Sweetness and light

Sweetness and light is an English idiom that indicates a person’s friendliness and ease. Today, it is generally used ironically to describe insincere courtesy. For example: The two had been fighting for a month, but around others it was all sweetness and light. Ammer, Christine. The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 1997. ]

Jonathan Swift coined the term in his 1790 essay, “Battle of the Books.” Matthew Arnold popularized it in his 1869 essay “Culture and Anarchy.”

Coining

Jonathan Swift’s “Battle of the Books” pits cultural ideas against each other in winding satirical narratives. His main groups are the “Ancients” and the “Moderns.” Swift’s important thinkers fight amongst themselves for superiority.

Midway through, one of Swifts Ancients, Aesop stumbles on a bee and a spider arguing about who is better. The bee had just ruined the spider’s web while trying to escape. The spider claims that the bee is useless because he has no property of his own. The bee counters, saying that the spider’s web only consists of dirt, and that all he really owns is the poison. Aesop judges the argument, equating the spider to the Moderns, and the bee to the Ancients. The ancient way, he says, is to fill their “hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.” [ Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels, A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books. Modern Library. New York. 1931. Pg. 532. ] The ancients are able to do this, Aesop says, because they “are content with the bee to pretend to nothing of [their] own, beyond…flights and…language.” [ Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels, A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books. Modern Library. New York. 1931. Pg. 532. ] That is to say, that the ancients are happy with the continuation of a larger tradition, even though they have no personal ownership, because of the sweetness and light they gain.

Popularization

Matthew Arnold popularized Swift’s phrase in “Culture and Anarchy,” an essay that discusses the role of culture in the world. Arnold claims that every culture strives for sweetness and light, which is the ideal combination of beauty and intelligence. Sweetness is beauty, and light is intelligence. He argues that culture moves to continually perfect itself, and that sweetness and light are the outcome of any good culture. He says that sweetness and light are “the essential character of human perfection.” [ Arnold, Matthew. Culture & Anarchy and Friendship’s Garland. Macmillan and Co.. London. 1903. Pg. 20. ]

The phrase came into regular use after Arnold’s essay, and crept into the English language as an idiom.

Modern use

The use of the phrase has changed a great deal since its original meaning out of Arnold’s essay. During the 20th century, it was used when someone exhibited an individual friendliness, or when a situation was especially pleasant. Bob’s close friends knew he wasn’t all sweetness and light. Or: Our time at the opera was all sweetness and light. [ Ammer, Christine. The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 1997. ]

In recent years, the phrase has started being used when pleasantness is unexpected or insincere. The novel’s tense moments are offset by long passages of sweetness and light. Or: Fred was all sweetness and light around his ex-wife. [ Ammer, Christine. The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 1997. ]

Notes