author's expressed, and very natural and proper, intention of
closing his professorial exercises with the _bocca dolce_. Still
this is at least conceivably due to the fact that the boldest
extension of the campaign itself had not definitely entered, or at
least possessed, the author's mind. A considerable time, indeed from
July 1867 to January 1868, passed before the publication of the
lecture as an article in the _Cornhill_ was followed up by the
series from the latter month to August, which bore the general title
of _Anarchy and Authority_, and completed the material of
_Culture and Anarchy_ itself. This, as a book, appeared in 1869.
It began, according to the author's favourite manner, which was
already passing into something like a mannerism, with a sort of
half-playful, half-serious battery against a living writer (in this
case Mr Frederic Harrison), and with a laudatory citation from a dead
one (in this case Bishop Wilson). Mr Harrison had blasphemed "the cant
about culture," and Mr Arnold protests that culture's only aim is in
the Bishop's words, "to make reason and the will of God prevail." In
the first chapter, famous thenceforward in English literature by its
title, borrowed from Swift, of "Sweetness and Light," we have the old
rallyings of the _Daily Telegraph_ and the _Nonconformist_.
Then the general view is laid down, and is developed in those that
follow, but still with more of a political than a religious bent, and
with the political bent itself chiefly limited to the social aspect.
"Doing as one Likes" scatters a mild rain of ridicule on this supposed
fetich of all classes in England; and then, the very famous, if not
perhaps very felicitous, nickname-classification of
"Barbarian-Philistine-Populace" is launched, defended, discussed in a
chapter to itself. To do Mr Arnold justice, the three classes are, if
not very philosophically defined, very impartially and amusingly
rallied, the rallier taking up that part of humble Philistine
conscious of his own weaknesses, which, till he made it slightly
tiresome by too long a run, was piquant enough. The fourth chapter,
"Hebraism and Hellenism," coasts the sands and rocks (on which, as it
seems to some, Mr Arnold was later to make shipwreck) very nearly in
the title and rather nearly in the contents, but still with a fairly
safe offing. The opposition might be put too bluntly by saying that
"Hellenism" represents to Mr Arnold the love of truth at any price,
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