VIII

I daresay, after all, that the best way is not to bother a boy too early and overmuch with history; that the best way is to let him ramp at first through the Scriptures even as he might through "The Arabian Nights": to let him take the books as they come, merely indicating, for instance, that Job is a great poem, the Psalms great lyrics, the story of Ruth a lovely idyll, the Song of Songs the perfection of an Eastern love-poem. Well and what then? He will certainly get less of "The Cotter's Saturday Night" into it, and certainly more of the truth of the East. There he will feel the whole splendid barbaric story for himself: the flocks of Abraham and Laban: the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt for corn: the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the gleaning, and Rispah beneath the gibbet: Sisera bowing in weariness: Saul—great Saul—by the tent-prop with the jewels in his turban:

All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart.

Or consider—to choose one or two pictures out of the tremendous procession—consider Michal, Saul's royal daughter: how first she is given in marriage to David to be a snare for him; how loving him she saves his life, letting him down from the window and dressing up an image on the bed in his place: how, later, she is handed over to another husband Phaltiel, how David demands her back, and she goes:

And her husband (Phaltiel) went with her along weeping behind her to Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, Go, return. And he returned.

Or, still later, how the revulsion takes her, Saul's daughter, as she sees David capering home before the ark, and how her affection had done with this emotional man of the ruddy countenance, so prone to weep in his bed:

  And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David,
  Michal Saul's daughter—

Mark the three words—

  Michal Saul's daughter looked through a window, and saw
  King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she
  despised him in her heart.

The whole story goes into about ten lines. Your psychological novelist nowadays, given the wit to invent it, would make it cover 500 pages at least.

Or take the end of David in the first two chapters of the First Book of Kings, with its tale of Oriental intrigues, plots, treacheries, murderings in the depths of the horrible palace wherein the old man is dying. Or read of Solomon and his ships and his builders, and see his Temple growing (as Heber put it) like a tall palm, with no sound of hammers. Or read again the end of Queen Athaliah:

And when Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people, she came to the people into the temple of the Lord.— And when she looked, behold, the king stood by a pillar, as the manner was, and the princes and the trumpeters by the king, and all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets: And Athaliah rent her clothes, and cried Treason, Treason.—But Jehoiada the priest commanded the captains of the hundreds, the officers of the host, and said unto them, Have her forth without the ranges….

—And they laid hands on her; and she went by the way by the which the horses came into the king's house: and there was she slain.

Let a youngster read this, I say, just as it is written; and how the true East—sound, scent, form, colour—pours into the narrative!—cymbals and trumpets, leagues of sand, caravans trailing through the heat, priest and soldiery and kings going up between them to the altar; blood at the foot of the steps, blood everywhere, smell of blood mingled with spices, sandal-wood, dung of camels!

Yes, but how—if you will permit the word—how the enjoyment of it as magnificent literature might be enhanced by a scholar who would condescend to whisper, of his knowledge, the magical word here or there, to the child as he reads! For an instance.—

No child—no grown man with any sense of poetry—can deny his ear to the Forty-fifth Psalm; the one that begins 'My heart is inditing a good matter,' and plunges into a hymn of royal nuptials. First (you remember) the singing-men, the sons of Korah, lift their chant to the bridegroom, the King:

Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty … And in thy majesty ride prosperously.

Or as we hear it in the Book of Common Prayer:

Good luck have thou with thine honour… because of the word of truth, of meekness, and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things….

All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia: out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.

Anon they turn to the Bride:

Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house…. The King's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold.

She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company. And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift. Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth.

For whom (wonders the young reader, spell-bound by this), for what happy bride and bridegroom was this glorious chant raised? Now suppose that, just here, he has a scholar ready to tell him what is likeliest true—that the bridegroom was Ahab—that the bride, the daughter of Sidon, was no other than Jezebel, and became what Jezebel now is—with what an awe of surmise would two other passages of the history toll on his ear?

And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood….

And when he (Jehu) was come in, he did eat and drink, and said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king's daughter.

And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.

Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he said, This is the word of the Lord, which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel … so that (men) shall not say, This is Jezebel.

In another lecture, Gentlemen, I propose to take up the argument and attempt to bring it to this point. 'How can we, having this incomparable work, necessary for study by all who would write English, bring it within the ambit of the English Tripos and yet avoid offending the experts?'