irreducible to principle. But Agur can strike a spark when he makes this topic into a number sonnet: There be three things which are too wonderful for me, Yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; The way of a serpent upon a rock; The way of a ship in the midst of the sea; It must be remembered, moreover, that proverbs suffer more than any other kind of literature by being read in collections. Most readers have grown weary even of excellent lyric poems when they have tried to read through a disconnected series. But Wisdom literature contains the briefest of all literary compositions, and three hundred and seventy-five of these, wholly unconnected, are massed together in a single book of The Proverbs. Many of the sayings will justify themselves at once; for others the reader must be content to wait. It may well happen that proverbs which seemed the coldest in the mere reading may glow with wisdom if the reader himself happens to pass into the experience they describe. No special information is given by the familiar saying that the heart knoweth its own bitterness. But those who have had to suffer some pang of disaster have realised how this and other proverbs attain the very perfection of adequacy. We seem to pass into a different region of literature when we turn from the collections of proverbs to the introductory book of Poems on Wisdom as a whole. The word wisdom is associated with other names-Knowledge, Discretion, Understanding, Discernment: the individual words are not to be pressed, either in the original language or in any other, but the idea is a profusion of synonyms intended to take in all excellence. When to these synonyms is added 'Instruction' and 'Law,' the man of wisdom and the scribe join hands. To such Wisdom are opposed special errors - sluggishness, the sowing of discord or, in general terms, scorners and men of violence, as blind to their inevitable doom as the silly bird in whose very eyes the fowler may safely spread his net. Or the foes of Wisdom are the simple; or again the 'perverse' and 'froward'- terms suggesting those who do not yield to temptation, but go to meet it: in Southey's phrase, they tempt Hell to tempt them. The Wisdom celebrated is a thing of character; but of character viewed as a whole. It is an air or presence, that hangs about a man like a chaplet of grace on his head or chains about his neck. Sought at first with strain and effort with searching as for hid treasures, with watching daily at gates and waiting at the posts of doors, with the pain of Divine chastening-Wisdom becomes at last a heart possession, restraining the mouth, directing the eyes, establishing the feet, watching over the sleeper, talking with him when he wakes: by multiplied expressions like these the poets of Wisdom strive to express the overflowing of vigorous consciousness, as when an epic hero is made to converse with his 'dear heart.' Character passes into action, and Wisdom appears as a 'way' and a 'path': a path of light growing from dawn into full day, in contrast with another path that leads down into darkness and stumbling. And in this connection of thought a single poem identifies Wisdom with a mocking retribution, such as a Greek poet would call 'Nemesis,' which the Hebrew poet, by an interlocking of metaphors, describes as a man's 'eating of the fruit of his way.' Viewed from the past, Wisdom is the 'principal thing' which has come down by tradition from instructing father to son that becomes instructor in his turn; viewed from yet another standpoint, Wisdom is the grand bargain of life, whose merchandise is better than merchandise of silver, and her gain than gold and rubies. But Wisdom can rise higher still in the scale of personality. The same impulse which leads a sailor lad to speak of his ship as 'she,' or a poet to deify his inspiration as a Muse, leads the wise men to clothe their theme with a feminine personality. Wisdom is a sister, Understanding a kinswoman; the final poem of the book paints Wisdom as the universal hostess, with her house of seven pillars and her maidens bidding to a rich feast. But the great monologue which is the crown of the Wisdom poems contains another personification, as bold as it is brilliant. The poet throws out his light by dark shading, and prepares the way by presenting another personality — the 'Strange Woman,' who haunts the whole of Wisdom literature. Her tempting enticements are elaborated in all their details, and the simple victim is pictured as following her, heedless as the ox going to the slaughter, helpless as the fettered prisoner carried to the correction of fools. There is a momentary lifting of a veil to give a glimpse of the house as the way down to the abyss, and the victims as a mighty host in the chambers of death: and then, with a startling turn of the imagery, the poet presents Wisdom as the temptress to good. Doth not Wisdom cry? From the high places and every point of vantage are heard her pleadings with the simple. She enumerates her charms and at once the poem begins a chain of ascending climaxes. First, all the desirable things of mankind appear as part of Wisdom: subtilty and discretion, justice and strong rule, righteousness and true wealth. Then a further climax traverses the whole gulf between subjective and objective, and Wisdom is identified with Beauty, not with any partial or transient beauty, but with the whole creative design of the universe, in which Wisdom assisted as a master workman. Even a higher climax still is found when Wisdom appears as the delight in all existence, such as crowns moments of rare consciousness when the individual realises his oneness with the whole. The cosmogonist of Genesis, writing prose, represents God viewing his finished creation: "and, behold, it was very good." It is a poetic intensification of the same thought which here makes the beauty of creative design pass over into a joy of Deity for ever, and Wisdom is seen as his daily delight: Sporting always before him; Sporting in his habitable globe. A few words will be sufficient to describe the literary forms which are to be met with in the Books of Proverbs. The most elementary is the Unit Proverb: a couplet rarely a triplet - of verse, which is in the strictest sense an aphorism': bounded by its own horizon, without any connection with anything else. There are in Proverbs a few Proverb Clusters, where several independent sayings are gathered about a common theme. Next in order comes the Epigram. Classical epigrams do not, like those of modern literature, imply wit; the suggestion of the term is of smoothness and polish in connection with a poem at once brief and complete in its thought. In application to Wisdom literature I use the term Epigram in a very definite sense: as a unit proverb organically expanded. That is to say, in every epigram two lines (not necessarily consecutive) make a unit proverb, which is the germ of the whole. |