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, sandalwood, 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, spellbound 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?”
Lecture IX
On Reading the Bible (II)
Wednesday, April 24, 1918
I
We left off last term, Gentlemen, upon a note of protest. We wondered why it should be that our English Version of the Bible lies under the ban of schoolmasters, Boards of Studies, and all who devise courses of reading and examinations in English Literature: that among our “prescribed books” we find Chaucer’s “Prologue,” we find Hamlet, we find Paradise Lost, we find Pope’s “Essay on Man,” again and again, but the Book of Job never; The Vicar of Wakefield and Gray’s “Elegy” often, but Ruth or Isaiah, Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom never.
I propose this morning:
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to enquire into the reasons for this, so far as I can guess and interpret them;
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to deal with such reasons as we can discover or surmise;
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to suggest today, some simple first aid: and in another lecture, taking for experiment a single book from the Authorised Version, some practical ways of including it in the ambit of our new English Tripos. This will compel me to be definite: and as definite proposals invite definite objections, by this method we are likeliest to know where we are, and if the reform we seek be realisable or illusory.
II
I shall ask you then, first, to assent with me, that the Authorised
