THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1198, 5 August 1911, Page 9

THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE.

What English literature would have been but tor tlie existence oi' tho Autnorisacl Version, to say nothing of tho earlier and equally magimicent translations troui which it was so largely derived, is one of tho uuthinkablo tilings. For three centuries tho inlluenco ot the liilile as literature has aliectcd tho stylo even of thoso writers who found in it neither spiritual consolation nor intellectual inspiration, nor oven examples ot tho enacted, casuistry of maulcinu's works and days. It is not too much to say that if every copy of the English Biblo were to bo lost irretrievably it would bo possible to recover it by carefully sifting the vast mass of books which have been written sinco tho Authorised Version was presented into tho hands of James the First—and this work of rediscovery could bo accomplished, I do believe, without ransacking tho writings of professed theologians and of the text-mongering moralists, not altogether extinct even in these latter days, for whom a Scriptural sentence, torn from its setting, was sufficient warrant for breaking any of tho laws cf natural morality. In English, as in all tho other cultured tongues of Western Europe, there aro two kinds of prose: tho non-Ciceronian, or Romantic (ofwhich Browne's "Urn Burial" and Carlylc's "French Revolution are old and new examples), and the Ciceronian, or classical (of which Milton s "Areopagitica" or Newman's "Apologia may bo taken as earlier .and later illustrations). Tho English language is still to somo extent possessed by the spirit ot Latinity"; so much so that it is unscientific, as well as inartistic, to draw tho distinction suggested above too strictly, since all our great prose writers—and, less obviously, all our great poets—have at times been capable of writing in the man.ner, opposed' to their general, predilection. It is certainly Tiot true to assert, as a great" French critic once asserted, that English literature is essentially nonclassical—at all,times presenting the aspect of a Gothic cathcdral with its illuminated obscurities, never that of a Roman templo open to. tho every-day' sunshine that shines without .reservation. But to return to tho point at issue, there is some'justification .for this, Frenchman s saying. Ho merely said what every Irench critic .thinks, when ho first bccomes acquainted with tho masterpieces of English literature. French prose and poetry, even .when styled "romantic" by .the makers thereof aro alwajo classical in a sense—the Academy exists to l;ecp it so for ever and a day—and liobodv, not even the English critic who loves the mystery and glamour and occluded symbolism of his own literature, can deny that something has been gained, if something li.-s been lost, by tho inability of tho French prose writer 'or poet, oven if ho bo Victor Hugo or Verlainc, to abandon the sunny common-sense and' open-air simplicities which dominate tho literature not. only of France but also of the other Latin, lands. But what would have happened if, instead of the reserved Vulgate, which is a version of the Scriptures in the most marmoreal kind of Latin, tho French nation and tho other Latiii peoples had possessed each its own vernacular translation of .tho documents which are Christianity's title deeds? Surely the literature, as well as the life, of these peoples would have been profoundly affected. :In the first place, they would havo been able to.break "tho power of tho Roman hierarchy, to c;capo from under the dead hand of the time-confuted Roman Imperium, without at tho same .time falling into the militant atheism which is really h fanatic religion a rebours. And their literature, though still cast in tho moulds of this or that form ot Ctrivcd Latinity, might shino and ring with tho. colours arid cadenccs of an immortal book, faniiliar alike to tho loftiest and the lowliest, find having more po\yor over- the lips and pens of its possessors than a dozen literary Academies. As things are you can read French prose and Frcnch verso for a year without hearing any echo or seeing any prismatic reflection of tho manycoloured chanted volume, of ancient poetry, which is the greatest gift of tho Orient to the 'true tlmt the stately, sonorous pro«o a|id other great Freiifli preacheryU. now aid again concentrated—under'■ the stress 'of deepening emotion—into $ontcnccs that have tho weight and polished strength of tho langtiaßO of tho Vulgate, a mine-of marble diction out of which the medieval Latin hymns'havo been quarried in tho past. But these glimpses of the underlying influence of an occluded version which might bear the motto, i

v Odi profanum vulgus et arceo, are few .and transitory, and are seen only by those who have made a profound study of the older literature of France—immortal France that has preferred the "aurea mediocritas" of the ancient world to all the high magic, all the glories and grandeurs of tho Gothic style which shows lis the two worlds of Kant, the world 'of Nature, and tho world of the human heart, through painted windows in a many-columned perspective. On-tho other hand, English literature has been profoundly affected by the open Bible, which wo have possessed since tho days .of Wyclif. Even in tho prose of Addison and Johnson and in the poetry of Pope there are echoes and prismatic reflections of tho romantic diction of that wonderful translation, the beginning of which was the Wyclif Bible of 1359. In this _ time-honoured singing fountain of poetical prose, under its rainbow of chiming colours, all our poets and prose writers, even those, who aspired to revivo tho classical tradition, have been baptised into tho other-worldly realm of letters. ' All our makers and singers, from the invetftor of Euphuism—which is really derived from the balanced reiterations of the poet-pro-phets of tho Old Testament, such as, to take a verse at random;

; "But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall .dwell in it; and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness. (Isaiah xxsiv. 11.)" —to Walter Pater and from Marlowe to Eudyard Kipling, whoso "Hymn Before Action" begins-.

Tho earth is full of anger, The seas are dark with wrath, The Nations iu harness Go up against our path; —all our singers and makers hare visited this day-spring of English style, and drunk deeply of its musical waters. Some of them, it is true, have dwelt in later years by other and alien fountains. But they could nover forget the leaping ware by which they sat in their childhood; tho sound and sight thereof bad become part of their very being. To change the metaphor, ' this old English Bible, as old as English literature, is the most powerful Academy of Letters the world has ever seen; for it has asserted its authority bv beauty's right divine in every English homo for hundreds of years, and no English homo for hundreds .of years, and no Englishman, living or dead, learned or illiterate, has escaped the noble contagion of its exalted style, tho grand romantic, style. The Puritans threw down tho statues in our.ancient churches and broke painted windows—because they thought that all beauty -is but a veil that hides the truth. _ But they left the most beautiful and wisely-adorned of all the nation's ancient temples'as they found it; iconoclasts as they were, thoy did not attempt to destroy any of the countless beauties of the Bible. So that, by the irony of circumstances, their bigotry confuted itself; ilia one thing they snared rebuke:; by a thousand arguments the dreary philosophy which declared, by a thousand acts of vandalism, that beauty and truth are not two ways, each equally justifiable, of seeing the eternal. To gauge the inlluence of the English Bible on English literature would be the work of a life-lime; the first step towards tho fulfilment of so tremendous a task ivould Le to learn the whole of the Bible by heart—so (hat no echo or reflection of it's diction might escape notice. One is always finding such traces of its infiuenro in unexpected places. In his noble poem on the death of King Edward, Itudyard Kipling wrote: "The peculiar treasure of Kings was his for the taking," a line which is not likely to be forgotten. But many of those who admired it have missed its 'meaning because they did not know that 'half 'of it is a Bible phrase: "I gathered me, also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of ' kings and of tho provinces: I gat me singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts." (Ecclesiastes n. 8.) Instances of the kind could be multiplied, but this one is sufficient, for it is j

specially significant example of the unKuiscHius or half-unconscious use of a quotation from the Bible in a way that may make for misundcrtamling. After all, even tho greatest pott or prose-writer, cannot oniit a set of inverted .commas without running a certain risk. But on thoso who deliberately imitate tho inimitable diction of the Authorised A ersion a terrible penalty is imposed. See what has been the fate of .Martin Tupper, who had the impudence to use the very waters of this day-spring of stylo, in .the concoction of a specie's cf mid-Victorian gruel of caunting-house ethics. We can forgive tho ineffaule Smiles for presuming to exist—ho stuck to his own pedestrian prose; but the greater presumption of the interminable Tupper will nsver be pardoned. It is well to ovoid decking our verso or prose with Biblical phrases; it is better to avoid at all costs tho futilo attempt to imitate them. Yet every maker of modern literature, will do his work all the better for peeking sustenance in the illuminated pages of the Bible. When he has thought out what ho should say and what he should leave unsaid, let liini read a. chapter thereof—not to find a phrase for his purpose or tho suggestion of a phrase, but in order.to attain the mocd of exaltation, which enables him to clarify his thoughts in tho fewest and most felicitous words. There is no verbiage in this open Bible of ours; no hankering after the beauty of sound for its own sake; nothing of the artist's s2lf-consciousness; nothing melodramatic; nothing grandiose; in a word, nothing that is unnecessary. For the modern novelist the daily reading of tho Bible would be a most salutary discipline. He—or she—would thereby learn that 'characters should be allowed to define themselves by their • actions and words at a crisis, and that what is sometimes called "good analysis" by critics is merely psychological hair-splitting and an intolerable nuisance. David, for example, though not a complicated talker, is -the most complex of historical characters; yet'we all know him by heart, though his motives are not dissected for us by any of the edged tools of rhetoric wliich- tho modern novelist carries about with him. The modern dramatist also should study his Bible at the cost, if need be, of avoiding tho acquaintance, of Ibsen and Sudermann and Wcdckind et hoc genus omne. Nowhere, not even in Shakespeare, will he so often come across orio of those brief reveal the situation as in a, lightning flash, and are the crowning'achievements of dramatic art. ■ The Bible is. in a word, our Academy of Letters. And we are all Academicians, every one of us!—E. B. Osborn, in tho "Morning post."