Celtic Temperament

— There are certain authors from whom I always get pleasure and profit, no matter what the subject they treat of. Our own Lowell is one of these, and in his different way John Morley is another; writers who, out of the fullness of their minds, have at all times something to give worth the having, in good measure, pressed down, and running over. Matthew Arnold, too, seldom fails to furnish me with entertainment. He is a crotchety thinker, and his style, in its excellences and defects, is mannered; but his thought and his expression are his own, and he interests me even when I do not by any means agree with him. In an essay on the literature of the Celts, he comes by natural course upon the question of the Celtic temperament, and of temperament in general as a factor in the literary product of different peoples. The theme is a fascinating one, and much of what the author says seems to me both true and very happily expressed. So far as human nature can be described in the lump, one feels that Mr. Arnold does not hit off badly the characteristic excellences and defects of the Teutonic, the Norman, and Celtic races, out of which three elements the modern English race is compounded. The larger Teutonic element, modified by the mixture of Norman and Celtic blood in the English, is still more largely modified in us Americans by other influences, climatic, political, etc. The Celtic blood in the Englishman (the proportion of which is much greater, Arnold contends, than is commonly supposed) is undoubtedly the source in him of all that is fine in perception, quick in sensibility ; and yet it is the clashing of the Celtic with the Germanic temperament that produces the Englishman’s painful self-consciousness and awkwardness, all that makes the Frenchman speak of him as empêtré, hampered, embarrassed.

To the Celtic element is to be traced some of the finest qualities of English poetry, what Mr, Arnold calls its turn for style, so foreign to the Germans, and its turn for “ natural magic,” or the power to render the magic, the mystery, the sentiment, as well as the visible form of nature.

While the author’s characterization of the Celt is no doubt just, on the whole, it seems to me too little is allowed for the Celtic element in the French of today, and too much for the Latin civilization, which may have modified without overlaying the original basis of the French nature. The excellences of the Celtic temperament Mr. Arnold appreciates and describes admirably, a proof of what culture has done to clear the mind of an Englishman of national prejudices and antagonisms. The Celt is quick to feel impressions, and feels them strongly; his is a lively personality, keenly sensitive to joy and sorrow, its essence being to aspire ardently after life, light, and emotion. “ Impressionable, soon up, soon down, — the more down because it is its nature to be up, — sociable, hospitable, eloquent, expansive, eager, a genius for good and for bad, more airy and unsubstantial than the Teutonic, and if sensuous, not gross, not attracted so much by vulgar satisfactions as by emotion and excitement.” It is easy enough to see the dangers of such a temperament, with its want of balance, measure, patience, “ always ready to react against the despotism of fact.” Speaking of the Celt’s frequent want of success in material tilings, Mr. Arnold refers chiefly to the Celt in Great Britain, and here, I think, he puts all down to defect of temperament, and does not take into account, as he should, the fact of long-continued English oppression in Ireland. And the Gael in Scotland has had much to contend with in the barrenness and poverty of his native soil. The Celt in France has known how to “apply means to ends,” and to create, from the time of Louis XI. onward, one of the most powerful and civilized states of Europe. Why assume that the capacity for affairs, shown in a thousand small things of every-day life as well as in greater matters, is wholly attributable to the influence upon the Gaul of Roman civilization ? Mr. Arnold appears to regard the Latinized Celts of France as a people practically quite diverse from the Irish Celts or the Cymri of Wales and Brittany.

The good sides of the Celtic temperament Mr. Arnold appreciates more truly than many of his readers may do. Sentiment, he says, is the best term to take to describe the Celtic nature if we are to use but one term ; and to many people sentiment does not seem a particularly valuable element of character. An impressionable, ardent, expansive, sensitive temperament appears one of weakness rather than strength. Yet, if we consider, these qualities imply fullness of life, and a life of the spiritual rather than the animal part in us. It is the Celt’s sensibility and generous ardor that has made him “ full of reverence for genius, learning, the things of the mind,” enthusiastic for ideas, capable of disinterested devotion. Prudence is the last virtue learned by generous souls, and if it is unwise to react too strongly against the “ despotism of fact,” on the other hand it is often base to yield to it, to lend one’s self to upholding the tyranny of the hard, bare, coarse, commonplace reality over the noble, pure, and sweet ideality in the life of man. Sensibility, as Mr. Arnold rightly says, one cannot have too much of, if one can but keep its master, not its slave. “It is one of the prime constituents of genius ; it is to the soul what keen senses are to the body; and if sometimes a source of weakness, a source, too, of power and of happiness.” With all of which I heartily agree.