element. Their true field of development lay in a social and urban type of civilization: a life which opened into prosperous enterprise, business undertakings, the gain and care of wealth, intercourse and commerce with the world. And when they had surmounted their primitive conditions, and found themselves on the threshold of this kind of life, it was like awaking to a new world of thought and imagination.

Such awakening naturally finds outlet in expression wherein this attitude of mind has free and creative play. Accordingly, it is to this age that we trace the people's quickened response to a more liberal range of utterance and to literary values as such. We perceive it in the way the native literary forms pass from a run-wild and artless stage to a stage of self-conscious and disciplined cultivation. We perceive it too in the way the more dominating types of literature begin to be developed.

II. INITIATIVE IN TWO GIFTED KINGS

Not only was the people of Israel responding to a new type and stage of civilization. Personal influence and ascendancy too was at its highest and wholesomest. Out of the times succeeding the chaotic era of the Judges had come names of strong personalities, whose power survived to tone up the people's mind: Samuel, the venerable last judge and king-maker; Saul, the ill-fated first king and military champion; Jonathan, the brave and chivalrous crown prince untimely slain; David, who as popular hero even in outlawry and forced exile showed his essential nobility and magnanimity of character, and in his succession to royalty not only established a capital and religious center but built himself into men's hearts in a love which condoned his faults; Joab, whose able generalship went far to atone for his hard arbitrariness of nature; and finally Solomon, whose sagacity and

organizing vigor so captivated the people's imagination that they were well pleased, for a time, to submit their national pace to his scale of Oriental luxury and splendor. Never afterward in their history did the tide of personal ascendancy rise so high.

Of these great names two stand out preeminent in this period for the impulse they gave to literature. They are the names of the two kings, father and son, David and Solomon. Each of these was in his way generously endowed with literary gifts; and each is identified in tradition with a type of the more artistic and developed literature. In tradition, I say, rather than in history; for their actual work, if any of it is extant, is buried in the work of later generations. It is important therefore to note what historical warrant there is, if any, for ascribing to them so eminent a place in the nation's roll of authorship.

I

David's Part in the Literary Awakening. As a minstrel and singer, endowed with the gift both of poetry and of music, David was already famous in youth. It was he, it will be remembered, who was sent for to charm away the melancholic spirit of King Saul by his harp-playing (1 Sam. xvi, 14–23). He is mentioned by the prophet Amos in connection with the musical instruments used in secular feasts (Amos vi, 5); and the instruments used in the orchestral service of the Temple in King Hezekiah's time were called "instruments of David" (2 Chron. xxix, 26, 27; cf. 1 Chron. xxiii, 5). These references would indicate that his chief distinction was as an inventor and maker of stringed instruments. In the poem ascribed to him as his "last words," however, he is described as

The anointed of the God of Jacob,
And the sweet psalmist of Israel;

or, more literally, "the joy of the songs of Israel," where the word for songs is the specific term for songs set to music.

Of undoubted poetic compositions from his hand we have the famous lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i, 19–27), and a shorter one over Abner (2 Sam. iii, 33, 34), to show that he cultivated the form of song called the kinah, or elegy. Besides these there are ascribed to him a song of thanksgiving (2 Sam. xxii), composed when his kingdom was securely established, the same poem being repeated as one of the Psalms (Psa. xviii); and an ode called the last words of David" (2 Sam. xxiii, 1-7), in which latter the aged monarch passes in devout and grateful review the experiences of his reign.

King David's chief literary distinction, however, consists in the fact that tradition has made him the father of Israel's sacred lyric poetry. A whole scripture book, the Book of Psalms, though containing many poems ascribed to other authors, is named for him as founder and originator. As completely compiled, it appears as the anthem book for the temple services; and to the individual Psalms are appended many titles, or labels, relating to their authorship, their musical use, their class as poems, and their historical occasion. Of the one hundred and fifty Psalms contained in the book seventy-three are ascribed to David. It is to be remembered, however, that these titles are later additions to the text, representing the conclusions of compilers long after David's time; and we do not know what warrant these had for attributing the poems to David. We are to remember also that these Psalms, as they were used for liturgical purposes, were subject like our hymns to revision and adaptation to later conditions. The conjecture, therefore, just what or how many of the Psalms are of David's actual composition, is hazardous. At the same time, the appended titles, while not to be trusted implicitly, are not to be too lightly dismissed. They represent at least a very old tradition.

The Book of Psalms as a gradually compiled and eventually completed collection will come up for consideration later. Our concern here is with David's relation to it, which as we shall see was larger than that of mere authorship and musical genius.

II

Solomon's Relation to Literature. Although Solomon is known to history as the builder of the Temple and so as the organizer of a centralized state worship, his personal influence was not distinctively religious. Nor was he, as his father had been, a man of war. He was on the one side a man of the world, interested in civic, industrial, and commercial affairs, and on the other side, a man of liberal artistic and literary tastes. It was in these directions that he gave a new and powerful impulse to the progress of the Israelite state. When he began to reign over them the people were clannish and provincial; he worked to infuse into them something of a cosmopolitan sense, and to give them self-confidence and self-respect as a nation.

Solomon's love of display and luxury, which is such a striking feature of his reign, was only a surface trait, like the untempered tastes of the new-rich. Nor was his despotism so much a disposition as a careless aping of the ways of other Oriental monarchs. The inherent quality for which succeeding ages have known and honored him is his wisdom. In the popular account of his reign, as reflected in the narratives of 1 Kings, this is set forth by the story of his dream request at Gibeon and its answer (1 Kings iii, 4-15); by a specimen example of his acuteness and sagacity as a magistrate (1 Kings iii, 16–28); and by his cleverness in answering the hard questions of the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings x, 1-10). Such things would

1 See Chapter V, I, 111, Treasures from the Older Literature," and Chapter VIII, II, 1, "The Five Books of Psalms."

take the fancy, as they still do, of a people not yet schooled to literature. But beyond this also, there is introduced into the story of his reign an element the like of which we do not see under any other monarch, except to some degree under Hezekiah. From the enthusiastic account in 1 Kings iv, 29-34, we see that his court was not only a center of wealth and luxury but of keen intellectual activity. Stimulated by the brilliant versatility of the young king, the men of rank and position began to cultivate literature for its own sake, and with regard not only to its substance but its artistry. Their work was, in its primitive way, something like the vigorous intellectual activity of the court sonneteers and euphuists of Queen Elizabeth's time. Of the extraordinary literary vigor of Solomon's reign the king himself was the promoter and patron, surpassing the cleverest men of letters in their own field. He spoke, it is said, three thousand proverbs or mashals; and his songs were one thousand and five. The sources from which he drew his lessons of wisdom are indicated: the realm of animal and vegetable nature, which suggested to him a wealth of spiritual analogies. The principle of the mashal, as we will recall, is likeness or analogy; and here not natural science but the definite search for such lessons is meant. It was like the occupation of the Duke in Shakespeare's play, who with his companions in cultured leisure is curious to

Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in everything.1

It is from what this account indicates, especially, that we deduce our chapter heading, Awaking of the Literary Sense. We trace this awaking to the time and court of King Solomon, and to men of refinement and taste who were ardent in the pursuit of letters and learning to emulate the men of other nations.

1 "As You Like It," Act II, scene i, 16.