Page:The Galaxy (New York, Sheldon & Co.) Volume 24 (1877).djvu/12

6 and come to flower and fruit. It is a magical spectacle, this of the author's growth, because it is shown us in a single reading of his works: a single reading brings the development of a lifetime into the range of a day's observation, and for the critic or the critical reader the spectacle is one of deep interest.

The growth of a fine mind is a more complex thing than that of a plant; but in this paper I purpose confining myself in the main to a single clue in Mr. Arnold's thought and method. From his writings, from earlier to later, I will seek to trace out and detach what he means by his so-called doctrine of culture, and what the doctrine may signify for us his readers.

And first: we shall find the substantial anticipation of that doctrine in his writings long before his critics, and long before he himself, had thought of giving it a name. In the critical preface to his poems of 1853 he conceives of culture as the effort toward perfection of spirit in ourselves. He is speaking of the high value which classical studies have for the poet's discipline, and upon the character of those who pursue them; and he says:

"Their commerce with the ancients appears to me to produce, in those who constantly practise it, a steadying and composing effect upon their judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and events in general. They are like persons who have had a very weighty and impressive experience; they are more truly than others under the empire of facts, and more independent of the language current among those with whom they live. They wish neither to applaud nor to revile their age; they wish to know what it is, what it can give them, and whether this is what they want. What they want they know very well; they want to educe and cultivate what is best and noblest in themselves."

That passage contains, if not the fuller form and pressure of Mr. Arnold's doctrine of culture as developed in recent years, yet its clear premonition; in that passage, written at the age of thirty-one, is struck the keynote of the conception which we are to see gaining new elements and accretions in his later works. The doctrine is not yet named as culture, nor will it be so named for many years yet; but the conception is there, as that of growth in character. To educe and cultivate what is best and noblest in us—that is apparently more than what one of Mr. Arnold's critics, representing his less attentive readers, finds a sufficient conception of culture; namely, "a desirable quality in a critic of new books."

And surely this cultivation of what is best and noblest in us is not an unworthy object. Those even that do not believe in "culture" as vulgarly understood may admit this, though somewhat visionary, somewhat idealizing, it will doubtless seem to many; and to some it will appear a fit subject for ridicule. But let us not forget that this preface of Mr. Arnold's was written during those "days of ardor and emotion" to which he has recently referred in a note to one of his early poems. Like "The New Sirens," the early preface came from a time of "ardor and emotion"; and it shows the aspirations of a finely endowed nature in full play.

But at that time Mr. Arnold's thoughts were less with the world about him than now; his sympathies looked backward. It was in antiquity that the young poet mainly sought his nurture and his stimulus; in antiquity, with its record of "weighty and impressive experience." Weighty and impressive it surely is; and why? Because for us it is completed, serene. The deeds and the character of our own time may be as great, or greater if you will; but the dust clouds of controversy whirl around them, the false lights of prejudice and passion play upon them; the results which are to interpret them are still in the future. Is it strange that the student of perfection should choose to gaze upon the clearer horizon of the past? We may not