96 INDOOE STUDIES 



and spontaneity. His is a "sad lucidity of soul," 

 whereas the Greek had a joyous lucidity of soul. 

 "0 Solon, Solon!" said the priest of Egypt, "you 

 Greeks are always children." But the Englishman 

 had the Greek passion for symmetry, totality, and 

 the Hellenic ahhorrence of the strained, the fantas- 

 tic, the obscure. His were not merely the classi- 

 cal taste and predilections of a scholar, but of an 

 alert, fearless, and thoroughgoing critic of life; a 

 man who dared lay his hands on the British constitu- 

 tion itself and declare that "with its compromises, 

 its love of facts, its horror of theory, its studied 

 avoidance of clear thought, it sometimes looks a co- 

 lossal machine for the manufacture of Philistines." 

 Milton was swayed by the Greek ideals in his 

 poetry, but they took no vital hold of his life; his 

 Puritanism and his temper in his controversial writ- 

 ings are the farthest possible remove from the seren- 

 ity and equipose of the classic standards. But 

 Arnold, a much less poetic force certainly than Mil- 

 ton, was animated by the spirit of Hellenism on all 

 occasions; it was the shaping and inspiring spirit 

 of his life. It was not a dictum with him, but 

 a force. Yet his books are thoroughly of to-day, 

 thoroughly occupied with current men and meas- 

 ures, and covered with current names and allusions. 

 Arnold's Hellenism speaks very pointedly all 

 through "Culture and Anarchy," in all those as- 

 saults of his upon the " hideousness and rawness " of 

 so much of British civilization, upon the fierceness 

 and narrowness, the Jacobinism of parties, upon 



