A weight and denomination of money among the Jews; but as they never coined money, and always made use of the coinage of other people, all gold coins weighing about a guinea, and all silver coins of the weight of a small French crown, were called a shekel; and these shekels were distinguished into those of the weight of the sanctuary, and those of the weight of the king.
It is said in the Book of Samuel that Absalom had very fine hair, from which he cut a part every year. Many profound commentators assert that he cut it once a month, and that it was valued at two hundred shekels. If these shekels were of gold, the locks of Absalom were worth two thousand four hundred guineas per annum. There are few seigniories which produce at present the revenue that Absalom derived from his head.
It is said that when Abraham bought a cave in Hebron from the Canaanite Ephron, Ephron sold him the cave for four hundred shekels of silver, of current money with the merchant—probatæ monetæ publicæ.
We have already remarked that there was no coined money in these days, and thus these four hundred shekels of silver became four hundred shekels in weight, which, valued at present at three livres four sous each, are equal to twelve hundred and eighty livres of France.
It follows that the little field, which was sold with this cavern, was excellent land, to bring so high a price.
When Eleazar, the servant of Abraham, met the beautiful Rebecca, the daughter of Bethnel, carrying a pitcher of water upon her shoulder, from which she gave him and his camels leave to drink, he presented her with earrings of gold, which weighed two shekels, and bracelets which weighed ten, amounting in the whole to a present of the value of twenty-four guineas.
In the laws of Exodus it is said that if an ox gored a male or female slave, the possessor of the ox should give thirty shekels of silver to the master of the slave, and that the ox should be stoned. It is apparently to be understood that the ox in this case has produced a very dangerous wound, otherwise thirty-two crowns was a large sum for the neighborhood of Mount Sinai, where money was uncommon. It is for the same reason that many grave, but too hasty, persons suspect that Exodus as well as Genesis was not written until a comparatively late period.
What tends to confirm them in this erroneous opinion is a passage in the same Exodus: "Take of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half as much; of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels; of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; and of olive-oil a ton, to form an ointment to annoint the tabernacle"; and whosoever anointed himself or any stranger with a similar composition, was to be put to death.
It is added that with all these aromatics were to be united stacte, onyx, galbanum, and frankincense; and that a perfume was to be mixed up according to the art of the apothecary or perfumer.
But I cannot perceive anything in this composition which ought to excite the doubt of the incredulous. It is natural to imagine that the Jews—who, according to the text, stole from the Egyptians all which they could bring away—had also taken frankincense, galbanum, onyx, stacte, olive-oil, cassia, sweet calamus, cinnamon, and myrrh. They also, without doubt, stole many shekels; indeed, we have seen, that one of the most zealous partisans of this Hebrew horde estimates what they stole, in gold alone, at nine millions. I abide by his reckoning.
The first woman who pronounced oracles at Delphos was called Sibylla. According to Pausanias, she was the daughter of Jupiter, and of Lamia, the daughter of Neptune, and she lived a long time before the siege of Troy. From her all women were distinguished by the name of sibyls, who, without being priestesses, or even attached to a particular oracle, announced the future, and called themselves inspired. Different ages and countries have had their sibyls, or preserved predictions which bear their name, and collections were formed of them.
The greatest embarrassment to the ancients was to explain by what happy privilege these sibyls had the gift of predicting the future. Platonists found the cause of it in the intimate union which the creature, arrived at a certain degree of perfection, might have with the Divinity. Others attribute this divine property of the sibyls to the vapors and exhalations of the caves which they inhabited. Finally others attributed the prophetic spirit of the sibyls to their sombre and melancholy humor, or to some singular malady.
St. Jerome maintained that this gift was to them a recompense for their chastity; but there was at least one very celebrated one who boasted of having had a thousand lovers without being married. It would have been much more sensible in St. Jerome and other fathers of the Church to have denied the prophetic spirit of the sibyls, and to have said that by means of hazarding predictions at a venture, they might sometimes have been fulfilled, particularly with the help of a favorable commentary, by which words, spoken by chance, have been turned into facts which it was impossible they could have predicted.
It is singular that their predictions were collected after the event. The first collection of sibylline leaves, bought by Tarquin, contained three books; the second was compiled after the fire of the capitol, but we are ignorant how many books it contained; and the third is that which we possess in eight books, and in which it is doubtful whether the author has not inserted several predictions of the second. This collection is the fruit of the pious fraud of some Platonic Christians, more zealous than clever, who in composing it thought to lend arms to the Christian religion, and to put those who defended it in a situation to combat paganism with the greatest advantage.
This confused compilation of different prophecies was printed for the first time in the year 1545 from manuscripts, and published several times after, with ample commentaries, burdened with an erudition often trivial, and almost always foreign to the text, which they seldom enlightened. The number of works composed for and against the authenticity of these sibylline books is very great, and some even very learned; but there prevails so little order and reasoning, and the authors are so devoid of all philosophic spirit that those who might have courage to read them would gain nothing but ennui and fatigue. The date of the publication is found clearly indicated in the fifth and eighth books. The sibyl is made to say that the Roman Empire will have only fifteen emperors, fourteen of which are designated by the numeral value of the first letter of their names in the Greek alphabet. She adds that the fifteenth, who would be a man with a white head, would bear the name of a sea near Rome. The fifteenth of the Roman emperors was Adrian, and the Asiatic gulf is the sea of which he bears the name.
From this prince, continues the sibyl, three others will proceed who will rule the empire at the same time; but finally one of them will remain the possessor. These three shoots were Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus. The sibyl alludes to the adoptions and associations which united them. Marcus Aurelius found himself sole master of the empire at the death of Lucius Verus, at the commencement of the year 169; and he governed it without any colleague until the year 177, when he associated with his son Commodus. As there is nothing which can have any relation to this new colleague of Marcus Aurelius, it is evident that the collection must have been made between the years 169 and 177 of the vulgar era.
Josephus, the historian, quotes a work of the sibyl, in which the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues are spoken of nearly as in Genesis; which proves that the Christians are not the first authors of the supposition of the sibylline books. Josephus not relating the exact words of the sibyl, we cannot ascertain whether what is said of the same event in our collection was extracted from the work quoted by Josephus; but it is certain that several lines, attributed to the sibyl, in the exhortations found in the works of St. Justin, of Theophilus of Antioch, of Clement of Alexandria, and in some other fathers, are not in our collection; and as most of these lines bear no stamp of Christianity, they might be the work of some Platonic Jew.
In the time of Celsus, sibyls had already some credit among the Christians, as it appears by two passages of the answer of Origen. But in time sibylline prophecies appearing favorable to Christianity, they were commonly made use of in works of controversy with much more confidence than by the pagans themselves, who, acknowledging sibyls to be inspired women, confined themselves to saying that the Christians had falsified their writings, a fact which could only be decided by a comparison of the two manuscripts, which few people are in a situation to make.
Finally, it was from a poem of the sibyl of Cumea that the principal dogmas of Christianity were taken. Constantine, in the fine discourse which he pronounced before the assembly of the saints, shows that the fourth eclogue of Virgil is only a prophetic description of the Saviour; and if that was not the immediate object of the poet, it was that of the sibyl from whom he borrowed his ideas, who, being filled with the spirit of God, announced the birth of the Redeemer.
He believed that he saw in this poem the miracle of the birth of Jesus of a virgin, the abolition of sin by the preaching of the gospel, and the abolition of punishment by the grace of the Redeemer. He believed he saw the old serpent overthrown, and the mortal venom with which he poisoned human nature entirely deadened. He believed that he saw that the grace of the Lord, however powerful it might be, would nevertheless suffer the dregs and traces of sin to remain in the faithful; in a word, he believed that he saw Jesus Christ announced under the great character of the Son of God.
In this eclogue there are many other passages which might have been said to be copies of the Jewish prophets, who apply it themselves to Jesus Christ; it is at least the general opinion of the Church. St. Augustine, like others, has been persuaded of it, and has pretended that the lines of Virgil can only be applied to Jesus Christ. Finally, the most clever moderns maintain the same opinion.
Could a Turk conceive that we have one kind of singing for the first of our mysteries when we celebrate it in music, another kind which we call "motetts" in the same temple, a third kind at the opera, and a fourth at the theatre?
In like manner, can we imagine how the ancients blew their flutes, recited on their theatres with their heads covered by enormous masks, and how their declamation was written down.
Law was promulgated in Athens nearly as in Paris we sing an air on the Pont-Neuf. The public crier sang an edict, accompanying himself on the lyre.
It is thus that in Paris the rose in bud is cried in one tone; old silver lace to sell in another; only in the streets of Paris the lyre is dispensed with.
After the victory of Chæronea, Philip, the father of Alexander, sang the decree by which Demosthenes had made him declare war, and beat time with his foot. We are very far from singing in our streets our edicts, or finances, or upon the two sous in the livre.
It is very probable that the melopée, or modulation, regarded by Aristotle in his poetic art as an essential part of tragedy, was an even, simple chant, like that which we call the preface to mass, which in my opinion is the Gregorian chant, and not the Ambrosian, and which is a true melopée.
When the Italians revived tragedy in the sixteenth century the recitative was a melopée which could not be written; for who could write inflections of the voice which are octaves and sixths of tone? They were learned by heart. This custom was received in France when the French began to form a theatre, more than a century after the Italians. The "Sophonisba" of Mairet was sung like that of Trissin, but more grossly; for throats as well as minds were then rather coarser at Paris. All the parts of the actors, but particularly of the actresses, were noted from memory by tradition. Mademoiselle Bauval, an actress of the time of Corneille, Racine, and Molière, recited to me, about sixty years ago or more, the commencement of the part ofEmilia, in "Cinna," as it had been played in the first representations by La Beaupré. This modulation resembled the declamation of the present day much less than our modern recitative resembles the manner of reading the newspaper.
I cannot better compare this kind of singing, this modulation, than to the admirable recitative of Lulli, criticised by adorers of double crochets, who have no knowledge of the genius of our language, and who are ignorant what help this melody furnishes to an ingenious and sensible actor.
Theatrical modulation perished with the comedian Duclos, whose only merit being a fine voice without spirit and soul, finally rendered that ridiculous which had been admired in Des Œuillets, and in Champmeslé.
Tragedy is now played dryly; if we were not heated by the pathos of the spectacle and the action, it would be very insipid. Our age, commendable in other things, is the age of dryness.
It is true that among the Romans one actor recited and another made gestures. It was not by chance that the abbé Dubos imagined this pleasant method of declaiming. Titus Livius, who never fails to instruct us in the manners and customs of the Romans, and who, in that respect is more useful than the ingenious and satirical Tacitus, informs us, I say, that Andronicus, being hoarse while singing in the interludes, got another to sing for him while he executed the dance; and thence came the custom of dividing interludes between dancers and singers: "Dicitur cantum egisse magis vigente motu quum nihil vocis usis impediebat." The song is expressed by the dance. "Cantum egisse magis vigente motu." With more vigorous movements.
But they divided not the story of the piece between an actor who only gesticulates and another who only sings. The thing would have been as ridiculous as impracticable.
The art of pantomimes, which are played without speaking, is quite different, and we have seen very striking examples of it; but this art can please only when a marked action is represented, a theatrical event which is easily presented to the imagination of the spectator. It can represent Orosmanes killing Zaïre and killing himself; Semiramis wounded, dragging herself on the frontiers to the tomb of Ninus, and holding her son in her arms. There is no occasion for verses to express these situations by gestures to the sound of a mournful and terrible symphony. But how would two pantomimes paint the dessertation of Maximus and Cinna on monarchical and popular governments?
Apropos of the theatrical execution of the Romans, the abbé Dubos says that the dancers in the interludes were always in gowns. Dancing requires a closer dress. In the Pays de Vaud, a suite of baths built by the Romans, is carefully preserved, the pavement of which is mosaic. This mosaic, which is not decayed, represents dancers dressed like opera dancers. We make not these observations to detect errors in Dubos; there is no merit in having seen this antique monument which he had not seen; and besides, a very solid and just mind might be deceived by a passage of Titus Livius.
Why do we denominate slaves those whom the Romans called "servi," and the Greeks "duloi"? Etymology is here exceedingly at fault; and Bochart has not been able to derive this word from the Hebrew.
The most ancient record that we possess in which the word "slave" is found is the will of one Ermangaut, archbishop of Narbonne, who bequeathed to Bishop Fredelon his slave Anaph—"Anaphinus Slavonium." This Anaph was very fortunate in belonging to two bishops successively.
It is not unlikely that the Slavonians came from the distant North with other indigent and conquering hordes, to pillage from the Roman Empire what that empire had pilliged from other nations, and especially in Dalmatia and Illyria. The Italians called the misfortune of falling into their hands "shiavitu," and "schiavi" the captives themselves.
All that we can gather from the confused history of the middle ages is that in the time of the Romans the known world was divided between freemen and slaves. When the Slavonians, Alans, Huns, Heruli, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Franks and Normans came to despoil Europe, there was little probability that the multitude of slaves would diminish. Ancient masters, in fact, saw themselves reduced to slavery, and the smaller number enslaved the greater, as negroes are enslaved in the colonies, and according to the practice in many other cases.
We read nothing in ancient authors concerning the slaves of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. The book which speaks most of slaves is the "Iliad." In the first place, Briseis is slave to Achilles; and all the Trojan women, and more especially the princesses, fear becoming slaves to the Greeks, and spinners for their wives.
Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature. Society was so accustomed to this degradation of the species that Epictetus, who was assuredly worth more than his master, never expresses any surprise at his being a slave.
No legislator of antiquity ever attempted to abrogate slavery; on the contrary, the people most enthusiastic for liberty—the Athenians, the Lacedæmonians, the Romans, and the Carthaginians—were those who enacted the most severe laws against their serfs. The right of life and death over them was one of the principles of society. It must be confessed that, of all wars, that of Spartacus was the most just, and possibly the only one that was ever absolutely so.
Who would believe that the Jews, created as it might appear to serve all nations in turn, should also appear to possess slaves of their own? It is observed in their laws, that they may purchase their brethren for six years, and strangers forever. It was said, that the children of Esau would become bondsmen to the children of Jacob; but since, under a different dispensation, the Arabs, who call themselves descendants of Esau, have enslaved the posterity of Jacob.
The Evangelists put not a single word into the mouth of Jesus Christ which recalls mankind to the primitive liberty to which they appear to be born. There is nothing said in the New Testament on this state of degradation and suffering, to which one-half of the human race was condemned. Not a word appears in the writings of the apostles and the fathers of the Church, tending to change beasts of burden into citizens, as began to be done among ourselves in the thirteenth century. If slavery be spoken of, it is the slavery of sin.
It is difficult to comprehend how, in St. John, the Jews can say to Jesus: "We have never been slaves to any one"—they who were at that time subjected to the Romans; they who had been sold in the market after the taking of Jerusalem; they of whom ten tribes, led away as slaves by Shalmaneser, had disappeared from the face of the earth, and of whom two other tribes were held in chains by the Babylonians for seventy years; they who had been seven times reduced to slavery in their promised land, according to their own avowal; they who in all their writings speak of their bondage in that Egypt which they abhorred, but to which they ran in crowds to gain money, as soon as Alexander condescended to allow them to settle there. The reverend Dom Calmet says, that we must understand in this passage, "intrinsic servitude," an explanation which by no means renders it more comprehensible.
Italy, the Gauls, Spain, and a part of Germany, were inhabited by strangers, by foreigners become masters, and natives reduced to serfs. When the bishop of Seville, Opas, and Count Julian called over the Mahometan Moors against the Christian kings of the Visigoths, who reigned in the Pyrenees, the Mahometans, according to their custom, proposed to the natives, either to receive circumcision, give battle, or pay tribute in money and girls. King Roderick was vanquished, and slaves were made of those who were taken captive.
The conquered preserved their wealth and their religion by paying; and it is thus that the Turks have since treated Greece, except that they imposed upon the latter a tribute of children of both sexes, the boys of which they circumcise and transform into pages and janissaries, while the girls are devoted to the harems. This tribute has since been compromised for money. The Turks have only a few slaves for the interior service of their houses, and these they purchase from the Circassians, Mingrelians, and nations of Lesser Tartary.
Between the African Mahometans and the European Christians, the custom of piracy, and of making slaves of all who could be seized on the high seas, has always existed. They are birds of prey who feed upon one another; the Algerines, natives of Morocco, and Tunisians, all live by piracy. The Knights of Malta, successors to those of Rhodes, formally swear to rob and enslave all the Mahometans whom they meet; and the galleys of the pope cruise for Algerines on the northern coasts of Africa. Those who call themselves whites and Christians proceed to purchase negroes at a good market, in order to sell them dear in America. The Pennsylvanians alone have renounced this traffic, which they account flagitious.
I read a short time ago at Mount Krapak, where it is known that I reside, a book written at Paris, abounding in wit and paradoxes, bold views and hardihood, resembling in some respects those of Montesquieu, against whom it is written. In this book, slavery is decidedly preferred to domesticity, and above all to the free labor. This book exceedingly pities those unhappy free men who earn a subsistence where they please, by the labor for which man is born, and which is the guardian of innocence, as well as the support of life. It is incumbent on no one, says the author, either to nourish or to succor them; whereas, slaves are fed and protected by their masters like their horses. All this is true; but human beings would rather provide for themselves than depend on others; and horses bred in the forest prefer them to stables.
He justly remarks that artisans lose many days in which they are forbidden to work, which is very true; but this is not because they are free, but because ridiculous laws exist in regard to holidays.
He says most truly, that it is not Christian charity which has broken the fetters of servitude, since the same charity has riveted them for more than twelve centuries; and that Christians, and even monks, all charitable as they are, still possess slaves reduced to a frightful state of bondage, under the name of "mortaillables, mainmortables" and serfs of the soil.
He asserts that which is very true, that Christian princes only affranchised their serfs through avarice. It was, in fact, to obtain the money laboriously amassed by these unhappy persons, that they signed their letters of manumission. They did not bestow liberty, but sold it. The emperor Henry V. began: he freed the serfs of Spires and Worms in the twelfth century. The kings of France followed his example; and nothing tends more to prove the value of liberty than the high price these gross men paid for it.
Lastly, it is for the men on whose condition the dispute turns to decide upon which state they prefer. Interrogate the lowest laborer covered with rags, fed upon black bread, and sleeping on straw, in a hut half open to the elements; ask this man, whether he will be a slave, better fed, clothed, and bedded; not only will he recoil with horror at the proposal, but regard you with horror for making the proposal. Ask a slave if he is willing to be free, and you will hear his answer. This alone ought to decide the question.
It is also to be considered that a laborer may become a farmer, and a farmer a proprietor. In France, he may even become a counsellor of the king, if he acquire riches. In England, he may become a freeholder, or a member of parliament. In Sweden, he may become a member of the national states. These possibilities are of more value than that of dying neglected in the corner of his master's stable.
Puffendorff says, that slavery has been established "by the free consent of the opposing parties." I will believe Puffendorff, when he shows me the original contract.
Grotius inquires, whether a man who is taken captive in war has a right to escape; and it is to be remarked, that he speaks not of a prisoner on his parole of honor. He decides, that he has no such right; which is about as much as to say that a wounded man has no right to get cured. Nature decides against Grotius.
Attend to the following observations of the author of the "Spirit of Laws," after painting negro slavery with the pencil of Molière:
"Mr. Perry says that the Moscovites sell themselves readily; I can guess the reason—their liberty is worth nothing."
Captain John Perry, an Englishman, who wrote an account of the state of Russia in 1714, says nothing of that which the "Spirit of Laws" makes him say. Perry contains a few lines only on the subject of Russian bondage, which are as follows: "The czar has ordered that, throughout his states, in future, no one is to be called 'golup' or slave; but only 'raab,' which signifies subject. However, the people derive no real advantage from this order, being still in reality slaves."
The author of the "Spirit of Laws" adds, that according to Captain Dampier, "everybody sells himself in the kingdom of Achem." This would be a singular species of commerce, and I have seen nothing in the "Voyage" of Dampier which conveys such a notion. It is a pity that a man so replete with wit should hazard so many crudities, and so frequently quote incorrectly.
Serfs of the Body, Serfs of the Glebe, Mainmort, etc.
It is commonly asserted that there are no more slaves in France; that it is the kingdom of the Franks, and that slave and Frank are contradictory terms; that people are so free there that many financiers die worth more than thirty millions of francs, acquired at the expense of the descendants of the ancient Franks. Happy French nation to be thus free! But how, in the meantime, is so much freedom compatible with so many species of servitude, as for instance, that of themainmort?
Many a fine lady at Paris, who sparkles in her box at the opera, is ignorant that she descends from a family of Burgundy, the Bourbonnais, Franche-Comté, Marche, or Auvergne, which family is still enslaved,mortaillableandmainmortable.
Of these slaves, some are obliged to work three days a week for the lord, and others two. If they die without children, their wealth belongs to the lord; if they leave children, the lord takes only the finest cattle and, according to more than one custom, the most valuable movables. According to other customs, if the son of amainmortableslave visits not the house of his father within a year and a day from his death, he loses all his father's property, yet still remains a slave; that is to say, whatever wealth he may acquire by his industry, becomes at his death the property of the lord.
What follows is still better: An honest Parisian pays a visit to his parents in Burgundy and in Franche-Comté, resides a year and a day in amainmortablehouse, and returning to Paris finds that his property, wherever situated, belongs to the lord, in case he dies without issue.
It is very properly asked how the province of Burgundy obtained the nickname of "free," while distinguished by such a species of servitude? It is without doubt upon the principle that the Greeks called the furiesEumenides, "good hearts."
But the most curious and most consolatory circumstance attendant on this jurisprudence is that the lords of half thesemainmortableterritories are monks.
If by chance a prince of the blood, a minister of state, or a chancellor cast his eyes upon this article, it will be well for him to recollect, that the king of France, in his ordinance of May 18, 1731, declares to the nation, "that the monks and endowments possess more than half of the property of Franche-Comté."
The marquis d'Argenson, in "Le Droit Public Ecclesiastique," says, that in Artois, out of eighteen ploughs, the monks possess thirteen. The monks themselves are calledmainmortables, and yet possess slaves. Let us refer these monkish possessions to the chapter of contradictions.
When we have made some modest remonstrances upon this strange tyranny on the part of people who have vowed to God to be poor and humble, they will then reply to us: We have enjoyed this right for six hundred years; why then despoil us of it? We may humbly rejoin, that for these thirty or forty thousand years, the weasels have been in the habit of sucking the blood of our pullets; yet we assume to ourselves the right of destroying them when we can catch them.
N.B. It is a mortal sin for a Chartreux to eat half an ounce of mutton, but he may with a safe conscience devour the entire substance of a family. I have seen the Chartreux in my neighborhood inherit a hundred thousand crowns from one of their mainmortable slaves, who had made a fortune by commerce at Frankfort. But all the truth must be told; it is no less true, that his family enjoys the right of soliciting alms at the gate of the convent.
Let us suppose that the monks have still fifty or sixty thousand slaves in the kingdom of France. Time has not been found hitherto to reform this Christian jurisprudence; but something is beginning to be thought about it. It is only to wait a few hundred years, until the debts of the state be paid.
Fable supposes that one Epimenides in a single nap, slept twenty-seven years, and that on his awaking he was quite astonished at finding his grandchildren—who asked him his name—married, his friends dead, his town and the manners of its inhabitants changed. It was a fine field for criticism, and a pleasant subject for a comedy. The legend has borrowed all the features of the fable, and enlarged upon them.
The author of the "Golden Legend" was not the first who, in the thirteenth century, instead of one sleeper, gave us seven, and bravely made them seven martyrs. He took his edifying history from Gregory de Tours, a veridical writer, who took it from Sigebert, who took it from Metaphrastes, who had taken it from Nicephorus. It is thus that truth is handed down from man to man.
The reverend father Peter Ribadeneira, of the company of Jesus, goes still further in this celebrated "Flower of the Saints," of which mention Is made in Molière's "Tartuffe." It was translated, augmented; and enriched with engravings, by the reverend Antony Girard, of the same society: nothing was wanting to it.
Some of the curious will doubtless like to see the prose of the reverend father Girard: behold a specimen! "In the time of the emperor Decius, the Church experienced a violent and fearful persecution. Among other Christians, seven brothers were accused, young, well disposed, and graceful; they were the children of a knight of Ephesus, and called Maximilian, Marius, Martinian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine. The emperor first took from them their golden girdles; then they hid themselves in a cavern, the entrance of which Decius caused to be walled up that they might die of hunger."
Father Girard proceeds to say, that all seven quickly fell asleep, and did not awake again until they had slept one hundred and seventy-seven years.
Father Girard, far from believing that this is the dream of a man awake, proves its authenticity by the most demonstrative arguments; and when he could find no other proof, alleges the names of these seven sleepers—names never being given to people who have not existed. The seven sleepers doubtless could neither be deceived nor deceivers, so that it is not to dispute this history that we speak of it, but merely to remark that there is not a single fabulous event of antiquity which has not beenrectifiedby ancient legendaries. All the history of Œdipus, Hercules, and Theseus is found among them, accommodated to their style. They have invented little, but they haveperfectedmuch.
I ingenuously confess that I know not whence Nicephorus took this fine story. I suppose it was from the tradition of Ephesus; for the cave of the seven sleepers, and the little church dedicated to them, still exist. The least awakened of the poor Greeks still go there to perform their devotions. Sir Paul Rycaut and several other English travellers have seen these two monuments; but as to their devotions there, we hear nothing about them.
Let us conclude this article with the reasoning of Abbadie: "These are memorials instituted to celebrate forever the adventure of the seven sleepers. No Greek in Ephesus has ever doubted of it, and these Greeks could not have been deceived, nor deceive anybody else; therefore the history of the seven sleepers is incontestable."
St. Paul says, that the Cretans were all "liars," "evil beasts," and "slow bellies." The physician Hequet understood by slow bellies, that the Cretans were costive, which vitiated their blood, and rendered them ill-disposed and mischievous. It is doubtless very true that persons of this habit are more prone to choler than others: their bile passes not away, but accumulates until their blood is overheated.
When you have a favor to beg of a minister, or his first secretary, inform yourself adroitly of the state of his stomach, and always seize on "mollia fandi tempora."
No one is ignorant that our character and turn of mind are intimately connected with the water-closet. Cardinal Richelieu was sanguinary, because he had the piles, which afflicted his rectum and hardened his disposition. Queen Anne of Austria always called him "cul pourri" (sore bottom), which nickname redoubled his bile, and possibly cost Marshal Marillac his life, and Marshal Bassompierre his liberty; but I cannot discover why certain persons should be greater liars than others. There is no known connection between the anal sphincter and falsehood, like that very sensible one between our stomach and our passions, our manner of thinking and our conduct.
I am much disposed to believe, that by "slow bellies" St. Paul understood voluptuous men and gross feeders—a kind of priors, canons, and abbots-commendatory—rich prelates, who lay in bed all the morning to recover from the excesses of the evening, as Marot observes in his eighty-sixth epigram in regard to a fat prior, who lay in bed and fondled his grandson while his partridges were preparing:
Un gros prieur son petit fils baisait,Et mignardait au matin dans sa couche,Tandis rôtir sa perdrix en faisait, etc.
But people may lie in bed all the morning without being either liars, or badly disposed. On the contrary, the voluptuously indolent are generally socially gentle, and easy in their commerce with the world.
However this may be, I regret that St. Paul should offend an entire people. In this passage, humanly speaking, there is neither politeness, ability, or even truth. Nothing is gained from men by calling them evil beasts; and doubtless men of merit were to be found in Crete. Why thus outrage the country of Minos, which Archbishop Fénelon, infinitely more polished than St. Paul, so much eulogizes in his "Telemachus"?
Was not St. Paul somewhat difficult to live with, of a proud spirit, and of a hard and imperious character? If I had been one of the apostles, or even a disciple only, I should infallibly have quarrelled with him. It appears to me, that the fault was all on his side, in his dispute with Simon Peter Barjonas. He had a furious passion for domination. He often boasts of being an apostle, and more an apostle than his associates—he who had assisted to stone St. Stephen, he who had been assistant persecutor under Gamaliel, and who was called upon to weep longer for his crimes than St. Peter for his weakness!—always, however, humanly speaking.
He boasts of being a Roman citizen born at Tarsus, whereas St. Jerome pretends that he was a poor provincial Jew, born at Giscala in Galilee. In his letters addressed to the small flock of his brethren, he always speaks magisterially: "I will come," says he to certain Corinthians, "and I will judge of you all on the testimony of two or three witnesses; and I will neither pardon those who have sinned, nor others." This "nor others" is somewhat severe.
Many men at present would be disposed to take the part of St. Peter against St. Paul, but for the episode of Ananias and Sapphira, which has intimidated persons inclined to bestow alms.
I return to my text of the Cretan liars, evil beasts, and slow bellies; and I recommend to all missionaries never to commence their labors among any people with insults.
It is not that I regard the Cretans as the most just and respectable of men, as they were called by fabulous Greece. I pretend not to reconcile their pretended virtue with the pretended bull of which the beautiful Pasiphæ was so much enamored; nor with the skill exerted by the artisan Dædalus in the construction of a cow of brass, by which Pasiphæ was enabled to produce a Minotaur, to whom the pious and equitable Minos sacrificed every year—and not every nine years—seven grown-up boys and seven virgins of Athens.
It is not that I believe in the hundred large cities in Crete, meaning a hundred poor villages standing upon a long and narrow rock, with two or three towns. It is to be regretted that Rollin, in his elegant compilation of "Ancient History," has repeated so many of the ancient fables of Crete, and that of Minos among others.
With respect to the poor Greeks and Jews who now inhabit the steep mountains of this island, under the government of a pasha, they may possibly be liars and evil disposed, but I cannot tell if they are slow of digestion: I sincerely hope, however, that they have sufficient to eat.
Great men have all been formed either before academies or independent of them. Homer and Phidias, Sophocles and Apelles, Virgil and Vitruvius, Ariosto and Michelangelo, were none of them academicians. Tasso encountered only unjust criticism from the Academy della Crusca, and Newton was not indebted to the Royal Society of London for his discoveries in optics, upon gravitation, upon the integral calculus, and upon chronology. Of what use then are academies? To cherish the fire which great genius has kindled.
The Royal Society of London was formed in 1660, six years before the French Academy of Science. It has no rewards like ours, but neither has it any of the disagreeable distinctions invented by the abbé Bignon, who divided the Academy of Sciences between those who paid, and honorary members who were not learned. The society of London being independent, and only self-encouraged, has been composed of members who have discovered the laws of light, of gravitation, of the aberration of the stars, the reflecting telescope, the fire engine, solar microscope, and many other inventions, as useful as admirable. Could they have had greater men, had they admitted pensionaries or honorary members?
The famous Doctor Swift, in the last years of the reign of Queen Anne, formed the idea of establishing an academy for the English language, after the model of the Académie Française. This project was countenanced by the earl of Oxford, first lord of the treasury, and still more by Lord Bolingbroke, secretary of state, who possessed the gift of speaking extempore in parliament with as much purity as Doctor Swift composed in his closet, and who would have been the patron and ornament of this academy. The members likely to compose it were men whose works will last as long as the English language. Doctor Swift would have been one, and Mr. Prior, whom we had among us as public minister, and who enjoyed a similar reputation in England to that of La Fontaine among ourselves. There were also Mr. Pope, the English Boileau, and Mr. Congreve, whom they call their Molière, and many more whose names escape my recollection. The queen, however, dying suddenly, the Whigs took it into their heads to occupy themselves in hanging the protectors of academies, a process which is very injurious to the belles-lettres. The members of this body would have enjoyed much greater advantages than were possessed by the first who composed the French Academy. Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Addison, and others, had fixed the English language by their writings, whereas Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, and Cotin, our first academicians, were a scandal to the nation; and their names have become so ridiculous that if any author had the misfortune to be called Chapelain or Cotin at present, he would be obliged to change his name.
Above all, the labors of an English academy would have materially differed from our own. One day, a wit of that country asked me for the memoirs of the French Academy. It composes no memoirs, I replied; but it has caused sixty or eighty volumes of compliments to be printed. He ran through one or two, but was not able to comprehend the style, although perfectly able to understand our best authors. "All that I can learn by these fine compositions," said he to me, "is, that the new member, having assured the body that his predecessor was a great man, Cardinal Richelieu a very great man, and Chancellor Séguier a tolerably great man, the president replies by a similar string of assurances, to which he adds a new one, implying that the new member is also a sort of great man; and as for himself, the president, he may also perchance possess a spice of pretension." It is easy to perceive by what fatality all the academic speeches are so little honorable to the body. "Vitium est temporis, potius quam hominis." It insensibly became a custom for every academician to repeat those eulogies at his reception; and thus the body imposed upon themselves a kind of obligation to fatigue the public. If we wish to discover the reason why the most brilliant among the men of genius, who have been chosen by this body, have so frequently made the worst speeches, the cause may be easily explained. It is, that they have been anxious to shine, and to treat worn-out matter in a new way. The necessity of saying something; the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say; and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous. Unable to discover new thoughts, the new members fatigue themselves for novel terms of expression, and often speak without thinking; like men who, affecting to chew with nothing in their mouths, seem to eat while perishing with hunger. Instead of a law in the French Academy to have these speeches printed, a law should be passed in prevention of that absurdity.
The Academy of Belles-Lettres imposed upon itself a task more judicious and useful—that of presenting to the public a collection of memoirs comprising the most critical and curious disquisitions and researches. These memoirs are already held in great esteem by foreigners. It is only desirable, that some subjects were treated more profoundly, and others not treated of at all. They might, for example, very well dispense with dissertations upon the prerogative of the right hand over the left; and of other inquiries which, under a less ridiculous title, are not less frivolous. The Academy of Sciences, in its more difficult and useful investigation, embraces a study of nature, and the improvement of the arts; and it is to be expected that studies so profound and perseveringly pursued, calculations so exact, and discoveries so refined, will in the end produce a corresponding benefit to the world at large.
As to the French Academy, what services might it not render to letters, to the language, and the nation, if, instead of printing volumes of compliments every year, it would reprint the best works of the age of Louis XIV., purified from all the faults of language which have crept into them! Corneille and Molière are full of them, and they swarm in La Fontaine. Those which could not be corrected might at least be marked, and Europe at large, which reads these authors, would then learn our language with certainty, and its purity would be forever fixed. Good French books, printed with care at the expense of the king, would be one of the most glorious monuments of the nation. I have heard say, that M. Despréaux once made this proposal, which has since been renewed by a man whose wit, wisdom, and sound criticism are generally acknowledged; but this idea has met with the fate of several other useful projects—that of being approved and neglected.
Is the mould broken of those who loved virtue for itself, of a Confucius, a Pythagoras, a Thales, a Socrates? In their time, there were crowds of devotees to their pagods and divinities; minds struck with fear of Cerberus and of the Furies, who underwent initiations, pilgrimages, and mysteries, who ruined themselves in offerings of black sheep. All times have seen those unfortunates of whom Lucretius speaks:
Qui quocumque tamen miseri venere parentant,Et nigras mactant pecudes, et manibu DivisIn ferias mittunt; multoque in rebus acerbisAcrius advertunt animus ad religionem.—LUCRETIUS, iii, 51-54.Who sacrifice black sheep on every tombTo please the manes; and of all the routWhen cares and dangers press, grow most devout.—CREECH.
Mortifications were in use; the priests of Cybele castrated themselves to preserve continence. How comes it, that among all the martyrs of superstition, antiquity reckons not a single great man—a sage? It is, that fear could never make virtue, and that great men have been enthusiasts in moral good. Wisdom was their predominant passion; they were sages as Alexander was a warrior, as Homer was a poet, and Apelles a painter—by a superior energy and nature; which is all that is meant by the demon of Socrates.
One day, two citizens of Athens, returning from the temple of Mercury, perceived Socrates in the public place. One said to the other: "Is not that the rascal who says that one can be virtuous without going every day to offer up sheep and geese?" "Yes," said the other, "that is the sage who has no religion; that is the atheist who says there is only one God." Socrates approached them with his simple air, his dæmon, and his irony, which Madame Dacier has so highly exalted. "My friends," said he to them, "one word, if you please: a man who prays to God, who adores Him, who seeks to resemble Him as much as human weakness can do, and who does all the good which lies in his power, what would you call him?" "A very religious soul," said they. "Very well; we may therefore adore the Supreme Being, and have a great deal of religion?" "Granted," said the two Athenians. "But do you believe," pursued Socrates, "that when the Divine Architect of the world arranged all the globes which roll over our heads, when He gave motion and life to so many different beings, He made use of the arm of Hercules, the lyre of Apollo, or the flute of Pan?" "It is not probable," said they. "But if it is not likely that He called in the aid of others to construct that which we see, it is not probable that He preserves it through others rather than through Himself. If Neptune was the absolute master of the sea, Juno of the air, Æolus of the winds, Ceres of harvests—and one would have a calm, when the other would have rain—you feel clearly, that the order of nature could not exist as it is. You will confess, that all depends upon Him who has made all. You give four white horses to the sun, and four black ones to the moon; but is it not more likely, that day and night are the effect of the motion given to the stars by their Master, than that they were produced by eight horses?" The two citizens looked at him, but answered nothing. In short, Socrates concluded by proving to them, that they might have harvests without giving money to the priests of Ceres; go to the chase without offering little silver statues to the temple of Diana; that Pomona gave not fruits; that Neptune gave not horses; and that they should thank the Sovereign who had made all.
His discourse was most exactly logical. Xenophon, his disciple, a man who knew the world, and who afterwards sacrificed to the wind, in the retreat of the ten thousand, took Socrates by the sleeve, and said to him: "Your discourse is admirable; you have spoken better than an oracle; you are lost; one of these honest people to whom you speak is a butcher, who sells sheep and geese for sacrifices; and the other a goldsmith, who gains much by making little gods of silver and brass for women. They will accuse you of being a blasphemer, who would diminish their trade; they will depose against you to Melitus and Anitus, your enemies, who have resolved upon your ruin: have a care of hemlock; your familiar spirit should have warned you not to say to a butcher and a goldsmith what you should only say to Plato and Xenophon."
Some time after, the enemies of Socrates caused him to be condemned by the council of five hundred. He had two hundred and twenty voices in his favor, which may cause it to be presumed that there were two hundred and twenty philosophers in this tribunal; but it shows that, in all companies, the number of philosophers is always the minority.
Socrates therefore drank hemlock, for having spoken in favor of the unity of God; and the Athenians afterwards consecrated a temple to Socrates—to him who disputed against all temples dedicated to inferior beings.
Several kings have been good scholars, and have written good books. The king of Prussia, Frederick the Great, is the latest example we have had of it: German monarchs will be found who compose French verses, and who write the history of their countries. James I. in England, and even Henry VIII. have written. In Spain, we must go back as far as Alphonso X. Still it is doubtful whether he put his hand to the "Alphonsine Tables."
France cannot boast of having had an author king. The empire of Germany has no book from the pen of its emperors; but Rome was glorified in Cæsar, Marcus Aurelius, and Julian. In Asia, several writers are reckoned among the kings. The present emperor of China, Kien Long, particularly, is considered a great poet; but Solomon, or Solyman, the Hebrew, has still more reputation than Kien Long, the Chinese.
The name of Solomon has always been revered in the East. The works believed to be his, the "Annals of the Jews," and the fables of the Arabs, have carried his renown as far as the Indies. His reign is the great epoch of the Hebrews.
He was the third king of Palestine. The First Book of Kings says that his mother, Bathsheba, obtained from David, the promise that he should crown Solomon, her son, instead of Adonijah, his eldest. It is not surprising that a woman, an accomplice in the death of her first husband, should have had artifice enough to cause the inheritance to be given to the fruit of her adultery, and to cause the legitimate son to be disinherited, who was also the eldest.
It is a very remarkable fact that the prophet Nathan, who reproached David with his adultery, the murder of Uriah, and the marriage which followed this murder, was the same who afterwards seconded Bathsheba in placing that Solomon on the throne, who was born of this sanguine and infamous marriage. This conduct, reasoning according to the flesh, would prove, that the prophet Nathan had, according to circumstances, two weights and two measures. The book even says not that Nathan received a particular mission from God to disinherit Adonijah. If he had one, we must respect it; but we cannot admit that we find it written.
It is a great question in theology, whether Solomon is most renowned for his ready money, his wives, or his books. I am sorry that he commenced his reign in the Turkish style by murdering his brother.
Adonijah, excluded from the throne by Solomon, asked him, as an only favor, permission to espouse Abishag, the young girl who had been given to David to warm him in his old age. Scripture says not whether Solomon disputed with Adonijah, the concubine of his father; but it says, that Solomon, simply on this demand of Adonijah, caused him to be assassinated. Apparently God, who gave him the spirit of wisdom, refused him that of justice and humanity, as he afterwards refused him the gift of continence.
It is said in the same Book of Kings that he was the master of a great kingdom which extended from the Euphrates to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean; but unfortunately it is said at the same time, that the king of Egypt conquered the country of Gezer, in Canaan, and that he gave the city of Gezer as a portion to his daughter, whom it is pretended that Solomon espoused. It is also said that there was a king at Damascus; and the kingdoms of Tyre and Sidon flourished. Surrounded thus with powerful states, he doubtless manifested his wisdom in living in peace with them all. The extreme abundance which enriched his country could only be the fruit of this profound wisdom, since, as we have already remarked, in the time of Saul there was not a worker in iron in the whole country. Those who reason find it difficult to understand how David, the successor of Saul, so vanquished by the Philistines, could have established so vast an empire.
The riches which he left to Solomon are still more wonderful; he gave him in ready money one hundred and three thousand talents of gold, and one million thirteen thousand talents of silver. The Hebraic talent of gold, according; to Arbuthnot, is worth six thousand livres sterling, the talent of silver, about five hundred livres sterling. The sum total of the legacy in ready money, without the jewels and other effects, and without the ordinary revenue—proportioned no doubt to this treasure—amounted, according to this calculation, to one billion, one hundred and nineteen millions, five hundred thousand pounds sterling, or to five billions, five hundred and ninety-seven crowns of Germany, or to twenty-five billions, forty-eight millions of francs. There was not then so much money circulating through the whole world. Some scholars value this treasure at a little less, but the sum is always very large for Palestine.
We see not, after that, why Solomon should torment himself so much to send fleets to Ophir to bring gold. We can still less divine how this powerful monarch, in his vast states, had not a man who knew how to fashion wood from the forest of Libanus. He was obliged to beg Hiram, king of Tyre, to lend him wood cutters and laborers to work it. It must be confessed that these contradictions exceedingly exercise the genius of commentators.
Every day, fifty oxen, and one hundred sheep were served up for the dinner and supper of his houses, and poultry and game in proportion, which might be about sixty thousand pounds weight of meat per day. He kept a good house. It is added, that he had forty thousand stables, and as many houses for his chariots of war, but only twelve thousand stables for his cavalry. Here is a great number of chariots for a mountainous country; and it was a great equipage for a king whose predecessor had only a mule at his coronation, and a territory which bred asses alone.
It was not becoming a prince possessing so many chariots to be limited in the article of women; he therefore possessed seven hundred who bore the name of queen; and what is strange, he had but three hundred concubines; contrary to the custom of kings, who have generally more mistresses than wives.
He kept four hundred and twelve thousand horses, doubtless to take the air with them along the lake of Gennesaret, or that of Sodom, in the neighborhood of the Brook of Kedron, which would be one of the most delightful places upon earth, if the brook was not dry nine months of the year, and if the earth was not horribly stony.
As to the temple which he built, and which the Jews believed to be the finest work of the universe, if the Bramantes, the Michelangelos, and the Palladios, had seen this building, they would not have admired it. It was a kind of small square fortress, which enclosed a court; in this court was one edifice of forty cubits long, and another of twenty; and it is said, that this second edifice, which was properly the temple, the oracle, the holy of holies, was only twenty cubits in length and breadth, and twenty cubits high. M. Souflot would not have been quite pleased with those proportions.
The books attributed to Solomon have lasted longer than his temple.
The name of the author alone has rendered these books respectable. They should be good, since they were written by a king, and this king passed for the wisest of men.
The first work attributed to him is that of Proverbs. It is a collection of maxims, which sometimes appear to our refined minds trifling, low, incoherent, in bad taste, and without meaning. People cannot be persuaded that an enlightened king has composed a collection of sentences, in which there is not one which regards the art of government, politics, manners of courtiers, or customs of a court. They are astonished at seeing whole chapters in which nothing is spoken of but prostitutes, who invite passengers in the streets to lie with them. They revolt against sentences in the following style: "There are three things that are never satisfied, a fourth which never says 'enough'; the grave; the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water, are the three; and the fourth is fire, which never sayeth 'enough.'
"There be three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.
"There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise. The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the conies are but a feeble race, yet they make their houses in rocks; the locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces."
Can we impute such follies as these to a great king, to the wisest of mortals? say the objectors. This criticism is strong; it should deliver itself with more respect.
The Proverbs have been attributed to Isaiah, Elijah, Sobna, Eliakim, Joachim, and several others; but whoever compiled this collection of Eastern sentences, it does not appear that it was a king who gave himself the trouble. Would he have said that the terror of the king is like the roaring of a lion? It is thus that a subject or a slave speaks, who trembles at the anger of his master. Would Solomon have spoken so much of unchaste women? Would he have said: "Look thou not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the glass"?
I doubt very much whether there were any drinking glasses in the time of Solomon; it is a very recent invention; all antiquity drank from cups of wood or metal; and this single passage perhaps indicates that this Jewish collection was composed in Alexandria, as well as most of the other Jewish books.
The Book of Ecclesiastes, which is attributed to Solomon, is in quite a different order and taste. He who speaks in this work seems not to be deceived by visions of grandeur, to be tired of pleasures, and disgusted with science. We have taken him for an Epicurean who repeats on each page, that the just and unjust are subject to the same accidents; that man is nothing more than the beast which perishes; that it is better not to be born than to exist; that there is no other life; and that there is nothing more good and reasonable than to enjoy the fruit of our labors with a woman whom we love.
It might happen that Solomon held such discourse with some of his wives; and it is pretended that these are objections which he made; but these maxims, which have a libertine air, do not at all resemble objections; and it is a joke to profess to understand in an author the exact contrary of that which he says.
We believe that we read the sentiments of a materialist, at once sensual and disgusted, who appears to have put an edifying word or two on God in the last verse, to diminish the scandal which such a book must necessarily create. As to the rest, several fathers say that Solomon did penance; so that we can pardon him.
Critics have difficulty in persuading themselves that this book can be by Solomon; and Grotius pretends that it was written under Zerubbabel. It is not natural for Solomon to say: "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!" The Jews had not then such kings.
It is not natural for him to say: "I observe the face of the king." It is much more likely, that the author spoke of Solomon, and that by this alienation of mind, which we discover in so many rabbins, he has often forgotten, in the course of the book, that it was a king whom he caused to speak.
What appears surprising to them is that this work has been consecrated among the canonical books. If the canon of the Bible were to be established now, say they, perhaps the Book of Ecclesiastes might not be inserted; but it was inserted at a time when books were very rare, and more admired than read. All that can be done now is to palliate the Epicureanism which prevails in this work. The Book of Ecclesiastes has been treated like many other things which disgust in a particular manner. Being established in times of ignorance, we are forced, to the scandal of reason, to maintain them in wiser times, and to disguise the horror or absurdity of them by allegories. These critics are too bold.
The "Song of Songs" is further attributed to Solomon, because the name of that king is found in two or three places; because it is said to the beloved, that she is beautiful as the curtains of Solomon; because she says that she is black, by which epithet it is believed that Solomon designated his Egyptian wife.
These three reasons have not proved convincing:
1. When the beloved, in speaking to her lover, says "The king hath brought me into his chamber," she evidently speaks of another than her lover; therefore the king is not this lover; it is the king of the festival; it is the paranymph, the master of the house, whom she means; and this Jewess is so far from being the mistress of a king, that throughout the work she is a shepherdess, a country girl, who goes seeking her lover through the fields, and in the streets of the town, and who is stopped at the gates by a porter who steals her garment.
2. "I am beautiful as the curtains of Solomon," is the expression of a villager, who would say: I am as beautiful as the king's tapestries; and it is precisely because the name of Solomon is found in this work, that it cannot be his. What monarch could make so ridiculous a comparison? "Behold," says the beloved, "behold King Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals!" Who recognizes not in these expressions the common comparisons which girls make in speaking of their lovers? They say: "He is as beautiful as a prince; he has the air of a king," etc.
It is true that the shepherdess, who is made to speak in this amorous song, says that she is tanned by the sun, that she is brown. Now if this was the daughter of the king of Egypt, she was not so tanned. Females of quality in Egypt were fair. Cleopatra was so; and, in a word, this person could not be at once a peasant and a queen.
A monarch who had a thousand wives might have said to one of them: "Let her kiss me with the lips of her mouth; for thy breasts are better than wine." A king and a shepherd, when the subject is of kissing, might express themselves in the same manner. It is true, that it is strange enough it should be pretended, that the girl speaks in this place, and eulogizes the breasts of her lover.
We further avow that a gallant king might have said to his mistress: "A bundle of myrrh is my well beloved unto me; he shall lie all night between my breasts."
That he might have said to her: "Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor; thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies; thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins; thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fish pools in Heshbon; and thy nose as the tower of Lebanon."
I confess that the "Eclogues" of Virgil are in a different style; but each has his own, and a Jew is not obliged to write like Virgil.
We have not noticed this fine turn of Eastern eloquence: "We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts. What shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, we will build upon her; and if she be a door, we will close it."
Solomon, the wisest of men, might have spoken thus in his merry moods; but several rabbins have maintained, not only that this voluptuous eclogue was not King Solomon's, but that it is not authentic. Theodore of Mopsuestes was of this opinion, and the celebrated Grotius calls the "Song of Songs," a libertine flagitious work. However, it is consecrated, and we regard it as a perpetual allegory of the marriage of Jesus Christ with the Church. We must confess, that the allegory is rather strong, and we see not what the Church could understand, when the author says that his little sister has no breasts.
After all, this song is a precious relic of antiquity; it is the only book of love of the Hebrews which remains to us. Enjoyment is often spoken of in it. It is a Jewish eclogue. The style is like that of all the eloquent works of the Hebrews, without connection, without order, full of repetition, confused, ridiculously metaphorical, but containing passages which breathe simplicity and love.
The "Book of Wisdom" is in a more serious taste; but it is no more Solomon's than the "Song of Songs." It is generally attributed to Jesus, the son of Sirac, and by some to Philo of Biblos; but whoever may be the author, it is believed, that in his time the Pentateuch did not exist; for he says in chapter x., that Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac at the time of the Deluge; and in another place he speaks of the patriarch Joseph as of a king of Egypt. At least, it is the most natural sense.
The worst of it is, that the author in the same chapter pretends, that in his time the statue of salt into which Lot's wife was changed was to be seen. What critics find still worse is that the book appears to them a tiresome mass of commonplaces; but they should consider that such works are not made to follow the vain rules of eloquence. They are written to edify, and not to please, and we should even combat our disinclination to read them.
It is very likely that Solomon was rich and learned for his time and people. Exaggeration, the inseparable companion of greatness, attributes riches to him which he could not have possessed, and books which he could not have written. Respect for antiquity has since consecrated these errors.
But what signifies it to us, that these books were written by a Jew? Our Christian religion is founded on the Jewish, but not on all the books which the Jews have written.
For instance, why should the "Song of Songs" be more sacred to us than the fables of Talmud? It is, say they, because we have comprised it in the canon of the Hebrews. And what is this canon? It is a collection of authentic works. Well, must a work be divine to be authentic? A history of the little kingdoms of Judah and Sichem, for instance—is it anything but a history? This is a strange prejudice. We hold the Jews in horror, and we insist that all which has been written by them, and collected by us, bears the stamp of Divinity. There never was so palpable a contradiction.