to heighten the effect. Moreover, the conversation recorded is so realistic that one never thinks of it as book dialogue, but as real human speech. THE PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE The Old Testament narratives, enriched as they are with poetic and dramatic elements, comprise a literature which, for simplicity, clearness, directness, vividness, and universal appeal, is unique. And these qualities explain its power, not merely to arouse interest in millions of readers, but to inspire the writers of Christendom fron the beginning to the present moment. Speaking of the place of the Bible in English literature, Professor J. H. Gardiner says: The power of the book to stir the imagination to a sense of the realities which are on a higher plane than the affairs of everyday life is not limited to its use as a source of religious belief. Yet this most native of all books is by origin wholly foreign, and in the case of the Old Testament is as foreign as anything can be. The stories of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers were first gathered at the local shrines of Palestine at a time when the children of Israel were just shedding their wild nomadic habits; and the stories of Judges with the glimpses they give us of bloody raids and tribal feuds, show how little the settling down tamed their wild and bloody temper. . . . All such stories reflect a state of civilization which we look upon as wholly Asiatic. Much reading in the Bible will soon bring one to an understanding of the mood in which all art seems a juggling with trifles, and an attempt to catch the unessential when the everlasting verities are slipping by. The silent, unhurrying rumination of the East makes our modern flood of literature seem garrulous and chattering: even the great literature of the Greeks loses beside the compression and massiveness of the Old Testament. It is this cool solidity of poise, this grave and weighty compression of speech, that makes the Old Testament literature so foreign. It has no pride of art, no interest in the subjective impressions of the writer, no care even for the preservation of his name. It is austerely preoccupied with the lasting and the real, and above all, unceasingly possessed with the sense of the immediate presence of a God who is omnipotent and inscrutable. . In our modern literature it is hardly possible to find an author who has not some touch of the restless egotism that is the curse of the artistic temperament: in the Bible there is no author who is not free from it. In this art which is not art, then, in this absorption with the solid facts of reality and the neglect of man's comment and finterpretation, in the unswerving instinct for the lasting, and the sense of the constant and immediate presence of an omnipotent God, the Bible stands apart in our literature. Yet on the other hand, the Bible is of all books the most thoroughly woven into the thought and language of the English speaking people. Not the least of its contributions is the standard which it has set for all writing in English that has an ambition to belong to literature. Certainly an intimate acquaintance with the English Bible is the best possible preparation for the study of English literature, or for the matter of fact, of any literature. Here, then, is a work which it seems safe to say is of something like universal appeal to the men of our race, a book which one may therefore look on as touching the soul of the race, as a whole.1 Numerous books have been published showing how strong this influence has been in the case of some of our greatest writers. To mention a few of them will suffice to aid such students as desire to pursue their study further. Concerning Shakespeare alone we mention 1. The Bible as English Literature, by J. H. Gardiner. three: Shakespeare and the Bible, by J. R. Eaton; The Bible in Shakespeare, by William Burgess; and Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible, by Bishop Charles Wordsworth. In Dr. van Dyke's The Poetry of Tennyson, we learn of over five hundred references to the Bible, while in The Bible in Browning, by Mrs. Minnie Gresham Machen, we are informed that in The Ring and the Book alone there are as many Biblical references as in all of Tennyson's poems. The Religion of Ruskin, by William Burgess, containing many quotations from Ruskin's works, shows what the Bible did for him. No student of English literature needs to be told of the influence of the Bible upon such seventeenth century writers as Milton, Bunyan, and Dryden; an examination of the works of these writers, however, is commended, that the extent of this influence may be appreciated. During the eighteenth century the effect of the Bible upon literary men was not so marked, but it was far from being a negligible quantity. Addison, Cowper, Burke, and Burns, to mention but a few of the best known, all show their debt to the great book. Concerning Burke it is said that, besides quoting the Bible frequently, and alluding to it oftener than to all the rest of literature, he often read chapters from Isaiah before making his speeches. In Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night alone there are some twenty Biblical references. In addition to what has already been said concerning Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin, attention may be called to the debt of some other nineteenth century writers to the Bible. A Scotch nurse taught Byron to love the Bible and led him to learn a number of the psalms while a boy, and many of his poems reveal the extent and exactness of his Biblical knowledge; not only his Hebrew Melodies and similar poems drawn wholly from the Bible, but hundreds of references in his other works might be cited. Mrs. Browning, Jean Ingelow, and Christina Rossetti could not have written what they did or as they did, but for their knowledge of the Bible. And the names of Scott, Landor, Carlyle, Hardy, Stevenson, and Kipling, as well as of our own Longfellow, Lowell, and, above all, Lincoln, must be added to the list of those whose thought and imagery make large drafts on the Book of Books. If further authority for the statement that the Bible is in a way the chief of English books is needed, it is found in the words of the following men of letters. Coleridge said, "Intense study of the Bible will keep any man from being vulgar in point of style." Walter Savage Landor wrote: "I am glad to witness your veneration for a Book which, to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence." "The English Bible-a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power," said Macaulay. And our own orator Daniel Webster confessed his debt as follows: "If there be anything in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures." Since English literature owes to the Bible so much of its power, its vitality, and its universal appeal to the human heart, it is evident that the Bible itself must be studied if one would appreciate English literature. BIBLIOGRAPHY World Literature.. . Richard G. Moulton The Literary Study of the Bible....Richard G. Moulton ... William G. Blaikie A History of the Hebrew People.... Charles Foster Kent A History of the Babylonians and Assyrians. George Stephen Goodspeed The House of Rimmon (a Drama)....Henry van Dyke |