On The Art of Reading Part 16

He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart: Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured.

Do you think [asks Socrates] that Homer wrote this under the idea that the soul is a harmony capable of being led by the affections of the body, and not rather of a nature which should lead and master them--herself a far diviner thing than any harmony?

A Greek, then, will use Homer--_his_ Bible--minutely on niceties of conduct or broadly on first principles of philosophy or religion. But equally, since it is poetry all the time to him, he will take--or to instance particular writers, Aristotle and the late Greek, Longinus will take--a single hexameter to ill.u.s.trate a minute trick of style or turn of phrase, as equally he will choose a long pa.s.sage or the whole "Iliad," the whole "Odyssey,"

to ill.u.s.trate a grand rule of poetic construction, a first principle of aesthetics. For an example--'Herein,' says Aristotle, starting to show that an Epic poem must have Unity of Subject--'Herein, to repeat what we have said before, we have a further proof of Homer's superiority to the rest. He did not attempt to deal even with the Trojan War in its entirety, though it was a whole story with a definite beginning, middle and end-- feeling apparently that it was too long a story to be taken in at one view or else over-complicated by variety of incidents.' And as Aristotle takes the "Iliad"--_his_ Bible--to ill.u.s.trate a grand rule of poetical construction, so the late writer of his tradition--Longinus--will use it to exhibit the core and essence of poetical sublimity; as in his famous ninth chapter, of which Gibbon wrote:

The ninth chapter ... {of the [Greek: PERI UPSOUS] or "De Sublimitate" of Longinus} is one of the finest monuments of antiquity. Till now, I was acquainted only with two ways of criticising a beautiful pa.s.sage: the one, to show, by an exact anatomy of it, the distinct beauties of it, and whence they sprung; the other, an idle exclamation, or a general encomium, which leaves nothing behind it. Longinus has shown me that there is a third. He tells me his own feelings upon reading it; and tells them with so much energy, that he communicates them. I almost doubt which is more sublime, Homer's Battle of the G.o.ds, or Longinus's Apostrophe to Terentia.n.u.s upon it.

Well, let me quote you, in translation, a sentence or two from this chapter, which produced upon Gibbon such an effect as almost to antic.i.p.ate Walter Pater's famous definition, 'To feel the virtue of the poet, of the painter, to disengage it, to set it forth--these are the three stages of the critic's duty.'

'Elsewhere,' says Longinus, 'I have written as follows: _Sublimity is the echo of a great soul._'

'Sublimity is the echo of a great soul.'--It was worth repeating too--was it not?

For it is not possible that men with mean and servile ideas and aims prevailing throughout their lives should produce anything that is admirable and worthy of immortality. Great accents we expect to fall from the lips of those whose thoughts are deep and grave.... Hear how magnificently Homer speaks of the higher powers: 'As far as a man seeth with his eyes into the haze of distance as he sitteth upon a cliff of outlook and gazeth over the wine-dark sea, even so far at a bound leap the neighing horses of the G.o.ds.'

'He makes' [says Longinus] 'the vastness of the world the measure of their leap.' Then, after a criticism of the Battle of the G.o.ds (too long to be quoted here) he goes on:

Much superior to the pa.s.sages respecting the Battle of the G.o.ds are those which represent the divine nature as it really is--pure and great and undefiled; for example, what is said of Poseidon.

Her far-stretching ridges, her forest-trees, quaked in dismay, And her peaks, and the Trojans' town, and the s.h.i.+ps of Achaia's array, Beneath his immortal feet, as onward Poseidon strode.

Then over the surges he drave: leapt, sporting before the G.o.d, Sea-beasts that uprose all round from the depths, for their king they knew, And for rapture the sea was disparted, and onward the car-steeds flew[1].

Then how does Longinus conclude? Why, very strangely--very strangely indeed, whether you take the treatise to be by that Longinus, the Rhetorician and Zen.o.bia's adviser, whom the Emperor Aurelian put to death, or prefer to believe it the work of an unknown hand in the first century. The treatise goes on:

Similarly, the legislator of the Jews [Moses], no ordinary man, having formed and expressed a worthy conception of the might of the G.o.dhead, writes at the very beginning of his Laws, 'G.o.d said'--What? 'Let there be light, and there was light'

IV

So here, Gentlemen, you have Plato, Aristotle, Longinus--all Greeks of separate states--men of eminence all three, and two of surpa.s.sing eminence, all three and each in his time and turn treating Homer reverently as Holy Writ and yet enjoying it liberally as poetry. For indeed the true Greek mind had no thought to separate poetry from religion, as to the true Greek mind reverence and liberty to enjoy, with the liberty of mind that helps to enjoy, were all tributes to the same divine thing.

They had no professionals, no puritans, to hedge it off with a _taboo_: and so when the last and least of the three, Longinus, comes to _our_ Holy Writ--the sublime poetry in which Christendom reads its G.o.d--his open mind at once recognises it as poetry and as sublime. 'G.o.d said, Let there be light: and there was light.'

If Longinus could treat this as sublime poetry, why cannot we, who have translated and made it ours?

V

Are we forbidden on the ground that our Bible is directly inspired? Well, inspiration, as Sir William Davenant observed and rather wittily proved, in his Preface to "Gondibert," 'is a dangerous term.' It is dangerous mainly because it is a relative term, a term of degrees. You may say definitely of some things that the writer was inspired, as you may certify a certain man to be mad--that is, so thoroughly and convincingly mad that you can order him under restraint. But quite a number of us are (as they say in my part of the world) 'not exactly,' and one or two of us here and there at moments may have a touch even of inspiration.

So of the Bible itself: I suppose that few nowadays would contend it to be all inspired _equally._ 'No' you may say, 'not all equally: but all of it _directly,_ as no other book is.'

To that I might answer, 'How do you _know_ that direct inspiration ceased with the Revelation of St John the Divine, and closed the book? It may be: but how do you know, and what authority have you to say that Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," for example, or Browning's great Invocation of Love was not directly inspired? Certainly the men who wrote them were rapt above themselves: and, if not directly, Why indirectly, and how?'

But I pause on the edge of a mora.s.s, and spring back to firmer ground. Our Bible, as we have it, is a translation, made by forty-seven men and published in the year 1611. The original--and I am still on firm ground because I am quoting now from "The Cambridge History of English Literature"--'either proceeds from divine inspiration, as some will have it, or, according to others, is the fruit of the religious genius of the Hebrew race.

From either point of view the authors are highly gifted individuals' [!]--

highly gifted individuals, who, notwithstanding their diversities, and the progressiveness observable in their representations of the nature of G.o.d, are wonderfully consistent in the main tenor of their writings, and serve, in general, for mutual confirmation and ill.u.s.tration. In some cases, this may be due to the revision of earlier productions by later writers, which has thus brought more primitive conceptions into a degree of conformity with maturer and profounder views; but, even in such cases, the earlier conception often lends itself, without wrenching, to the deeper interpretation and the completer exposition. The Bible is not distinctively an intellectual achievement.

In all earnest I protest that to write about the Bible in such a fas.h.i.+on is to demonstrate inferentially that it has never quickened you with its glow; that, whatever your learning, you have missed what the unlearned Bunyan, for example, so admirably caught--the true _wit_ of the book. The writer, to be sure, is dealing with the originals. Let us more humbly sit at the feet of the translators. 'Highly gifted individuals,' or no, the sort of thing the translators wrote was 'And G.o.d said, Let there be light,' 'A sower went forth to sow,' 'The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took,' 'The wages of sin is death,' 'The trumpet shall sound,' 'Jesus wept,' 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'

Let me quote you for better encouragement, as well as for relief, a pa.s.sage from Matthew Arnold on the Authorised Version:

The effect of Hebrew poetry can be preserved and transferred in a foreign language as the effect of other great poetry cannot. The effect of Homer, the effect of Dante, is and must be in great measure lost in a translation, because their poetry is a poetry of metre, or of rhyme, or both; and the effect of these is not really transferable. A man may make a good English poem with the matter and thoughts of Homer and Dante, may even try to reproduce their metre, or rhyme: but the metre and rhyme will be in truth his own, and the effect will be his, not the effect of Homer or Dante. Isaiah's, on the other hand, is a poetry, as is well known, of parallelism; it depends not on metre and rhyme, but on a balance of thought, conveyed by a corresponding balance of sentence; and the effect of this can be transferred to another language.... Hebrew poetry has in addition the effect of a.s.sonance and other effects which cannot perhaps be transferred; but its main effect, its effect of parallelism of thought and sentence, can.

I take this from the preface to his little volume in which Arnold confesses that his 'paramount object is to get Isaiah enjoyed.'

VI

Sundry men of letters besides Matthew Arnold have pleaded for a literary study of the Bible, and specially of our English Version, that we may thereby enhance our enjoyment of the work itself and, through this, enjoyment and understanding of the rest of English Literature, from 1611 down. Specially among these pleaders let me mention Mr F. B. Money-Coutts (now Lord Latymer) and a Cambridge man, Dr R. G. Moulton, now Professor of Literary Theory and Interpretation in the University of Chicago. Of both these writers I shall have something to say. But first and generally, if you ask me why all their pleas have not yet prevailed, I will give you my own answer--the fault as usual lies in ourselves--in our own tameness and incuriosity.

There is no real trouble with the _taboo_ set up by professionals and puritans, if we have the courage to walk past it as Christian walked between the lions; no real tyranny we could not overthrow, if it were worth while, with a push; no need at all for us to 'wreathe our sword in myrtle boughs.' What tyranny exists has grown up through the quite well-meaning labours of quite well-meaning men: and, as I started this lecture by saying, I have never heard any serious reason given why we should not include portions of the English Bible in our English Tripos, if we choose.

Nos te, Nos facimus, Scriptura, deam.

Then why don't we choose?

To answer this, we must (I suggest) seek somewhat further back.

The Bible--that is to say the body of the old Hebrew Literature clothed for us in English--comes to us in our childhood. But how does it come?

Let me, amplifying a hint from Dr Moulton, ask you to imagine a volume including the great books of our own literature all bound together in some such order as this: "Paradise Lost," Darwin's "Descent of Man," "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," Walter Map, Mill "On Liberty," Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," "The Annual Register," Froissart, Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," "Domesday Book," "Le Morte d'Arthur," Campbell's "Lives of the Lord Chancellors," Boswell's "Johnson," Barbour's "The Bruce,"

Hakluyt's "Voyages," Clarendon, Macaulay, the plays of Shakespeare, Sh.e.l.ley's "Prometheus Unbound," "The Faerie Queene,"

Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Bacon's Essays, Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads," FitzGerald's "Omar Khayyam," Wordsworth, Browning, "Sartor Resartus," Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Burke's "Letters on a Regicide Peace," "Ossian," "Piers Plowman," Burke's "Thoughts on the Present Discontents," Quarles, Newman's "Apologia", Donne's Sermons, Ruskin, Blake, "The Deserted Village," Manfred, Blair's "Grave," "The Complaint of Deor,"

Bailey's "Festus," Thompson's "Hound of Heaven."

Will you next imagine that in this volume most of the author's names are lost; that, of the few that survive, a number have found their way into wrong places; that Ruskin for example is credited with "Sartor Resartus," that "Laus Veneris" and "Dolores" are ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, "The Anatomy of Melancholy" to Charles II; and that, as for the t.i.tles, these were never invented by the authors, but by a Committee?

Will you still go on to imagine that all the poetry is printed as prose; while all the long paragraphs of prose are broken up into short verses, so that they resemble the little pa.s.sages set out for parsing or a.n.a.lysis in an examination paper?

This device, as you know, was first invented by the exiled translators who published the Geneva Bible (as it is called) in 1557; and for pulpit use, for handiness of reference, for 'waling a portion,' it has its obvious advantages: but it is, after all and at the best, a very primitive device: and, for my part, I consider it the deadliest invention of all for robbing the book of outward resemblance to literature and converting it to the aspect of a gazetteer--a _biblion a-biblion,_ as Charles Lamb puts it.

Have we done? By no means. Having effected all this, let us pepper the result over with italics and numerals, print it in double columns, with a marginal gutter on either side, each gutter pouring down an inky flow of references and cross references. Then, and not till then, is the outward disguise complete--so far as you are concerned. It remains only then to appoint it to be read in Churches, and oblige the child to get selected portions of it by heart on Sundays. But you are yet to imagine that the authors themselves have taken a hand in the game: that the later ones suppose all the earlier ones to have been predicting all the time in a nebulous fas.h.i.+on what they themselves have to tell, and indeed to have written mainly with that object: so that Macaulay and Adam Smith, for example, constantly interrupt the thread of their discourse to affirm that what they tell us must be right because Walter Map or the author of "Piers Plowman" foretold it ages before.

Now a grown man--that is to say, a comparatively unimpressionable man--that is again to say, a man past the age when to enjoy the Bible is priceless--has probably found out somehow that the word prophet does not (in spite of vulgar usage) mean 'a man who predicts.' He has experienced too many prophets of that kind-- especially since 1914--and he respects Isaiah too much to rank Isaiah among them. He has been in love, belike; he has read the Song of Solomon: he very much doubts if, on the evidence, Solomon was the kind of lover to have written that Song, and he is quite certain that when the lover sings to his beloved:

Thy two b.r.e.a.s.t.s are like two young roes that are twins. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim.

--he knows, I say, that this is not a description of the Church and her graces, as the chapter-heading audaciously a.s.serts. But he is lazy; too lazy even to commend the Revised Version for striking Solomon out of the Bible, calling the poem The Song of Songs, omitting the absurd chapter-headings, and printing the poetry as poetry ought to be printed. The old-fas.h.i.+oned arrangement was good enough for him. Or he goes to church on Christmas Day and listens to a first lesson, of which the old translators made nonsense, and, in two pa.s.sages at least, stark nonsense. But, again, the old nonsense is good enough for him; soothing in fact. He is not even quite sure that the Bible, looking like any other book, ought to be put in the hands of the young.

In all this I think he is wrong. I am sure he is wrong if our contention be right, that the English Bible should be studied by us all for its poetry and its wonderful language as well as for its religion--the religion and the poetry being in fact inseparable. For then, in Euripides' phrase, we should clothe the Bible in a dress through which its beauty might best s.h.i.+ne.

VII

If you ask me How? I answer--first begging you to bear in mind that we are planning the form of the book for our purpose, and that other forms will be used for other purposes--that we should start with the simplest alterations, such as these:

(1) The books should be re-arranged in their right order, so far as this can be ascertained (and much of it has been ascertained).

I am told, and I can well believe, that this would at a stroke clear away a ma.s.s of confusion in strictly Biblical criticism.

But that is not my business. I know that it would immensely help our _literary_ study.

(2) I should print the prose continuously, as prose is ordinarily and properly printed: and the poetry in verse lines, as poetry is ordinarily and properly printed. And I should print each on a page of one column, with none but the necessary notes and references, and these so arranged that they did not tease and distract the eye.

(3) This arrangement should be kept, whether for the Tripos we prescribe a book in the Authorised text or in the Revised. As a rule, perhaps--or as a rule for some years to come--we shall probably rely on the Authorised Version: but for some books (and I instance "Job") we should undoubtedly prefer the Revised.