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[384] Macbeth, III, ii.

[385] Paradise Lost, VII, 23-24.

[386] The Recluse, l. 831.

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[387] From Burns’s A Bard’s Epitaph.

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[388] The correct title is The Solitary Reaper.

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

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[389] This selection is the first chapter of Culture and Anarchy.  It originally formed a part of the last lecture delivered by Arnold as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Culture and Anarchy was first printed in The Cornhill Magazine, July 1867,-August, 1868, vols.  XVI-XVIII.  It was published as a book in 1869.

[390] For Sainte-Beuve, see The Study of Poetry, Selections, Note 2, p. 56.[Transcriber’s note:  This is Footnote 65 in this e-text.] The article referred to appeared in the Quarterly Review for January, 1866, vol.  CXIX, p. 80.  It finds fault with Sainte-Beuve’s lack of conclusiveness, and describes him as having “spent his life in fitting his mind to be an elaborate receptacle for well-arranged doubts.”  In this respect a comparison is made with Arnold’s “graceful but perfectly unsatisfactory essays.”

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[391] From Montesquieu’s Discours sur les motifs qui doivent nous encourager aux sciences, prononce le 15 Novembre, 1725.  Montesquieu’s Oeuvres completes, ed.  Laboulaye, VII, 78.

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[392] Thomas Wilson (1663-1755) was consecrated Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1698.  His episcopate was marked by a number of reforms in the Isle of Man.  The opening pages of Arnold’s Preface to Culture and Anarchy are devoted to an appreciation of Wilson.  He says:  “On a lower range than the Imitation, and awakening in our nature chords less poetical and delicate, the Maxims of Bishop Wilson are, as a religious work, far more solid.  To the most sincere ardor and unction, Bishop Wilson unites, in these Maxims, that downright honesty and plain good sense which our English race has so powerfully applied to the divine impossibilities of religion; by which it has brought religion so much into practical life, and has done its allotted part in promoting upon earth the kingdom of God.”

[393] will of God prevail. Maxim 450 reads:  “A prudent Christian will resolve at all times to sacrifice his inclinations to reason, and his reason to the will and word of God.”

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[394] From Bishop Wilson’s Sacra Privata, Noon Prayers, Works, ed. 1781, I, 199.