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Random documents with unrelated
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Companionable
Books
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPANIONABLE BOOKS

***
 BY HENRY VAN DYKE

Companionable Books
The Valley of Vision
Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts
Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land
Little Rivers
Fisherman’s Luck

Days Off
The Unknown Quantity
The Ruling Passion
The Blue Flower

Poems, Collection in one volume

Songs Out of Doors

Golden Stars
The Red Flower
The Grand Canyon, and Other Poems
The White Bees, and Other Poems
The Builders, and Other Poems
Music, and Other Poems
The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems
The House of Rimmon

Studies in Tennyson
Poems of Tennyson
Fighting for Peace
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

COMPANIONABLE BOOKS

JOHN KEATS.
 Painted by Joseph Severn.

From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London.

COMPANIONABLE
BOOKS

BY
HENRY VAN DYKE

“What is this reading, which I must learn,” asked Adam, “and what is it like?”
“It is something beyond gardening,” answered Raphael, “and at times you will
find it a heavy task. But at its best it will be like listening through your eyes; and
you shall hear the flowers laugh, the trees talk, and the stars sing.”
Solomon Singlewitz—The Life of Adam

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1922

Copyright, 1922, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Copyright, 1920, by HARPER BROTHERS
Printed in the United States of America
Published October, 1922
 To
MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT
AUTHOR AND RANCHMAN
ONCE MY SCHOLAR
ALWAYS MY FRIEND
 PREFACE
Many books are dry and dusty, there is no juice in them; and many are
soon exhausted, you would no more go back to them than to a squeezed
orange; but some have in them an unfailing sap, both from the tree of
knowledge and from the tree of life.
By companionable books I mean those that are worth taking with you on a
journey, where the weight of luggage counts, or keeping beside your bed,
near the night-lamp; books that will bear reading often, and the more slowly
you read them the better you enjoy them; books that not only tell you how
things look and how people behave, but also interpret nature and life to you,
in language of beauty and power touched with the personality of the author,
so that they have a real voice audible to your spirit in the silence.
Here I have written about a few of these books which have borne me good
company, in one way or another,—and about their authors, who have put the
best of themselves into their work. Such criticism as the volume contains is
therefore mainly in the form of appreciation with reasons for it. The other kind
of criticism you will find chiefly in the omissions.
So (changing the figure to suit this cabin by the sea) I send forth my new
ship, hoping only that it may carry something desirable from each of the ports
where it has taken on cargo, and that it may not be sunk by the enemy before
it touches at a few friendly harbours.
Henry van Dyke.
Sylvanora, Seal Harbour, Me., August 19, 1922.
 CONTENTS
I. The Book of Books 1
II. Poetry in the Psalms 33
III. The Good Enchantment of Dickens 63
IV. Thackeray and Real Men 103
V. George Eliot and Real Women 131
VI. The Poet of Immortal Youth (Keats) 165
VII. The Recovery of Joy (Wordsworth) 189
VIII. “The Glory of the Imperfect” (Browning) 233
IX. A Quaint Comrade by Quiet Streams (Walton) 289
X. A Sturdy Believer (Samuel Johnson) 307
XI. A Puritan Plus Poetry (Emerson) 333
XII. An Adventurer in a Velvet Jacket (Stevenson) 357
 ILLUSTRATIONS
John Keats Frontispiece
Facing
page
Charles Dickens as Captain Bobadil in “Every Man in
His Humour” 82
William Makepeace Thackeray 120
William Wordsworth 200
Robert Browning 246
Samuel Johnson 314
Ralph Waldo Emerson 340
Robert Louis Stevenson 360

In the cover design by Margaret Armstrong the books and authors are
represented by the following symbolic flowers: Bible—grapes; Psalms—wheat;
Dickens—English holly; Thackeray—English rose; George Eliot—ivy; Keats—
bleeding-heart; Wordsworth—daffodil; Browning—pomegranate; Izaak Walton
—strawberry; Johnson—oak; Stevenson—Scottish bluebell.
 THE BOOK OF BOOKS
An Apologue

There was once an Eastern prince who was much enamoured of the art of
gardening. He wished that all flowers delightful to the eye, and all fruits
pleasant to the taste and good for food, should grow in his dominion, and that
in growing the flowers should become more fair, the fruits more savoury and
nourishing. With this thought in his mind and this desire in his heart, he found
his way to the Ancient One, the Worker of Wonders who dwells in a secret
place, and made known his request.
“For the care of your gardens and your orchards,” said the Ancient One, “I
can do nothing, since that charge has been given to you and to your people.
Nor will I send blossoming plants and fruiting trees of every kind to make your
kingdom rich and beautiful as by magic, lest the honour of labour should be
diminished, and the slow reward of patience despised, and even the living
gifts bestowed upon you without toil should wither and die away. But this will
I do: a single tree shall be brought to you from a far country by the hands of
my servants, and you shall plant it in the midst of your land. In the body of
that tree is the sap of life that was from the beginning; the leaves of it are full
of healing; its flowers never fail, and its fruitage is the joy of every season.
The roots of the tree shall go down to the springs of deep waters; and
wherever its pollen is drifted by the wind or borne by the bees, the gardens
shall put on new beauty; and wherever its seed is carried by the fowls of the
air, the orchards shall yield a richer harvest. But the tree itself you shall guard
and cherish and keep as I give it you, neither cutting anything away from it,
nor grafting anything upon it; for the life of the tree is in all the branches, and
the other trees shall be glad because of it.”
As the Ancient One had spoken, so it came to pass. The land of that prince
had great renown of fine flowers and delicious fruits, ever unfolding in new
colours and sweeter flavours the life that was shed among them by the tree of
trees.

I
 Something like the marvel of this tale may be read in the history of the
Bible. No other book in the world has had such a strange vitality, such an
outgoing power of influence and inspiration. Not only has it brought to the
countries in whose heart it has been set new ideals of civilization, new models
of character, new conceptions of virtue and hopes of happiness; but it has
also given new impulse and form to the shaping imagination of man, and
begotten beauty in literature and the other arts.
Suppose, for example, that it were possible to dissolve away all the works
of art which clearly owe their being to thoughts, emotions, or visions derived
from the Bible,—all sculpture like Donatello’s “David” and Michelangelo’s
“Moses”; all painting like Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” and Murillo’s “Holy
Family”; all music like Bach’s “Passion” and Handel’s “Messiah”; all poetry like
Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost,”—how it would
impoverish the world!
The literary influence of the Bible appears the more wonderful when we
consider that it is the work of a race not otherwise potent or famous in
literature. We do not know, of course, what other books may have come from
the Jewish nation and vanished with whatever of power or beauty they
possessed; but in those that remain there is little of exceptional force or
charm for readers outside of the Hebrew race. They have no broad human
appeal, no universal significance, not even any signal excellence of form and
imagery. Josephus is a fairly good historian, sometimes entertaining, but not
comparable to Herodotus or Thucydides or Tacitus or Gibbon. The Talmuds
are vast storehouses of things new and old, where a careful searcher may
now and then find a legendary gem or a quaint fragment of moral tapestry. In
histories of mediæval literature, Ibn Ezra of Toledo and Rashi of Lunel are
spoken of with respect. In modern letters, works as far apart as the
philosophical treatises of Spinoza and the lyrics of Heinrich Heine have
distinction in their kind. No one thinks that the Hebrews are lacking in great
and varied talents; but how is it that in world-literature their only contribution
that counts is the Bible? And how is it that it counts so immensely?
It is possible to answer by saying that in the Old Testament we have a
happily made collection of the best things in the ancient literature of the Jews,
and in the New Testament we have another anthology of the finest of the
narratives and letters which were produced by certain writers of the same
race under a new and exceedingly powerful spiritual impulse. The Bible is
excellent because it contains the cream of Hebrew thought. But this answer
explains nothing. It only restates the facts in another form. How did the
cream rise? How did such a collection come to be made? What gives it unity
and coherence underneath all its diversity? How is it that, as a clear critic has
well said, “These sixty books, with all their varieties of age, authorship,
literary form, are, when properly arranged, felt to draw together with a unity
like the connectedness of a dramatic plot?”
There is an answer, which if it be accepted, carries with it a solution of the
problem.
Suppose a race chosen by some process of selection (which need not now
be discussed or defined) to develop in its strongest and most absolute form
that one of man’s faculties which is called the religious sense, to receive most
clearly and deeply the impression of the unity, spirituality, and righteousness
of a Supreme Being present in the world. Imagine that race moving through a
long and varied experience under this powerful impression, now loyal to it,
now rebelling against it, now misinterpreting it, now led by the voice of some
prophet to understand it more fully and feel it more profoundly, but never
wholly losing it for a single generation. Imagine the history of that race, its
poetry, the biography of its famous men and women, the messages of its
moral reformers, conceived and written in constant relation to that strongest
factor of conscious life, the sense of the presence and power of the Eternal.
Suppose, now, in a time of darkness and humiliation, that there rises within
that race a prophet who declares that a new era of spiritual light has come,
preaches a new revelation of the Eternal, and claims in his own person to fulfil
the ancient hopes and promises of a divine deliverer and redeemer. Imagine
his followers, few in number, accepting his message slowly and dimly at first,
guided by companionship with him into a clearer understanding and a
stronger belief, until at last they are convinced that his claims are true, and
that he is the saviour not only of the chosen people, but also of the whole
world, the revealer of the Eternal to mankind. Imagine these disciples setting
out with incredible courage to carry this message to all nations, so deeply
impressed with its truth that they are supremely happy to suffer and die for it,
so filled with the passion of its meaning that they dare attempt to remodel the
life of the world with it. Suppose a human story like this underneath the
writing of the books which are gathered in the Bible, and you have an
explanation—it seems to me the only reasonable explanation—of their
surpassing quality and their strange unity.
This story is not a mere supposition: its general outline, stated in these
terms, belongs to the realm of facts which cannot reasonably be questioned.
What more is needed to account for the story itself, what potent and
irresistible reality is involved in this record of experience, I do not now ask.
This is not an estimate of the religious authority of the Bible, nor of its
inspiration in the theological sense of that word, but only of something less
important, though no less real—its literary influence.

II
The fountain-head of the power of the Bible in literature lies in its nearness
to the very springs and sources of human life—life taken seriously, earnestly,
intensely; life in its broadest meaning, including the inward as well as the
outward; life interpreted in its relation to universal laws and eternal values. It
is this vital quality in the narratives, the poems, the allegories, the
meditations, the discourses, the letters, gathered in this book, that gives it
first place among the books of the world not only for currency, but also for
greatness.
For the currency of literature depends in the long run upon the breadth and
vividness of its human appeal. And the greatness of literature depends upon
the intensive significance of those portions of life which it depicts and
interprets. Now, there is no other book which reflects so many sides and
aspects of human experience as the Bible, and this fact alone would suffice to
give it a world-wide interest and make it popular. But it mirrors them all,
whether they belong to the chronicles of kings and conquerors, or to the
obscure records of the lowliest of labourers and sufferers, in the light of a
conviction that they are all related to the will and purpose of the Eternal. This
illuminates every figure with a divine distinction, and raises every event to the
nth power of meaning. It is this fact that gives the Bible its extraordinary force
as literature and makes it great.
Born in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks
the ways of all the world with familiar feet and enters land after land to find
its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the
heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is a servant
of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is a son
of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wise men
ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, a
word of comfort for the day of calamity, a word of light for the hour of
darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its
counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wicked and the proud tremble
at its warning, but to the wounded and the penitent it has a mother’s voice.
The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire
on the hearth has lit the reading of its well-worn page. It has woven itself into
our deepest affections and coloured our dearest dreams; so that love and
friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful
garments of its treasured speech, breathing of frankincense and myrrh.
Above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us uncalled.
They fill our prayers with power larger than we know, and the beauty of them
lingers on our ear long after the sermons which they adorned have been
forgotten. They return to us swiftly and quietly, like doves flying from far
away. They surprise us with new meanings, like springs of water breaking
forth from the mountain beside a long-trodden path. They grow richer, as
pearls do when they are worn near the heart.
No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the
landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the Valley named of
the Shadow, he is not afraid to enter: he takes the rod and staff of Scripture
in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, “Good-by; we shall meet again”;
and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who
walks through darkness into light.
It would be strange indeed if a book which has played such a part in human
life had not exercised an extraordinary influence upon literature. As a matter
of fact, the Bible has called into existence tens of thousands of other books
devoted to the exposition of its meaning, the defense and illustration of its
doctrine, the application of its teaching, or the record of its history. The
learned Fabricius, in the early part of the eighteenth century, published a
catalogue raisonné of such books, filling seven hundred quarto pages.[1] Since
that time the length of the list has probably more than trebled. In addition,
we must reckon the many books of hostile criticism and contrary argument
which the Bible has evoked, and which are an evidence of revolt against the
might of its influence. All this tangle of Biblical literature has grown up around
it like a vast wood full of all manner of trees, great and small, useful and
worthless, fruit-trees, timber-trees, berry-bushes, briers, and poison-vines.
But all of them, even the most beautiful and tall, look like undergrowth, when
we compare them with the mighty oak of Scripture, towering in perennial
grandeur, the father of the forest.
Among the patristic writers there were some of great genius like Origen and
Chrysostom and Augustine. The mediæval schools of theology produced men
of philosophic power, like Anselm and Thomas Aquinas; of spiritual insight,
like the author of the Imitatio Christi. The eloquence of France reached its
height in the discourses of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon. German
became one of the potent tongues of literature when Martin Luther used it in
his tracts and sermons, and Herder’s Geist der hebräischen Poesie is one of
the great books in criticism. In English, to mention such names as Hooker and
Fuller and Jeremy Taylor is to recall the dignity, force, and splendour of prose
at its best. Yet none of these authors has produced anything to rival the book
from which they drew their common inspiration.
In the other camp, though there have been many brilliant assailants, not
one has surpassed, or even equalled, in the estimation of the world, the
literary excellence of the book which they attacked. The mordant wit of
Voltaire, the lucid and melancholy charm of Renan, have not availed to drive
or draw the world away from the Bible; and the effect of all assaults has been
to leave it more widely read, better understood, and more intelligently
admired than ever before.
Now it must be admitted that the same thing is true, at least in some
degree, of other books which are held to be sacred or quasi-sacred: they are
superior to the distinctively theological literature which has grown up about
them. I suppose nothing of the Mussulmans is as great as the “Koran,”
nothing of the Hindus as great as the “Vedas”; and though the effect of the
Confucian classics, from the literary point of view, may not have been
altogether good, their supremacy in the religious library of the Chinese is
unquestioned. But the singular and noteworthy thing about the influence of
the Bible is the extent to which it has permeated general literature, the mark
which it has made in all forms of belles-lettres. To treat this subject
adequately one would need to write volumes. In this chapter I can touch but
briefly on a few points of the outline as they come out in English literature.

III
In the Old-English period, the predominant influence of the Scriptures may
be seen in the frequency with which the men of letters turned to them for
subjects, and in the Biblical colouring and texture of thought and style.
Cædmon’s famous “Hymn” and the other poems like “Genesis,” “Exodus,”
“Daniel,” and “Judith,” which were once ascribed to him; Cynewulf’s “Crist,”
“The Fates of the Apostles,” “The Dream of the Rood”; Ælfric’s “Homilies” and
his paraphrases of certain books of Scripture—these early fruits of our
literature are all the offspring of the Bible.
In the Middle-English period, that anonymous masterpiece “Pearl” is full of
the spirit of Christian mysticism, and the two poems called “Cleanness” and
“Patience,” probably written by the same hand, are free and spirited versions
of stories from the Bible. “The Vision of Piers the Plowman,” formerly ascribed
to William Langland, but now supposed by some scholars to be the work of
four or five different authors, was the most popular poem of the latter half of
the fourteenth century. It is a vivid picture of the wrongs and sufferings of the
labouring man, a passionate satire on the corruptions of the age in church
and state, an eloquent appeal for a return to truth and simplicity. The feeling
and the imagery of Scripture pervade it with a strange power and charm; in
its reverence for poverty and toil it leans closely and confidently upon the
example of Jesus; and at the end it makes its ploughman hero appear in
some mystic way as a type, first of the crucified Saviour, and then of the
church which is the body of Christ.
It was about this time, the end of the fourteenth century, that John Wyclif
and his disciples, feeling the need of the support of the Bible in their work as
reformers, took up and completed the task of translating it entirely into the
English tongue of the common people. This rude but vigourous version was
revised and improved by John Purvey. It rested mainly upon the Latin version
of St. Jerome. At the beginning of the sixteenth century William Tindale made
an independent translation of the New Testament from the original Greek, a
virile and enduring piece of work, marked by strength and simplicity, and
setting a standard for subsequent English translations. Coverdale’s version of
the Scriptures was published in 1535, and was announced as made “out of
Douche and Latyn”; that is to say, it was based upon the German of Luther
and the Zurich Bible, and upon the Vulgate of St. Jerome; but it owed much
to Tindale, to whose manly force it added a certain music of diction and grace
of phrase which may still be noted in the Psalms as they are rendered in the
Anglican Prayer-Book. Another translation, marked by accurate scholarship,
was made by English Puritans at Geneva, and still another, characterized by a
richer Latinized style, was made by English Catholics living in exile at Rheims,
and was known as “the Douai Version,” from the fact that it was first
published in its complete form in that city in 1609-1610.
Meantime, in 1604, a company of scholars had been appointed by King
James I in England to make a new translation “out of the original tongues,
and with the former translations diligently compared and revised.” These
forty-seven men had the advantage of all the work of their predecessors, the
benefit of all the discussion over doubtful words and phrases, and the
“unearned increment” of riches which had come into the English language
since the days of Wyclif. The result of their labours, published in 1611, was
the so-called “Authorized Version,” a monument of English prose in its prime:
clear, strong, direct, yet full of subtle rhythms and strange colours; now
moving as simply as a shepherd’s song, in the Twenty-third Psalm; now
marching with majestic harmonies, in the book of Job; now reflecting the
lowliest forms of human life, in the Gospel stories; and now flashing with
celestial splendours in the visions of the Apocalypse; vivid without effort;
picturesque without exaggeration; sinewy without strain; capable alike of the
deepest tenderness and the most sublime majesty; using a vocabulary of only
six thousand words to build a book which, as Macaulay said, “if everything
else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole
extent of its beauty and power.”
The literary excellence of this version, no doubt, did much to increase the
influence of the Bible in literature and confirm its place as the central book in
the life of those who speak and write the English tongue. Consider a few of
the ways in which this influence may be traced.

IV
First of all, it has had a general effect upon English writing, helping to
preserve it from the opposite faults of vulgarity and affectation. Coleridge long
ago remarked upon the tendency of a close study of the Bible to elevate a
writer’s style. There is a certain naturalness, inevitableness, propriety of form
to substance, in the language of Scripture which communicates to its readers
a feeling for the fitness of words; and this in itself is the first requisite of good
writing. Sincerity is the best part of dignity.
The English of our Bible is singularly free from the vice of preciosity: it is
not far-sought, overnice, elaborate. Its plainness is a rebuking contrast to all
forms of euphuism. It does not encourage a direct imitation of itself; for the
comparison between the original and the copy makes the latter look pale and
dull. Even in the age which produced the authorized version, its style was
distinct and remarkable. As Hallam has observed, it was “not the English of
Daniel, of Raleigh, or Bacon.” It was something larger, at once more ancient
and more modern, and therefore well fitted to become not an invariable
model, but an enduring standard. Its words come to it from all sources; they
are not chosen according to the foolish theory that a word of Anglo-Saxon
origin is always stronger and simpler than a Latin derivative. Take the
beginning of the Forty-sixth Psalm:
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore
will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be
carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be
troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.”
Or take this passage from the Epistle to the Romans:
 “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour
preferring one another; not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the
Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;
distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.”
Here is a style that adapts itself by instinct to its subject, and whether it
uses Saxon words like “strength” and “help” and “love” and “hope,” or Latin
words like “refuge” and “trouble” and “present” and “fervent” and “patient”
and “prayer” and “hospitality,” weaves them into a garment worthy of the
thought.
The literary influence of a great, popular book written in such a style is both
inspiring and conservative. It survives the passing modes of prose in each
generation, and keeps the present in touch with the past. It preserves a sense
of balance and proportion in a language whose perils lie in its liberties and in
the indiscriminate use of its growing wealth. And finally it keeps a medium of
communication open between the learned and the simple; for the two places
where the effect of the Bible upon the English language may be most clearly
felt are in the natural speech of the plain people and in the finest passages of
great authors.

V
Following this line of the influence of the Bible upon language as the
medium of literature, we find, in the next place, that it has contributed to our
common speech a great number of phrases which are current everywhere.
Sometimes these phrases are used in a merely conventional way. They serve
as counters in a long extemporaneous prayer, or as padding to a page of dull
and pious prose. But at other times they illuminate the sentence with a new
radiance; they clarify its meaning with a true symbol; they enhance its value
with rich associations; they are “sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.”
Take for example such phrases as these: “a good old age,” “the wife of thy
bosom,” “the apple of his eye,” “gathered to his fathers,” “a mother in Israel,”
“a land flowing with milk and honey,” “the windows of heaven,” “the fountains
of the great deep,” “living fountains of waters,” “the valley of decision,”
“cometh up as a flower,” “a garden enclosed,” “one little ewe lamb,” “thou art
the man,” “a still, small voice,” “as the sparks fly upward,” “swifter than a
weaver’s shuttle,” “miserable comforters,” “the strife of tongues,” “the tents of
Kedar,” “the cry of the humble,” “the lofty looks of man,” “the pride of life,”
“from strength to strength,” “as a dream when one awaketh,” “the wings of
the morning,” “stolen waters,” “a dinner of herbs,” “apples of gold in pictures
of silver,” “better than rubies,” “a lion in the way,” “vanity of vanities,” “no
discharge in that war,” “the little foxes that spoil the vines,” “terrible as an
army with banners,” “precept upon precept, line upon line,” “as a drop of a
bucket,” “whose merchants are princes,” “trodden the wine-press alone,” “the
rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley,” “the highways and hedges,” “the salt
of the earth,” “the burden and heat of the day,” “the signs of the times,” “a
pearl of great price,” “what God hath joined together,” “the children of light,”
“the powers that be,” “if the trumpet give an uncertain sound,” “the fashion of
this world,” “decently and in order,” “a thorn in the flesh,” “labour of love,” “a
cloud of witnesses,” “to entertain angels unawares,” “faithful unto death,” “a
crown of life.” Consider also those expressions which carry with them
distinctly the memory of some ancient story: “the fleshpots of Egypt,” “manna
in the wilderness,” “a mess of pottage,” “Joseph’s coat,” “the driving of Jehu,”
“the mantle of Elijah,” “the widow’s mite,” “the elder brother,” “the kiss of
Judas,” “the house of Martha,” “a friend of publicans and sinners,” “many
mansions,” “bearing the cross.” Into such phrases as these, which are familiar
to us all, the Bible has poured a wealth of meaning far beyond the measure of
the bare words. They call up visions and reveal mysteries.

VI
Direct, but not always accurate, quotations from Scripture and allusions to
Biblical characters and events are very numerous in English literature. They
are found in all sorts of books. Professor Albert T. Cook has recently counted
sixty-three in a volume of descriptive sketches of Italy, twelve in a book on
wild animals, and eighteen in a novel by Thomas Hardy. A special study of the
Biblical references in Tennyson has been made,[2] and more than five hundred
of them have been found.
Bishop Charles Wordsworth has written a book on Shakespeare’s Knowledge
and Use of the Bible,[3] and shown “how fully and how accurately the general
tenor of the facts recorded in the sacred narrative was present to his mind,”
and “how Scriptural are the conceptions which Shakespeare had of the being
and attributes of God, of His general and particular Providence, of His
revelation to man, of our duty toward Him and toward each other, of human
life and of human death, of time and of eternity.” It is possible that the bishop
benevolently credits the dramatist with a more invariable and complete
orthodoxy than he possessed. But certainly Shakespeare knew the Bible well,
and felt the dramatic value of allusions and illustrations which were sure to be
instantly understood by the plain people. It is his Antonio, in The Merchant of
Venice, who remarks that “the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,”
evidently referring to the Gospel story of the evil one who tried to tempt Jesus
with a verse from the Psalms.
The references to the Bible in the poetry of Robert Browning have been
very carefully examined by Mrs. Machen in an admirable little book.[4] It is not
too much to say that his work is crowded with Scriptural quotations, allusions,
and imagery. He follows Antonio’s maxim, and makes his bad characters, like
Bishop Blougram and Sludge the Medium, cite from Holy Writ to cloak their
hypocrisy or excuse their villainy. In his longest poem, The Ring and the Book,
there are said to be more than five hundred Biblical references.
But more remarkable even than the extent to which this material drawn
from the Scriptures has been used by English writers, is the striking effect
which it produces when it is well used. With what pathos does Sir Walter
Scott, in The Heart of Midlothian, make old Davie Deans bow his head when
he sees his daughter Effie on trial for her life, and mutter to himself,
“Ichabod! my glory is departed!” How magnificently does Ruskin enrich his
Sesame and Lilies with that passage from Isaiah in which the fallen kings of
Hades start from their thrones to greet the newly fallen with the cry, “Art thou
also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us?” How grandly do the
images and thoughts of the last chapters of Deuteronomy roll through
Kipling’s Recessional, with its Scriptural refrain, “Lest we forget!”
There are some works of literature in English since the sixteenth century
which are altogether Biblical in subject and colouring. Chief among these in
prose is The Pilgrim’s Progress of John Bunyan, and in verse, the Paradise
Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes of John Milton. These are
already classics. Some day a place near them will be given to Browning’s Saul
and A Death in the Desert; but for that we must wait until their form has
stood the test of time.
In general it may be observed—and the remark holds good of the works
just mentioned—that a Scriptural story or poem is most likely to succeed
when it takes its theme, directly or by suggestion, from the Bible, and carries
it into a region of imagination, a border-realm, where the author is free to
work without paraphrase or comparison with the sacred writers. It is for this
reason that both Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost are superior to Paradise
Regained.

VII
 The largest and most important influence of the Bible in literature lies
beyond all these visible effects upon language and style and imagery and
form. It comes from the strange power of the book to nourish and inspire, to
mould and guide, the inner life of man. “It finds me,” said Coleridge; and the
word of the philosopher is one that the plain man can understand and repeat.
The hunger for happiness which lies in every human heart can never be
satisfied without righteousness; and the reason why the Bible reaches down
so deep into the breast of man is because it brings news of a kingdom which
is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. It brings this news not
in the form of a dogma, a definition, a scientific statement, but in the form of
literature, a living picture of experience, a perfect ideal embodied in a
Character and a Life. And because it does this, it has inspiration for those who
write in the service of truth and humanity.
The Bible has been the favourite book of those who were troubled and
downtrodden, and of those who bore the great burden of a great task. New
light has broken forth from it to lead the upward struggle of mankind from
age to age. Men have come back to it because they could not do without it.
Nor will its influence wane, its radiance be darkened, unless literature ceases
to express the noblest of human longings, the highest of human hopes, and
mankind forgets all that is now incarnate in the central figure of the Bible,—
the Divine Deliverer.
 POETRY IN THE PSALMS

There are three ways in which we may read the Bible.

We may come to it as the divinely inspired rule of faith and conduct. This is
the point of view from which it appears most precious to religion. It gives us
the word of God to teach us what to believe and how to live.
We may consider it as a collection of historical books, written under certain
conditions, and reflecting, in their contents and in their language, the
circumstances in which they were produced. This is the aspect in which
criticism regards the Bible; and its intellectual interest, as well as its religious
value, is greatly enhanced by a clear vision of the truth about it from this
point of view.
We may study it also as literature. We may see in it a noble and
impassioned interpretation of nature and life, uttered in language of beauty
and sublimity, touched with the vivid colours of human personality, and
embodied in forms of enduring literary art.
None of these three ways of studying the Bible is hostile to the others. On
the contrary, they are helpful to one another, because each of them gives us
knowledge of a real factor in the marvellous influence of the Bible in the
world.
The true lover of the Bible has an interest in all the elements of its life as an
immortal book. He wishes to discern, and rightly to appreciate, the method of
its history, the spirit of its philosophy, the significance of its fiction, the power
of its eloquence, and the charm of its poetry. He wishes this all the more
because he finds in it something which is not in any other book: a vision of
God, a hope for man, and an inspiration to righteousness which seem to him
divine. As the worshipper in the Temple would observe the art and structure
of the carven beams of cedar and the lily-work on the tops of the pillars the
more attentively because they beautified the house of his God, so the man
who has a religious faith in the Bible will study more eagerly and carefully the
literary forms of the book in which the Holy Spirit speaks forever.
 It is in this spirit that I wish to consider the poetical element in the Psalms.
The comfort, help, and guidance that they bring to our spiritual life will not be
diminished, but increased, by a perception of their exquisite form and finish.
If a king sent a golden cup full of cheering cordial to a weary man, he might
well admire the two-fold bounty of the royal gift. The beauty of the vessel
would make the draught more grateful and refreshing. And if the cup were
inexhaustible, if it filled itself anew as often as it touched the lips, then the
very shape and adornment of it would become significant and precious. It
would be an inestimable possession, a singing goblet, a treasure of life.
John Milton, whose faith in religion was as exalted as his mastery of the art
of poetry was perfect, has expressed in a single sentence the spirit in which I
would approach the poetic study of the Book of Psalms: “Not in their divine
arguments alone, but in the very critical art of composition, the Psalms may
be easily made to appear over all kinds of lyric poetry incomparable.”

I
Let us remember at the outset that a considerable part of the value of the
Psalms as poetry will lie beyond our reach. We cannot precisely measure it,
nor give it full appreciation, simply because we are dealing with the Psalms
only as we have them in our English Bible. This is a real drawback; and it is
well to understand clearly the two things that we lose in reading the Psalms in
this way.
First, we lose the beauty and the charm of verse. This is a serious loss.
Poetry and verse are not the same thing, but they are so intimately related
that it is difficult to divide them. Indeed, according to certain definitions of
poetry, it would seem almost impossible.
Yet who will deny that the Psalms as we have them in the English Bible are
really and truly poetical?
The only way out of this difficulty that I can see is to distinguish between
verse as the formal element and imaginative emotion as the essential element
in poetry. In the original production of a poem, it seems to me, it is just to say
that the embodiment in metrical language is a law of art which must be
observed. But in the translation of a poem (which is a kind of reflection of it in
a mirror) the verse may be lost without altogether losing the spirit of the
poem.
Take an illustration from another art. A statue has the symmetry of solid
form. You can look at it from all sides, and from every side you can see the
balance and rhythm of the parts. In a photograph this solidity of form
disappears. You see only a flat surface. But you still recognize it as the
reflection of a statue.
The Psalms were undoubtedly written, in the original Hebrew, according to
a system of versification, and perhaps to some extent with forms of rhyme.
The older scholars, like Lowth and Herder, held that such a system existed,
but could not be recovered. Later scholars, like Ewald, evolved a system of
their own. Modern scholarship, represented by such authors as Professors
Cheyne and Briggs, is reconstructing and explaining more accurately the
Hebrew versification. But, for the present at least, the only thing that is clear
is that this system must remain obscure to us. It cannot be reproduced in
English. The metrical versions of the Psalms are the least satisfactory. The
poet Cowley said of them, “They are so far from doing justice to David that
methinks they revile him worse than Shimei.”[5] We must learn to appreciate
the poetry in the Psalms without the aid of those symmetries of form and
sound in which they first appeared. This is a serious loss. Poetry without verse
is like a bride without a bridal garment.
The second thing that we lose in reading the Psalms in English is something
even more important. It is the heavy tax on the wealth of its meaning, which
all poetry must pay when it is imported from one country to another, through
the medium of translation.
The most subtle charm of poetry is its suggestiveness; and much of this
comes from the magical power which words acquire over memory and
imagination, from their associations. This intimate and personal charm must
be left behind when a poem passes from one language to another. The
accompaniment, the harmony of things remembered and beloved, which the
very words of the song once awakened, is silent now. Nothing remains but the
naked melody of thought. If this is pure and strong, it will gather new
associations; as, indeed, the Psalms have already done in English, so that
their familiar expressions have become charged with musical potency. And yet
I suppose such phrases as “a tree planted by the rivers of water,” “a fruitful
vine in the innermost parts of the house,” “the mountains round about
Jerusalem,” can never bring to us the full sense of beauty, the enlargement of
heart, that they gave to the ancient Hebrews. But, in spite of this double loss,
in the passage from verse to prose and from Hebrew to English, the poetry in
the Psalms is so real and vital and imperishable that every reader feels its
beauty and power.
 It retains one valuable element of poetic form. This is that balancing of the
parts of a sentence, one against another, to which Bishop Lowth first gave the
familiar name of “parallelism.”[6] The effect of this simple artifice, learned
from Nature herself, is singularly pleasant and powerful. It is the rise and fall
of the fountain, the ebb and flow of the tide, the tone and overtone of the
chiming bell. The two-fold utterance seems to bear the thought onward like
the wings of a bird. A German writer compares it very exquisitely to “the
heaving and sinking of the troubled heart.”
It is this “parallelism” which gives such a familiar charm to the language of
the Psalms. Unconsciously, and without recognizing the nature of the
attraction, we grow used to the double cadence, the sound and the echo, and
learn to look for its recurrence with delight.

O come let us sing unto the Lord;

Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation,
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving;
And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.

If we should want a plain English name for this method of composition we

might call it thought-rhyme. It is easy to find varied illustrations of its beauty
and of its power to emphasize large and simple ideas.
Take for instance that very perfect psalm with which the book begins—a
poem so complete, so compact, so delicately wrought that it seems like a
sonnet. The subject is The Two Paths.
The first part describes the way of the good man. It has three divisions.
The first verse gives a description of his conduct by negatives—telling us
what he does not do. There is a triple thought-rhyme here.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor standeth in the way of sinners,
Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

The second verse describes his character positively, with a double thought-
rhyme.
 But his delight is in the law of the Lord;
And in his law doth he meditate day and night.

The third verse tells us the result of this character and conduct, in a fourfold
thought-rhyme.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water:

That bringeth forth his fruit in his season:
His leaf also shall not wither:
And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

The second part of the psalm describes the way of the evil man. In the fourth
verse there is a double thought-rhyme.

The ungodly are not so:

But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

In the fifth verse the consequences of this worthless, fruitless, unrooted life
are shown, again with a double cadence of thought, the first referring to the
judgment of God, the second to the judgment of men.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment:

Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

The third part of the psalm is a terse, powerful couplet, giving the reason for
the different ending of the two paths.

For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous:

But the way of the ungodly shall perish.

The thought-rhyme here is one of contrast.

A poem of very different character from this brief, serious, impersonal
sonnet is found in the Forty-sixth Psalm, which might be called a National
Anthem. Here again the poem is divided into three parts.
The first part (verses first to third) expresses a sense of joyful confidence in
the Eternal, amid the tempests and confusions of earth. The thought-rhymes
are in couplets; and the second phrase, in each case, emphasizes and
enlarges the idea of the first phrase.

God is our refuge and strength:

A very present help in trouble.

The second part (verses fourth to seventh) describes the peace and security
of the city of God, surrounded by furious enemies, but rejoicing in the Eternal
Presence. The parallel phrases here follow the same rule as in the first part.
The concluding phrase is the stronger, the more emphatic. The seventh verse
gives the refrain or chorus of the anthem.

The Lord of hosts is with us:

The God of Jacob is our refuge.

The last part (verses eighth to tenth) describes in a very vivid and concrete
way the deliverance of the people that have trusted in the Eternal. It begins
with a couplet, like those which have gone before. Then follow two stanzas of
triple thought-rhymes, in which the thought is stated and intensified with each
repetition.

He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth:

He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder:
He burneth the chariot in the fire.

Be still, and know that I am God:

I will be exalted among the heathen:
I will be exalted in the earth.

The anthem ends with a repetition of the refrain.

A careful study of the Psalms, even in English, will enable the thoughtful
reader to derive new pleasure from them, by tracing the many modes and
manners in which this poetic form of thought-rhyme is used to bind the
composition together, and to give balance and harmony to the poem.
Another element of poetic form can be discerned in the Psalms, not directly,
in the English version, but by its effects. I mean the curious artifice of
alphabetic arrangement. It was a favourite practice among Hebrew poets to
begin their verses with the successive letters of the alphabet, or sometimes to
vary the device by making every verse in a strophe begin with one letter, and
every verse in the next strophe with the following letter, and so on to the end.
The Twenty-fifth and the Thirty-seventh Psalms were written by the first of
these rules; the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm follows the second plan.
Of course the alphabetic artifice disappears entirely in the English
translation. But its effects remain. The Psalms written in this manner usually
have but a single theme, which is repeated over and over again, in different
words and with new illustrations. They are kaleidoscopic. The material does
not change, but it is turned this way and that way, and shows itself in new
shapes and arrangements. These alphabetic psalms are characterized by
poverty of action and richness of expression.

II
Milton has already reminded us that the Psalms belong to the second of the
three orders into which the Greeks, with clear discernment, divided all poetry:
the epic, the lyric, and the dramatic. The Psalms are rightly called lyrics
because they are chiefly concerned with the immediate and imaginative
expression of real feeling. It is the personal and emotional note that
predominates. They are inward, confessional, intense; outpourings of the
quickened spirit; self-revelations of the heart. It is for this reason that we
should never separate them in our thought from the actual human life out of
which they sprung. We must feel the warm pulse of humanity in them in order
to comprehend their meaning and immortal worth. So far as we can connect
them with the actual experience of men, this will help us to appreciate their
reality and power. The effort to do this will make plain to us some other things
which it is important to remember.
We shall see at once that the book does not come from a single writer, but
from many authors and ages. It represents the heart of man in communion
with God through a thousand years of history, from Moses to Nehemiah,
perhaps even to the time of the Maccabean revival. It is, therefore, something
very much larger and better than an individual book.
 It is the golden treasury of lyrics gathered from the life of the Hebrew
people, the hymn-book of the Jews. And this gives to it a singular and
precious quality of brotherhood. The fault, or at least the danger, of modern
lyrical poetry is that it is too solitary and separate in its tone. It tends towards
exclusiveness, over-refinement, morbid sentiment. Many Christian hymns
suffer from this defect. But the Psalms breathe a spirit of human fellowship
even when they are most intensely personal. The poet rejoices or mourns in
solitude, it may be, but he is not alone in spirit. He is one of the people. He is
conscious always of the ties that bind him to his brother men. Compare the
intense selfishness of the modern hymn:

I can but perish if I go;

I am resolved to try;
For if I stay away, I know
I shall forever die;

with the generous penitence of the Fifty-first Psalm:

Then will I teach transgressors thy way;

And sinners shall be converted unto thee.

It is important to observe that there are several different kinds of lyrics

among the Psalms. Some of them are simple and natural outpourings of a
single feeling, like A Shepherd’s Song about His Shepherd, the incomparable
Twenty-third Psalm.
This little poem is a perfect melody. It would be impossible to express a
pure, unmixed emotion—the feeling of joy in the Divine Goodness—more
simply, with a more penetrating lyrical charm. The “valley of the death-
shadow,” the “enemies” in whose presence the table is spread, are but dimly
suggested in the background. The atmosphere of the psalm is clear and
bright. The singing shepherd walks in light. The whole world is the House of
the Lord, and life is altogether gladness.
How different is the tone, the quality, of the One Hundred and Nineteenth
Psalm! This is not a melody, but a harmony; not a song, but an ode. The ode
has been defined as “a strain of exalted and enthusiastic lyrical verse, directed
to a fixed purpose and dealing progressively with one dignified theme.”[7] This
definition precisely fits the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm.
 Its theme is The Eternal Word. Every verse in the poem, except one,
contains some name or description of the law, commandments, testimonies,
precepts, statutes, or judgments of Jehovah. Its enthusiasm for the Divine
Righteousness never fails from beginning to end. Its fixed purpose is to kindle
in other hearts the flame of devotion to the one Holy Law. It closes with a
touch of magnificent pathos—a confession of personal failure and an assertion
of spiritual loyalty:

I have gone astray like a lost sheep:

Seek thy servant:
For I do not forget thy commandments.

The Fifteenth Psalm I should call a short didactic lyric. Its title is The Good
Citizen. It begins with a question:

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?

Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

This question is answered by the description of a man whose character

corresponds to the law of God. First there is a positive sketch in three broad
lines:

He that walketh uprightly,

And worketh righteousness,
And speaketh truth in his heart.

Then comes a negative characterization in a finely touched triplet:

He that backbiteth not with his tongue,

Nor doeth evil to his neighbor,
Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.

This is followed by a couplet containing a strong contrast:

 In whose eyes a vile person is contemned:
But he honoureth them that fear the Lord.

Then the description goes back to the negative style again and three more
touches are added to the picture:

He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not,

He that putteth not out his money to usury,
Nor taketh reward against the innocent.

The poem closes with a single vigourous line, summing up the character of
the good citizen and answering the question of the first verse with a new
emphasis of security and permanence:

He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

The Seventy-eighth, One Hundred and Fifth, and One Hundred and Sixth
Psalms are lyrical ballads. They tell the story of Israel in Egypt, and in the
Wilderness, and in Canaan, with swift, stirring phrases, and with splendid
flashes of imagery. Take this passage from the Seventy-eighth Psalm as an
example:
He clave the rocks in the wilderness,
And gave them drink out of the great depths.

He brought streams also out of the rock,

And caused waters to run down like rivers.

And they sinned yet more against him,

Provoking the Most High in the wilderness.

They tempted God in their hearts,

Asking meat for their lust.

Yea, they spake against God:

They said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?

Behold, he smote the rock that the waters gushed out,

And the streams overflowed;

Can he give bread also?

Can he provide flesh for his people?

Therefore the Lord heard and was wroth:

So a fire was kindled against Jacob,
And anger also came up against Israel:
Because they believed not in God,
And trusted not in his salvation:

Though he had commanded the clouds from above,

And opened the doors of heaven,
And had rained down manna upon them to eat,
And had given them of the corn of heaven,
Man did eat angel’s food:

He sent them meat to the full.

He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven,
And by his power he brought in the south wind.
He rained flesh also upon them as dust,
And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea.

And he let it fall in the midst of their camp,

Round about their habitations;
So they did eat and were filled