"SWEETNESS AND LIGHT."
[To TES EDITOR or TH. " SPECTATOR:] Sin,—In your review of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Spec- tator, February 13th) you ask whether moat people know that it was Swift, not Matthew Arnold, who first wrote of "Sweet- nese and Light." I cannot answer for "most people," but I have long known it. I happen to have read Culture and its Enemies in the original form (the present title, Culture and Anarchy, is an afterthought), and to have now in my possession the original copy which appeared in the Cornhill Magasine.
I cannot ask your permission to quote the passage in full, but it contains these words : "As Swift . . . most happily calls them in his Battle of the Books, 'the two noblest of things, Sweetness and Light.' " If moat people, as you think, do not know that Swift was the author of the phrase, at any rate their ignorance is not Arnold's fault.—I am, Sir, Ac.,
EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON.
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