Imatges de pàgina
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cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King John's days. I know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith.

The first of these is from a discourse on Eloquence, by Hume, the second, Hazlitt's opinion on Coleridge, from his English Poets, and the third from Elia (The Old and the New Schoolmaster). They are all in the constructive or artificial style, and, so far as syntax goes, have much in common with the Bible. It may be urged that their authors are quite as likely to be imitators of Seneca, or of his imitators. But, apart from the question whether Seneca himself may not have come under Hebraic influence, it must still be said that the ear of the English reader (and it is for the reader that, after all has been said, style is elaborated) had been attuned, not by the treatises On Anger and On Benefits, but by the cadences of Scripture. If now we compare these citations with examples of the cumulative style, the difference will be most conspicuous. The first extract which follows is from Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (Bk. I. Chap. 3), the second from Milton's Of Reformation in England, near its close.

But we must further remember also (which thing to touch in a word shall suffice) that as in this respect they have their law, which law directeth them in the means whereby they tend to their own perfection, so likewise another law there is, which toucheth them as they are sociable parts united into one body, a law which bindeth them each to serve unto other's good, and all to prefer the good of the whole before whatsoever their own particular, as we plainly see they do when things natural in that regard forget their ordinary natural wont, that which is heavy mounting sometime upwards of its own accord, and forsaking the centre of the earth, which to itself is most natural, even as if it did hear itself commanded to let go the good it privately wisheth, and to relieve the present distress of nature in common.

Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty measure to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and marvelous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her whole vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day when thou, the eternal and shortly expected King, shalt open the clouds

to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and, distributing national honors and rewards to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and earth, where they undoubtedly that by their labors, counsels, and prayers have been earnest for the common good of religion and their country, shall receive, above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in overmeasure for ever.

Who could mistake these, though the latter is colored by Scriptural phrases, for imitations of Scriptural style, or regard them as conformable to it? In its simplicity and concreteness Robinson Crusoe has much more in common with the Bible, and it is from this source that those qualities were no doubt in large measure derived. Let us see.

I found also that the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw good reason to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom however I saw none. Yet I saw abundance of fowls, but knew not their kinds; neither when I killed them could I tell what was fit for food, and what not. At my coming back I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a great wood. I believe it was the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of the world. I had no sooner fired but from all the parts of the wood there arose an innumerable number of fowls of many sorts, making a confused screaming, and crying every one according to his usual note, but not one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be a kind of a hawk, its color and beak resembling it, but had no talons or claws more than common. Its flesh was carrion, and fit for nothing.

But the matter is beyond dispute when we come to a piece of classic prose like Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which certainly owes nothing to the Romans (oftener Spaniards) of the Decadence.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against They rather suggest Cicero as an ultimate model.

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the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.

At this point we may pause, for we need no further demonstration of the indebtedness of English prose style to the Bible, nor would it be easy to discover a better illustration of Biblical qualities in modern guise, exemplified in a passage of more interest to all the world. South reckoned it a mark of illiteracy to be fond of high-flown metaphors and allegories, attended and set off with scraps of Greek and Latin.' If this be true, the American people in so far escape the imputation as they have set the seal of their approval on such writing as Lincoln's; and that they have had the judgment and taste to do so is due, more than to any other cause, to their familiarity with the Bible.1

1 For a parallel influence of the Bible on German cf. Nägelsbach's remarks in his Lateinische Stilistik, p. 7: "Während nun in den Schulen diese grösstentheils brotlosen Künste getrieben wurden und das Latein so sehr seine Würde verlor, dass es vor hundert Jahren in Deutschland wohl schwerlich mehr als drei geschmackvolle Stilisten gab, Mosheim, Gesner und Ernesti, hob sich auf der andern Seite die Muttersprache, an die rein gebliebene Kirchen- und Bibelsprache anknüpfend, zu einer nie geahnten Darstellungsfähig

keit."

ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS.

1. Importance of the Bible to the Student of English.

[RUSKIN, Præterita, Chap. 1.]

WALTER SCOTT and Pope's Homer were reading of my

WAL
W own selection, but my mother forced me, by steady daily

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toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to that discipline patient, accurate, and resolute - I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature. From Walter Scott's novels I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people's novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have led me to take Johnson's English, or Gibbon's, as types of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th Psalm, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, and having always a way of thinking with myself what words meant, it was not possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely superficial or formal English.

[RUSKIN, Præterita, Chap. 2.]

I have next with deeper gratitude to chronicle what I owed to my mother for the resolutely consistent lessons which so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make every word of them familiar to my ear in habitual music, yet in that familiarity reverenced, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct.

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This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether; that she did not care about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end.

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In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and went straight through, to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis the next day. If a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation, if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience, if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants allowed, none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs, - and none from any visitings or excursions, except real traveling,) I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what was already known; and, with the chapters thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound.

It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive - the 119th Psalm-has now become of all the most precious to me.

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But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise, toil on both sides equalby which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn these paraphrases, and chapters, (the eighth of 1st Kings being one—

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