80'0
KS
151
been in large part a protest against utilitarianism,
laissez taiTe,
and
whatever in human life is disintegrative, discontinuous, "unnatur–
al," mechanical and atomizing. In one way or another from the
conservative Burke to the Left-Labor Williams (as one makes him
out to be), "culture" has asserted an organic, continuous, natural,
corporate way of life, along with its perennial duty of furnishing a
more or less abstract intellectual and moral standard. Not only has
society been seen as having or needing culture, but as being, or
ideally becoming,
a
culture.
This double meaning is one thing that complicates and ob–
scures much American writing on the subject. American critics, as
has often been observed, feel the necessity of perpetually discover–
ing and indeed inventing "American culture" in order to talk about
it. One may envy Mr. Williams, who, although he recognizes the
difficulties involved in the double meaning of "culture," follows his
illustrious predecessors in generally assuming that there
is
a British
culture and that for all practical purposes he knows
what
it is. And
so when he speaks of culture as "a whole way of life," he is free to
think of it almost exclusively as a mode of criticism, "the effort at
total qualitative assessment." He doesn't have to face the hazards
and fatigues of half-creating something in order to criticize it.
Mr. Williams' book is a model, not notably of literary style,
one must admit, but of plain speaking, fairness, and concentrated
history-telling. The book is so concentrated, indeed, that summariz–
ing it in a short space is impossible. I will content myself with
simply noting some of the services he seems to me to have perform–
ed. He discovers unsuspected value in the Tory writings of South–
ey. He reminds us (and we need reminding) of the extent to
which all the Romantic poets were concerned with social matters.
He traces the processes by which two of the main components of
"culture" emerged from the Romantic movement: the autonomy
and high calling of the artist and the idea that art is a form of
superior truth. He points out also the dangers involved in this–
among them, the growing isolation of the artist, the burdening of
art and the artist with moral and religious functions which do not
properly belong to them, the allied tendency to make of poetry (as
