Chapter 5

THE READER IS REMINDED OF PRINCE ABINO JASSIMA AND THE FOX-LADY. GENT NOT LIKE JOB, NOR MRS. GENT LIKE JOB'S WIFE.

A me parrebbe a la storia far torto,S' io non aggiungo qualche codicillo;Acciò che ognun chi legge, benedicaL' ultimo effetto de la mia fatica.PULCI.

I cannot think so meanly of my gentle readers as to suppose that any of them can have forgotten the story of the Japanese Prince Abino Jassima, and the gradual but lamentable metamorphosis of his beautiful wife. But perhaps it may not have occurred to them that many a poor man, and without any thing miraculous in the case, finds himself in the same predicament,—except that when he discovers his wife to be a vixen he is not so easily rid of her.

Let me not be suspected of insinuating that Alice Gent, formerly Bourne, formerly Guy, proved to be a wife of this description, for which, I know not wherefore, an appellation has been borrowed from the she-fox. Her husband who found that ten years had wrought a great change in her appearance, complained indeed of other changes. “I found,” he says, “her temper much altered from that sweet natural softness and most tender affection that rendered her so amiable to me while I was more juvenile and she a maiden. Not less sincere I must own; but with that presumptive air and conceited opinion (like Mrs. Day in the play of the Committee) which made me imagine an epidemical distemper prevailed among the good women to ruin themselves and families, or if not prevented by Divine Providence to prove the sad cause of great contention and of disquietude. However as I knew I was but then a novice in the intricate laws of matrimony, and that nothing but a thorough annihilation can disentangle or break that chain which often produces a strange concatenation for future disorders, I endeavoured to comply with a sort of stoical resolution to some very harsh rules that otherwise would have grated my human understanding. For as by this change I had given a voluntary wound to my wonted liberty, now attacked in the maintenance partly of pretended friends, spunging parasites, and flatterers who imposed on good nature to our great damage; so in this conjugal captivity, as I may term it, I was fully resolved, likewise in a Christian sense, to make my yoke as easy as possible, thereby to give no offence to custom or law of any kind. The tender affection that a good husband naturally has to the wife of his bosom is such as to make him often pass by the greatest insults that can be offered to human nature: such I mean as the senseless provoking arguments used by one who will not be awakened from delusion till poverty appears, shows the ingratitude of false friends in prosperity, and brings her to sad repentance in adversity: she will then wish she had been foreseeing as her husband, when it is too late; condemn her foolish credulity, and abhor those who have caused her to differ from her truest friend, whose days she has embittered with the most undutiful aggravations, to render every thing uncomfortable to him!”

I suspect that Thomas Gent was wrong in thinking thus of his wife; I am sure he was wrong in thus writing of her, and that I should be doing wrong in repeating what he has written, if it were not with the intention of showing that though he represents himself in this passage as another Job, Socrates, or Jerry Sneak, it must not be concluded that his wife resembled the termagant daughter of Sir Jacob Jollup, Xantippe, Rahamat the daughter of Ephraim, her cousin Makher the daughter of Manasseh, or Queen Saba, whichever of these three latter were the wife of Job.

And here let me observe that although I follow the common usage in writing the last venerable name, I prefer the orthography of Junius and Tremellius who write Hiob, because it better represents the sound of the original Hebrew, and is moreover more euphonous than Job, or Jobab, if those commentators err not who identify that King of Edom with the man of Uz. Indeed it is always meet and right to follow the established usage unless there be some valid reason for departing from it; and moreover there is this to be said in favour of retaining the usual form and pronunciation of this well known name, that if it were denaturalized and put out of use, an etymology in our language would be lost sight of. For ajobin the working or operative sense of the word is evidently something which it requires patience to perform; in the physical and moral sense, as when for example in the language of the vulgar a personal hurt or misfortune is called a badjob, it is something which it requires patience to support; and in the political sense it is something which it requires patience in the public to endure: and in all these senses the origin of the word must be traced to Job, who is the proverbial exemplar of this virtue. This derivation has escaped Johnson; nor has that lexicographer noticed the substantivesjobingandjobation, and the verb tojobe, all from the same root, and familiar in the mouths of the people.

For these reasons therefore, and especially the etymological one, I prefer the common though peradventure, and indeed perlikelihood, erroneous manner of writing the name to Iob, Hiob, Ajob, Ajoub, or Jjob, all which have been proposed. And I do not think it worth while, (that is my while or the reader's,) to enquire into the derivation of the name, and whether it may with most probability be expounded to mean sorrowful, jubilant, persecuted, beloved, zealous, or wise in the sense of sage, seer, or magician. Nor whether Job was also called Jasub, Jaschub, Jocab, Jocam, Jobal, Jubab, Hobab, or Uz of that ilk, for this also has been contended. Nor to investigate the position of a territory the name of which has been rendered so famous by its connection with him, and of which nothing but the name is known. This indeed has occasioned much discussion among biblical chorographers. And not many years have elapsed since at a late hour of the night, or perhaps an early one of the morning, the watchman in Great Russel Street found it necessary in the discharge of his duty to interpose between two learned and elderly gentlemen, who returning together from a literary compotation, had entered upon this discussion on the way, and forgetting the example of the Man of Uz, quarrelled about the situation of his country. The scene of this dispute,—the only one upon that subject that ever required the interference of the watch in the streets of London at midnight,—was near the Museum Gate, and the Author of the Indian Antiquities was one of the disputants.

Returning however to the matter which these last parenthetical paragraphs interrupted, I say that before luke-warm Thomas represented himself as another Job for matrimonial endurance, he ought to have asked himself whether the motives for which he married the widow Bourne, were the same as those for which he wooed the fair maiden Alice Guy; and whether, if Mrs. Gent suspected that as she had been obliged to her first husband for her money, she was obliged to the money for her second, it was not very natural for her to resent any remonstrances on his part, when she entertained or assisted those whom she believed to be her friends, and who peradventure had claims upon her hospitality or her bounty for her late husband's sake.

A woman's goodness, when she is a wife,Lies much upon a man's desert; believe it Sir.If there be fault in her, I'll pawn my life on't'Twas first in him, if she were ever good.1

If there be any reader so inconsiderate as to exclaim, “what have we to do with the temper and character of a low-lived woman who was dead and buried long before we were born, whom nobody ever heard of before, and for whom nobody cares a straw now! What can have induced this most unaccountable of authors to waste his time and thoughts upon such people and such matter!”—Should there I say, be persons, as in all likelihood there may, so impatient and so unreasonable as to complain in this manner, I might content myself with observing to them in the words of that thoughtful and happy-minded man Mr. Danby of Swinton, that if Common Sense had not a vehicle to carry it abroad, it must always stay at home.

1BEAUMONTand FLETCHER.

But I am of the school of Job, and will reply with Uzzite patience to these objectors, as soon as I shall have related in a few words the little more that remains to be said of Thomas Gent, printer of York, and Alice his wife. They had only one child, it died an infant of six months, and the father speaks with great feeling of its illness and death. “I buried its pretty corpse,” he says, “in the Church of St. Michael le Belfrey where it was laid on the breast of Mr. Charles Bourne, my predecessor, in the chancel on the south side of the altar.” This was in 1726; there he was buried himself more than half a century afterwards, in the 87th year of his age; and Alice who opened the door to him when he first arrived in York was no doubt deposited in the same vault with both her husbands.

DR. SOUTHEY. JOHN BUNYAN. BARTHOLOMÆUS SCHERÆUS. TERTULLIAN. DOMENICO BERNINO. PETRARCH. JEREMY TAYLOR. HARTLEY COLERIDGE. DIEGO DE SAN PEDRO, AND ADAM LITTLETON.

Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray;Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in!Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky!Liard, Robin, you must bob in!Round, around, around, about, about!Allgoodcome running in, allillkeep out.MIDDLETON.

Nine years after the convention of Cintra a representation was made to the Laureate in favour of some artillery horses employed in Sir Arthur Wellesley's army. They were cast-off Irish cavalry, and their efficiency had been called in question; indeed it had been affirmed that they were good for nothing; attestations to disprove this were produced, and the Laureate was requested to set this matter right in his History of the Peninsular War. The good-natured historian has given accordingly a note to the subject, saying that he thought himself bound to notice the representation were it only for the singularity of the case. If Dr. Southey thought it became him for that reason and for truth's sake, to speak a good word of some poor horses who had long ago been worked to death and left to the dogs and wolves by the way side, much more may I feel myself bound for the sake of Dr. Dove to vindicate the daughter of his old schoolmaster from a splenetic accusation brought against her by her husband. The reader who knows what the Doctor's feelings were with regard to Mr. Guy, and what mine are for the Doctor, would I am sure excuse me even if on such an occasion I had travelled out of the record.

Gent when he penned that peevish page seems to have thought with Tom Otter, that a wife is a very scurvy clogdogdo! And with John Bunyan that “Women, whenever they would perk it and lord it over their husbands, ought to remember that both by creation and transgression they are made to be in subjection to them.” “Such a thing,” says the Arch-tinker, “may happen, as that the woman, not the man, may be in the right, (I mean when both are godly) but ordinarily it is otherwise!”

Authors of a higher class than the York printer and topographist have complained of their wives. We read in Burton that Bartholomæus Scheræus, Professor of Hebrew at Wittenberg, whom he calls “that famous Poet Laureate,” said in the introduction to a work of his upon the Psalms, he should have finished it long before, but amongst many miseries which almost broke his back (his words wereinter alia dura et tristia, quæ misero mihi pene tergum fregerunt,) he was yoked to a worse than Xantippe. A like lamentation is made more oddly and with less excuse, by Domenico Bernino, the author of a large history of All Heresies, which he dedicated to Clement XI. Tertullian, he says, being ill advised in his youth, and deceived by that shadow of repose which the conjugal state offers to the travellers in this miserable world, threw himself into the troubled sea of matrimony. And no sooner had he taken a wife, than being made wise by his own misfortunes, he composed his laborious treatisede molestiis nuptiarum, concerning the troubles of marriage, finding in this employment the only relief from those continual miseries, to which, he adds, we who now write may bear our present and too faithful testimony,—delle quali Noi ancora che queste cose scriviamo, siamo per lui testimonio pur troppo vero e presente.

The Historian of Heresy and the Hebrew Professor might have learnt a lesson from Petrarch's Dialoguede importunâ Uxore, in that work of hisde Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ. When DOLORcomplains of having a bad wife, RATIOreminds him that he might blame his ill fortune for any other calamity, but this he had brought upon himself and the only remedy was patience.

Est mala crux, conjux mala; crux tamen illa ferenda estQuâ nemo nisi Mors te relevare potest.

“It is the unhappy chance of many,” says Jeremy Taylor, “that finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles, and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or woman's peevishness; and the worst of the evil is, they are to thank their own follies, for they fell into the snare by entering an improper way.” To complain of the consequences, which are indeed the proper punishment, is to commit a second folly by proclaiming the first, and the second deserves the ridicule it is sure to meet with. Hartley Coleridge has well said, that there must always be something defective in the moral feelings or very unfortunate in the circumstances of a man who makes the public his confidant!

If Thomas Gent had read Lord Berners' Castle of Love, which might easily, rare as it has now become, have fallen in his way a hundred years ago, he would there have seen fifteen reasons why men do wrong when they speak ill of women, and twenty reasons why they ought to speak well of them. All lovers of our old literature know how greatly we are beholden to John Bouchier, Knight, Lord Berners, who when Deputy General of the Kings Town of Calais and Marches of the same, employed his leisure in translating books out of French into English. But he must have been one of those persons who with a great appetite for books have no discriminating taste, or he would not have translated Arthur of Little Britain, when Gyron le Courtoys and Meliadus were not extant in his own language; nor would he, even at the instance of Lady Elizabeth Carew, if he had known a good book from a bad one, have englished from its French version the Carcel de Amor, which Diego de San Pedro composed at the request of the Alcayde de los Donzelles, D. Diego Hernandez, and of other Knights and Courtiers.

The reader will please to observe that though all worthless books are bad, all bad books are not necessarily worthless. A work however bad, if written, as the Carcel de Amor was, early in the sixteenth century, and translated into Italian French and English, must be worth reading to any person who thinks the history of literature (and what that history includes) a worthy object of pursuit. If I had not been one of those who like Ludovicus Bosch—(my friend in the caxon)—are never weary of hunting in those woods, I could not, gentle reader, have set before you as I shall incontinently proceed to do, the fifteen above-mentioned and here following reasons, why you will commit a sin if you ever speak in disparagement of womankind.

First then, Leriano, the unhappy hero of Diego de San Pedro's tragic story, says that all things which God has made are necessarily good; women therefore being his creatures, to calumniate them is to blaspheme one of his works.

Secondly, there is no sin more hateful than ingratitude; and it is being ungrateful to the Virgin Mary if we do not honour all women for her sake.

Thirdly, it is an act of cowardice for man who is strong, to offend woman who is weak.

Fourthly, the man who speaks ill of woman brings dishonour upon himself, inasmuch as every man is of woman born.

Fifthly, such evil speaking is, for the last mentioned reason, a breach of the fifth commandment.

Sixthly, it is an obligation upon every noble man to employ himself virtuously both in word and deed; and he who speaks evil incurs the danger of infamy.

Seventhly, because all knights are bound by their order to show respect and honour to all womankind.

Eighthly, such manner of speech brings the honour of others in question.

Ninthly, and principally, it endangers the soul of the evil speaker.

Tenthly, it occasions enmities and the fatal consequences resulting therefrom.

Eleventhly, husbands by such speeches may be led to suspect their wives, to use them ill, to desert them, and peradventure to make away with them.

Twelfthly, a man thereby obtains the character of being a slanderer.

Thirteenthly, he brings himself in jeopardy with those who may think themselves bound to vindicate a lady's reputation or revenge the wrong which has been done to it.

Fourteenthly, to speak ill of women is a sin because of the beauty which distinguishes their sex, which beauty is so admirable that there is more to praise in one woman than there can be to condemn in all.

Fifteenthly, it is a sin because all the benefactors of mankind have been born of women, and therefore we are obliged to women for all the good that has ever been done in the world.

Such are the fifteen reasons which Diego de San Pedro excogitated to show that it is wrong for men to speak ill of women; and the twenty reasons which he has superinduced to prove that they are bound to speak well of them are equally cogent and not less curious. I have a reason of my own for reserving these till another opportunity. Not however to disappoint my fair readers altogether of that due praise which they have so properly expected, I will conclude the present chapter with a few flowers taken from the pulpit of my old acquaintance Adam Littleton. There is no impropriety in calling him so, though he died before my grandfathers and grandmothers were born; and when I meet him in the next world I hope to improve this one sided acquaintance by introducing myself and thanking him for his Dictionary and his Sermons.

The passage occurs in a sermon preached at the obsequies of the Right Honourable the Lady Jane Cheyne. The text was “Favour is deceitful, and Beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised:” in which proposition, says the Preacher, we have first the subject,Woman, with her qualificationthat fears the Lord:Secondly the predicate,she shall be praised.

“WOMAN, in the primitive design of Nature, God's master-piece, being the last work of creation, and made with a great deal of deliberation and solemnity.

“For to look upon her as a supernumerary creature, and one brought into the world by the bye, besides the Creator's first intention, upon second thoughts,—is to lay a foul imputation upon Divine Wisdom, as if it had been at a stand, and were to seek.

“Wherefore, as we use to argue that all things were made for the use and service of man, because he was made last of all; I do not see, if that argument be good, why the same consequences should not be of like force here too, that Man himself was made for the affectionate care of Woman, who was framed not onlyafterhim, butout ofhim too, the more to engage his tenderest and dearest respects.

“Certainly this manner of production doth plainly evince the equality of the Woman's merits and rights with Man; she being a noble cyon transplanted from his stock, and by the mystery of marriage implanted into him again, and made one with him.

“She is then equally at least partaker with him of all theadvantageswhich appertain to human nature, and alike capable of thoseimprovementswhich by the efforts of reason, and the methods of education and the instincts of the Blessed Spirit, are to be made upon it,—

“Hence it was that all Arts and Sciences, all Virtues and Graces, both divine and moral, are represented in the shape and habit of Women. Nor is there any reason for fancying Angels themselves more of our sex than of the other, since amongst them there is no such distinction, but they may as well be imagined female as male.

“Above all for Piety and Devotion, which is the top-perfection of our nature, and makes it most like angelical; as the capacity of Women is as large, so their inclinations are generally more vigorous, the natural bias and tendency of their spirits lying that way, and their softer temper more kindly receiving the supernatural impression of God's Spirit.

“This isthat, if any thing, which gives their sex the pre-eminence above us men and gains them just advantages of praise; that whereas those who have only a handsome shape and good features to commend them, are adored and idolized by persons of slight apprehensions and ungoverned passions, pious and virtuous women command the veneration of the most judicious, and are deservedly admired by holy men and Angels.”

Thus saith that Adam of whom even Adam Clarke might have been proud as a namesake; and whose portrait the Gentlemen of the name of Adam who meet and dine together at a tavern in London, once a year, ought to have in their club room.

CONCERNING JOB'S WIFE.

This insertion is somewhat long, and utterly impertinent to the principal matter, and makes a great gap in the tale; nevertheless is no disgrace, but rather a beauty and to very good purpose.

PUTTENHAM.

It has been a custom in popish countries, when there were no censors of the press civil or ecclesiastical to render it unnecessary, for an author to insert at the beginning of his work a protestation declaring, that if the book contained any thing contrary to the established faith, he thereby revoked any such involuntary error of opinion. Something similar has sometimes been done in free countries, and not then as a mere form, nor for prudential considerations, but in the sincerity of an upright intention and a humble mind.—“Who can tell how oft he offendeth? O cleanse thou me from my secret faults!”

To be sure what I am about to say is upon a matter of less import, and may seem neither to require nor deserve so grave a prelude. But it is no part of my philosophy to turn away from serious thoughts when they lie before me.

Φράσω γὰρ δὴ ὅσον μοιΨυχᾷ προσφιλές ἐστιν εἰπεῖν.1

I had no intention of quoting scripture when I began, but the words came to mind and I gave them utterance, and thou wilt not be displeased, good reader, at seeing them thus introduced.—Good reader, I have said:—if thou art not good, I would gladly persuade thee to become so;—and if thou art good, would fain assist thee in making thyself better.Si de tout ce que je vous ai dit, un mot peut vous être utile, je n'aurai nul regret à ma peine.2

1EURIPIDES.

2MAD.DEMAINTENON.

Well then benevolent and patient reader, it is here my duty to confess that there is a passage in the last chapter which I am bound to retract. For since that chapter was written I have found cause to apprehend that in vindicating Guy's daughter I have wronged Job's wife, by accrediting a received calumny founded upon a mistranslation. I did not then know, what I have now learnt, that a judicious and learned writer, modest enough to conceal his name and designate himself only as a private gentleman, had many years ago, in a Review of the History of Job, stated his reasons for regarding her as a much injured woman.

Every one knows that the wife of Job in our Bible says to her husband, “Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die!” Now this writer asserts that the Hebrew verb which our translators render in this placeto curse, means alsoto bless, to salute, or give the knee, and that there are but four more places in all the Bible where it can be supposed to have an opposite meaning, and that even in those places it may admit of the better signification. It is not surprizing that many verbal difficulties should occur in a book, which if of later date than the books of Moses, is next to them in antiquity. Such difficulties might be expected whether we have it in its original language, or whether it were written, as many have opined, by Job himself in Syriac, Arabic or Idumean, and translated into Hebrew; much more if the opinion of Dr. Wall could be admitted, that it was written at first in hieroglyphics, against which the length of the book is a conclusive objection. “I should imagine,” says the anonymous defender, “she had so high an opinion of her husband's innocence that she might mean to advise him, seeing notwithstanding his uprightness he was thus amazingly afflicted, to go and kneel or bow down before God, and plead or as it were expostulate with him concerning the reason of these dreadful calamities,—even though he should die. If this sense of her expressions be allowed, it will justify Job's wise rebuke for her inconsiderateness, while, as he still possessed his soul in submissive patience, crying out—‘Thou speakest as a rash, thoughtless, or foolish woman: what, shall we receive good at the hands of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ Indeed it should seem that God himself did not behold her as an impious or blasphemous woman, inasmuch as we find she was made a great instrument in Job's future and remarkable prosperity, becoming after their great calamity the mother of seven sons and three most beautiful daughters. I say she was their mother, because we have no intimation that Job had any other wife.”

Now upon consulting such authorities as happen to be within my reach, I find that this interpretation is supported by the Vulgate,—benedic Deo, et morere;and also by the version of Junius and Tremellius—“adhuc tu retines integritatem tuam, benedicendo Deum atque moriendo.” Piscator too renders the word in its better sense, as I learn from the elder Wesley's elaborate collation of this most ancient book, from which I collect also that the Chaldee version gives the good meaning, the Arabian and Syriac the bad one; and that the words of the Septuagintἀλλὰ εἰπόν τι ῥῆμα εἰς κύριον καὶ τελεύτα, are interpreted by the Scholiastκατάρασον τον θέον.

Moreover a passage of some length which is in no other translation except that of St. Ambrose, is found in three manuscripts of the Septuagint, one of them being that from which the text of the Oxford edition of 1817 is taken. It is as follows. “But after much time had elapsed, his wife said unto him, ‘how long wilt thou endure thus saying, “I will expect yet a little while, awaiting the hope of my salvation?” Behold thy memory hath past away from the earth, the sons and daughters of my womb, whom I have with pain and sorrow brought forth in vain. Thou thyself sittest among filthy worms, passing the night under the open sky; and I am a wanderer and a servant, from place to place and from house to house, looking for the sun to go down that I may rest from the grief and labour that oppress me. Speak then a word against the Lord, and die!’”

If the text were to be considered singly, without reference to any thing which may assist in determining its meaning, it would perhaps be impossible now to ascertain among these contrariant interpretations which is the true one. But the generous Englishman who in this country first in our language undertook the vindication of this Matriarch and by whom I have been led to make the present pertinent enquiry, has judiciously (as has been seen) observed in confirmation of his opinion, that the circumstance of her having been made a partaker in her husband's subsequent prosperity is proof that she also had been found righteous under all their trials. This is a valid argument deduced from the book itself.

It would be invalidated were there any truth in what certain Talmudists say, that Job came into the world only to receive his good things in it; that when Satan was permitted to afflict him he began to blaspheme and to revile his Maker, and that therefore the Lord doubled his measure of prosperity in this life, that he might be rejected from the world to come. But when we remember that he is called “a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil,” we may say with the great Cistercian Rabbinomastix “hæc est magna blasphemia et convicium in Iob.” Other Rabbis represent him as a fatalist, put into his mouth the common argument of that false and impious philosophy, and affirm that there is no hope of his salvation: what they say concerning him may safely be rejected. Others of the same school assert that there never was any such person as Job, in the teeth of the Prophet Ezekiel,—and that his whole history is only a parable: if their opinion were right it would be useless to enquire into the character of his wife;sed isti redarguuntursays Bartolocci,ex nomine ipsius et nomine civitatis ejusdem.Just as, whatever inconsiderate readers may suppose who take these my reminiscences of the Doctor for a work of fiction, Daniel Dove was Daniel Dove nevertheless, and Doncaster is Doncaster.

There is nothing then among the Jewish traditions, so far as my guides lead me, that can throw any light upon the subject of this enquiry. But there is among the Arabian, where it was more likely to be found; and though the Arabic translation supports the evil meaning of the equivocal text, the tradition on the contrary is in favour of Job's wife. It is indeed a legend, a mere figment, plainly fabulous; but it is founded upon the traditional character of Job's wife in Job's own country. There are two versions of the legend. The one Sale has given as a comment upon the text of the Koran,—“Remember Job when he cried unto his Lord, saying, Verily evil hath afflicted me; but Thou art the most merciful of those who show mercy!”

When Job, says this legend, was in so loathsome a condition that as he lay on a dunghill none could bear to come near him, his wife alone attended him dutifully with great patience, and supported him with what she earned by her labour. One day the Devil appeared to her, reminded her of their former prosperity, and promised to restore all they had lost if she would worship him. He had overcome Eve by a less temptation; the Matriarch did not yield like the Mother of Mankind, but neither did she withstand it; she took a middle course, and going to her husband repeated to him the proposal, and asked his consent: whereat he was so indignant that he swore if he recovered to give her an hundred stripes; and then it was that he uttered the ejaculation recorded in the Koran. Immediately the Lord sent Gabriel, who took him by the hand and raised him up; a fountain sprung up at his feet, he drank of it, and the worms fell from his wounds, and he washed in it, and his health and beauty were restored. What his wife had done was not imputed to her for sin, doubtless in consideration of the motive, and the sense of duty and obedience to her lord and master which she had manifested. She also became young and beautiful again; and that Job might keep his oath and neither hurt her nor his own conscience, he was directed to give her one blow with a palm branch having an hundred leaves.

The legend as related in D'Herbelot, is more favourable to her and exempts her from all blame. According to Khondemir whom he follows, what Job's wife, here called Rasima, provided for her miserable husband, Satan stole from her, till he deprived her at last of all means of supporting him, and thus rendered him utterly destitute. As soon as the tempter had effected this, he appeared to Rasima in the form of a bald old woman, and offered if she would give him the two locks which hung down upon her neck, to supply her every day with whatever she wanted for her husband. Rasima joyfully accepted the proposal, cut off her locks and gave them to the false old woman. No sooner was Satan possessed of them than he went to Job, told him that his wife had been detected in dishonouring herself and him, and that she had been ignominiously shorn in consequence, in proof of which he produced the locks. Job when he saw that his wife had indeed been shorn of her tresses, believed the story, and not doubting that she had allowed the Devil to prevail over her, swore if ever he recovered his health to punish her severely. Upon this Satan exulting that he had provoked Job to anger, assumed the form of an Angel of Light, and appearing to the people of the land, said he was sent by the Lord to tell them that Job had drawn upon himself the displeasure of the Most High, wherefore he had lost the rank of Prophet which theretofore he had held, and they must not suffer him to remain among them, otherwise the wrath of the Lord would be extended to them also. Job then breathed the prayer which is in the Koran, and the legend proceeds as in the other version, except that nothing is said concerning the manner in which he was discharged of his vow, the vow itself being annulled when Rasima's innocence was made known.

The Koran where it touches upon this legend, says, it was said to Job, “take a handful of rods in thy hand, and strike thy wife therewith, and break not thine oath.” Sale observes upon this that as the text does not express what this handful of rods was to be, some commentators have supposed it to be dry grass, and others rushes, and others (as in the legend) a palm branch. But the elder Wesley takes the words in their direct and rigorous meaning, and says that as the Devil had no small part in the Koran, this passage indubitably bears his stamp, for who but the Devil would instigate any one to beat his wife? This erudite commentator, (he deserves to be so called,) vindicates the Matriarch in one of his Dissertations, and says that in the speech for which Job reproved her she only advised him to pray for death: in the mouth of a Greek or Roman matron it might have been understood as an exhortation to suicide;—Hæc ore Græcæ aut Romanæ mulieris prolata ut heroica quædam exhortatio esset suspecta.

His favourable opinion is entitled to more weight, because it was formed when he made the book of Job his particular study, whereas in an earlier work, the History of the Bible in verse, he had followed the common error, and made Satan as the last and worst of Job's torments play his wife against him, saying that the fiercest shock which the Patriarch sustained was from the tempest raised by her tongue.

The expositors who comment upon this text of the Koran without reference to the legend, have differed in opinion as to the offence which Job's wife had committed thus to provoke her husband, some asserting that he swore to punish her with stripes because she had stayed too long on an errand,—an opinion by no means consistent with his patience.

Returning to the main argument I conclude, that if upon the meaning of the doubtful word in the Hebrew text authorities are so equipoised as to leave it doubtful, these traditions being of Arabian growth have sufficient weight to turn the scale; even if it were not a maxim that in cases of this kind the most charitable opinion ought to be preferred. And as Dr. Southey has classed this injured Matriarch in a triad with Xantippe and Mrs. Wesley, I cannot but hope that the candid and learned Laureate, who as I before observed, has condescended to clear the character of some Irish cast-off cavalry horses, will, when he has perused this chapter, render the same justice to Job's wife; and in the next edition of his Life of Wesley, substitute Hooker's in her place.

POINTS OF SIMILITUDE AND DISSIMILITUDE BETWEEN SIR THOMAS BROWN AND DOCTOR DOVE.

But in these serious works designedTo mend the morals of mankind,We must for ever be disgracedWith all the nicer sons of taste,If once the shadow to pursueWe let the substance out of view.Our means must uniformly tendIn due proportion to their end,And every passage aptly joinTo bring about the one design.CHURCHILL.

Dr. Johnson says that, “perhaps there is no human being, however hid in the crowd from the observation of his fellow mortals, who if he has leisure and disposition to recollect his own thoughts and actions, will not conclude his life in some sort a miracle, and imagine himself distinguished from all the rest of his species by many discriminations of nature or of fortune.” This remark he makes in relation to what Sir Thomas Brown asserts of the course of his own life, that it was “a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable.” Now it is not known that any thing extraordinary ever befell him. “The wonders,” says Johnson, “probably were transacted in his own mind: self-love, cooperating with an imagination vigorous and fertile as that of Brown, will find or make objects of astonishment in every man's life.”

What the Philosopher of Norwich considered as miraculous was probably this, that he had escaped from “Pyrrho's maze,” and had never been contaminated in Epicurus' sty; that he had neither striven for place among the “wrangling crew” nor sought to make his way with the sordid herd; that he had not sold himself to the service of Mammon; but in mature years and with deliberate judgement had chosen a calling in which he might continually increase his knowledge and enlarge his views, and entertain a reasonable hope that while he endeavoured to relieve the sufferings of his fellow creatures and discipline his own mind, the labours wherein his life was past would neither be useless to others nor to himself. He might well consider it a miracle of divine mercy that grace had been given him to fulfil the promise made for him at his baptism, and that he had verily and indeed renounced the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. He might indeed take comfort in his “authentic reflections how far he had performed the great intention of his Maker;—whether he had made good the principles of his nature and what he was made to be; what characteristic and special mark he had left to be observable in his generation; whether he had lived to purpose or in vain; and what he had added, acted, or performed, that might considerably speak him a man.”

There were more resemblances between Sir Thomas Brown and the Doctor than Fluellen discovered between Henry of Monmouth and Alexander the Great. Both graduated in the same profession at the same university; and each settled as a practitioner in a provincial town. (Doncaster indeed was an inconsiderable place compared with Norwich; and Brown merely procured his degree at Leyden, which was not in his time, as it was in Daniel Dove's, the best school of physic in Europe.) Both too were Philosophers as well as Physicians, and both were alike speculative in their philosophy and devout. Both were learned men. Sir Thomas Brown might have said of himself with Herbert,

I know the ways of learning; both the headAnd pipes that feed the press and make it run;What reason hath from nature borrowed,Or of itself, like a good housewife, spunIn laws and policy: what the Stars conspire;What willing Nature speaks, what forced by fire;Both the old discoveries, and the new found seas:The stock and surplus, cause and history:All these stand open, or I have the keys.

The Doctor could not have said this; he would rather have said,

I am but one who do the world despiseAnd would my thoughts to some perfection raise,A wisdom-lover, willing to be wise.1

Yet he was as justly entitled to the appellation of a learned man by his multifarious knowledge, as he was far from pretending to it. There were many things of which he was ignorant, and contented to be ignorant, because the acquirement would not have been worth the cost. Brown would have taken with just confidence a seat at the Banquet of the Philosophers, whereas Dove would have thought himself hardly worthy to gather up the crumbs that fell from their table.

1LORDSTIRLING.

A certain melancholy predominated as much in the constitution of Sir Thomas's mind, as in that of Charles the First, to whom his portrait bears so remarkable a resemblance; and a certain mirth entered as largely into the composition of the Doctor's, as it did into Charles the Second's, to whom in all moral respects no one could be more utterly unlike. The elements have seldom been so happily mixed as they were in the Philosopher of Norwich; he could not have been perfectly homogeneous if a particle of the quintelement had been superadded;—such an ingredient would have marred the harmony of his character: whereas the Philosopher of Doncaster would have been marred without a large portion of it.

It was a greater dissimilarity, and altogether to be regretted, that my Doctor left no “characteristic and special mark to be observable in his generation;” but upon this I shall make some observations hereafter. What led me to compare these persons, incomparable each in his own way, was that my Doctor, though he did not look upon his own history as miraculous, considered that the course of his life had been directed by a singular and special Providence. How else could it have been that being an only son,—an only child, the sole representative in his generation of an immemorial line,—his father instead of keeping him attached to the soil, as all his forefathers had been, should have parted with him for the sake of his moral and intellectual improvement, not with a view to wealth or worldly advancement, but that he might seek wisdom and ensue it?—that with no other friend than the poor schoolmaster of a provincial townlet, and no better recommendation, he should have been placed with a master by whose care the defects of his earlier education were supplied, and by whose bounty, after he had learned the practical routine of his profession, he was sent to study it as a science in a foreign university, which a little before had been raised by Boerhaave to its highest reputation;—that not only had his daily bread been given him without any of that wearing anxiety which usually attends upon an unsettled and precarious way of life, but in the very house which when sent thither in boyhood he had entered as a stranger, he found himself permanently fixed, as successively the pupil, the assistant, the friend, and finally the successor and heir of his benefactor;—above all, that he had not been led into temptation, and that he had been delivered from evil.

“My life,” said an unfortunate poor man who was one of the American Bishop Hobart's occasional correspondents, “has been a chapter of blunders and disappointments.” John Wilkes said that “the chapter of accidents is the longest chapter in the book;” and he, who had his good things here, never troubled himself to consider whether the great volume were the Book of Chance, or of Necessity, the Demogorgon of those by whom no other deity is acknowledged. With a wiser and happier feeling Bishop White Kennett when he was asked “where are we?” answered the question thus,—“in a world where nothing can be depended on but a future state; in the way to it, little comfort but prayers and books.” White Kennett might have enjoyed more comfort if he had been born in less contentious times, or if he had taken less part in their contentions, or if he had been placed in a less conspicuous station. Yet he had little cause to complain of his lot, and he has left behind him good works and a good name.

There is scarcely any man who in thoughtfully contemplating the course of his own life, would not find frequent reason to say,—

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