Library of the Theological Seminary PRINCETON o NEW JERSEY Presented by Professor William Henry Green SONG OF SONGS: OR, S A CRED IDYLS.f* NOV 1 f> 1902 TRANSLATED PROM 1£\)Z Criginal %brtto 3 WITH NOTES CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY, By JOHN MASON GOOD. SATOMOVIS SAKCT1SSIMUM CARMEN INTER IDYIXIA HEBRJEA RECF.NSENfU'M PUTO." Sir Win. Junes. LONDON : PRINTED FOR G. KEARSLEY, FLEET-STREET, BY WILKS AND TAYLOR, CHANCERY- 1 ANK. 1803, PREFACE. J. HE Song of Songs has hitherto been generally regarded as one continued and individual poem; — either as an epithalamium (oxpurros nuptialis), ac- companied, in its recitation, with appropriate music ; or a regular drama, divisible, and at first clearly di- vided, into distinct acts or periods. Since the com- mentary of the learned and elegant Bossuet, bishop of Meatti, upon this admirable pastoral — and more especially since the confirmation of his ingenious con- jecture, by that excellent critic the late bishop Lowth — the latter opinion has more generally prevailed ; and the poem has been arranged into seven parts ; one being appropriated to every day of the bridal week, or period of time allotted among the Hebrews for the celebration of the nuptial solemnity. Great as are the authorities for both these spe- culations, I have ventured to deviate from them in the version now offered to the public. The Song of a a IV PREFACE. Songs cannot be one connected epithalamium, since the transitions are too abrupt for the wildest flights of the oriental Muse, and evidently imply a variety of openings and conclusions; while, as a regular drama, it is deficient in almost every requisite that could give it such a classification : it has neither dramatic fable nor action, neither involution nor ca- tastrophe ; it is without a beginning, a middle, or an end. To call it such, is to injure it essentially; it is to raise expectations which can never be gratified, and to force parts upon parts which have no possible connexion. Bishop Lowth himself, indeed, while he contends that it is a drama, is compel 'ed to con- template it as an imperfect poem of'this description *. It is the object of the present version, therefore, to offer a new arrangement, and to regard the entire song as a collection of distinct idyls upon one com- mon subject — and that the loves of the Hebrew * Id itaque satis tufo jam statuere licet, Canticum Salomonis ad minorem iliam speciera dramatics po^seos pertinere, seu formam solum modo dramaticam habere ; neutiquamjusti dra- matis titulo insignbi posse. De Sacr. Poes, PREFACE. V monarch and his fair bride: and it has afforded me peculiar pleasure to observe, from a passage I have accidentally met with in the writings of Sir William Jones, long since the composition of the present work, that some such opinion was entertained by this illustrious scholar*. In forming this arrange- ment, I have followed no other guide than what has appeared to me the obvious intention of the sacred bard himself: I have confined myself to soliloquy where the speaker gives no evident proofs of a com- panion, jind I have introduced dialogue where the responses are obvious. I have finished the idyl where the subject seems naturally to close, and I have recommenced it where a new subjeet is intro- duced. Thus divided into a multitude of little de- tached poems, I trust that many of the obscurities which have hitherto overshadowed this unrivalled rclique of the eastern pastoral have vanished com- pletelv, and that the ancient Hebrews will be found to possess a poet who, independently of the sublimity * This passage I Lave readily selected as a motto to the titlerpage. V1 PREFACE. of any concealed and allegorical meaning, may rival the best productions of Theocritus, Bion, or Virgil, as to the literal beauties with which every verse overflows. The author of these exquisite amorets was king Soloman*; and they probably constitute a part of * I trust the small deviation I have here, and throughout the volume, made from the common orthography of the last syllable of this name, will not be attributed to affectation. It would be a desirable acquisition at all times — but more espe- cially at present, when a knowledge of oriental learning is ad- vancing with rapid strides among us, that every proper name should be so delineated in the version to which it is committed, as equally to express its entire enunciation and original ele- ments ; and for want of an attention to so important a rule, it is surprising to observe how very differently the names of persons highly celebrated in Hindustanee, Persian, or Turkish history, are expressed in Roman characters, not only by translators of different European countries, but of the very same state and language; so as in many instances to render it almost impossi- ble for the English reader to assimilate them. In the final syl- lable of the Hebrew TrOTtf it cannot, I think, be contended that the value of the n is by any means fairly appreciated by the Roman o, either with regard to sound or character ; and although we be not perhaps fully acquainted, notwithstanding all the diacritical attempts of the Massora, with the exact pro- nunciation of the ancient Hebrews, there can be no doubt that the Jl is more justly represented by a or e than by o. In PREFACE. V1L the one thousand and five songs which his biographer asserts him to have composed *. Of the rest, unfor- tunately, we know nothing. The present fasciculus, point of original element, the latter of these two might be pre- ferable ; but it is not sufficiently calculated in our own lan- guage to express the vocal value of the n j and *> fortified by the example of the Arabians and Persians, who uniformly write (^l^Lw Or (^L^xiwj) SSlnwn, or Soliman, I have preferred the former. As to the two prior vowels, from their total absence in the original, we are left at more liberty ; and they have been consequently given very differently, both in different and the same languages, at different periods of time. Among the Asiatics, as I have just observed, they are both omitted, consistently indeed with the Hebrew text : but, as I have observed also, in rendering the Persian mode of spelling the name, we commonly to the present day make the first vowel an o, and the second an i or z.y. In the Greek and Latin versions it is generally written Salomon: our first Eng- lish translators, Tindal and Coverdale, adhered to the Latin orthography: and among the Germans, Italians, and almost every language of modern Europe excepting our own, it is continued to the present day. All however being arbitrary, and the modern use of the first and second o as correct as that of any other vowels, to have deviated in either of these in- stances would have been to have incurred the charge of affec- tation most justly. * 1 Kin^s, iv. 32- Vlll PREFACE.' or collection, descends to us under the characteristic name of The Song of Songs, □'nTH TIT, and was unquestionably therefore his favourite or happiest performance, the Hebrew language duplicating its terms to express superlative excellence. The Orien- tals, to the present moment, are accustomed to pub- lish their lighter, and particularly their amatory, effusions, in distinct sets or diwans ; each diwan consisting of "an indefinite number of odes or gazels, arranged under every letter jof the alphabet, and every verse of the gazel rhyming with the letter under which h is placed. The word diwan is, how- ever, occasionally employed in a more relaxed sense, and applied to collections of poems, in which this rigid attention either to alphabetical arrangement or similarity of rhymes is not adhered to. Thus the diwan of Rafia consists of poems of almost every description, and comprises altogether not less than fifteen thousand distichs. Among the Hebrew bards, a system of the same kind appears occasionally to have prevailed. The five alphabetical psalms as they are called, consisting of the xxvth, xxxivth, xxxviith, PREFACE. JX cxith, and cxixth, may be regarded as instances of the Hebrew diwan in its more strict and pertinent application; and the collection before us, as a diwan liberated from the bondage of alphabetical order, but maintaining- a whole by the unity of its subject. The Arabian poet, Teman, has happily compared the arrangement of beautiful thoughts in verse to a string of pearls prepared for the neck of a fine woman ; and the Persian Anacreon, Hafiz, pursuing the same idea, asserts, in the last beit or stanza of one of his most exquisite gazels, that he has now c strung his pearls,' and that they possess ' the lustre and beauty of the stars *.' This elegant conception is probably of Hebrew origin ; for the word ~W 3 in the present and most other instances, translated song, means, in its original acceptation, ' a string or j ..j \ / aAwjjc3 « / ^XJ (J IS -y T J- X PREFACE. chain jr* it is precisely synonymous with the Greek ° r ' R a 5' s of Light;' and another i^UOjskA-T, 'The Bed, or Bower of Roses :' while from the tender Jami we have received U-^ JU 1 &\>±>Xi*i, ' The Chain of Gold,' a poem in three books, and /^jIaaw jl^J, ' The Mansion of the Spring:' the latter poem not widely different in appellation, though diametrically opposite in merit, to the Aeniwacioy, or ' Spiritual Meadow' of Sophronius. PREFACE. XI therefore probably regarded by the sacred poet, at the time of their composition, as so many distinct beads or pearls, of which the whole, when struno- togcther, constituted one perfect Tvl?, string, cate- nation, or diwan ; and, as before observed, on ac- count of their supremity of excellence above all the other diwans or poetic firings he had ever exhibited, he distinguished them by the illustrious appellation of e string of strings,' * song of songs,' or e diwan of diwans.' Of the name of the fair bride in whose honour these amatory idyls were composed we are totally ignorant. By Dr. Lowth, Sir W. Jones, and many other eminent critics and scholars, she is thought to have been the royal daughter of Pharaoh ; but the few circumstances that incidentally relate to her history, in these poetical effusions, completely oppose such an idea. The matrimonial connexion of the Hebrew monarch with the Egyptian princess was probably, indeed, a connexion of political interest alone ; for we have no reason to conceive that it had been preceded by any personal intimacy or interchange of affection : XU PREFACE. the offer was proposed by him on his first accession to the throne, prior to his having received from Jehovah the gift of superior wisdom ; at a time when, accord- ing to archbishop Usher*, he could not have been more than twenty years of age, when he was sur- rounded by a vast body of opponents and competitors, and when an alliance with the royal family of Egypt was likely to be of essential advantage to him : from which also, as a further proof of his political views in such an union, he received the city of Gezer as a dowry with the princess t — a. city captured by Pha- raoh from the Canaanites, and rased to the ground, probably from the obstinacy of its resistance ; but afterwards re-built by Soloman, and converted into a place of considerable distinction. The matrimonial connexion here celebrated, on the contrary, appears to have proceeded from reci- procal affection alone ; and from the gentleness, modesty, and delicacy of mind, which are uniformly and perpetually attributed to this beautiful and ac- * An. Mund. 2971^-2991. t J Kings, ix. 16. PREFACE. XU1 complisbed fair one, she must have been well worthy of the royal love. Instead of being of Egyptian ori- gin, she herself informs us that she was a native of Sharon *, which was a canton of Palestine. Though hot of royal blood, she was of noble birth ; for she is addressed by her attendants under the appellation of princess f ; and though she could not augment by her dowry the dimensions of the national territory, she possessed for her marriage-portion a noble and fruit- ful estate in Baal-hammon J, ingeniously supposed by Mr. Harmer to have been situated in the de- lightful valley of Bocat, in the immediate vicinity of Balbec §, leased out to a variety of tenants, whose number we are not acquainted with, but every one of whom paid her a clear rental of a thousand she- kels of silver, amounting to about 120/. 16s. 8 d. sterling. From the possession of this property it is natural to conceive that her father was deceased; more especially as the house in which she resided is * Sol. Song, II- 1- t Id. vii. 1. % Sol. Song, viii. 12. § Outlines of a New Commentary, p. 55, 36. XIV PREFACE. repeatedly called the house of her mother *, as it was her mother who betrothed her to the enamoured monarch -j-, and as no notice of any kind is taken of the existence of her father. Dr. Hodgson conjectures that the name of her mother was Talmadni ; for such is the interpretation he has given to a parti- cular passage, which in general is translated very differently. I have stated the motives for this varia- tion in note ( 5 ) on idyl X. but cannot accede to the criticism. She appears to have possessed two distinct families, and consequently to have had two mar- riages; for in idyl I. 2i, the royal bride speaks of an offspring considerably older than herself, whom she denominates, not her father's, but her mother's children, who seem to have taken an undue advan- tage of her infancy, and to have behaved with great unkindness towards her. For these she no where expresses any degree of affection ; but for an own brother and sister — the former an infant, and the * Sol. Song, ch. iii. 4. viii. 2. t Id. viii. 5. PREFACE. XV latter considerably younger than herself — she evinces the temlerest regard of the most affectionate bosom*. Of the age of this unrivalled beauty, at the time of her nuptials, we are no-where informed. Being in possession of an estate bequeathed her by her fa- ther, or some collateral relation, she must, at least, have acquired her majority according to the Hebrew ritual ; yet, from the circumstance of her brother's being an unweaned infant, she could not have ex- ceeded the prime of life ; and from the exquisite de- lineations of her person, by her companions as well as by her lover, she must have been in the full flower of youth and beauty. As to the age of king Soloman, we may fairly calculate it, from collateral circumstances, to have been about twenty-five or twenty-six, and, consequently, that the nuptials were celebrated about the year ioio before the birth of Christ. At the age of twenty he contracted his mar- riage of political interest with the Egyptian princess: and if he had not at this period complied with the * Sol. Sons, viii. 1. viii. 8. XVI PREFACE. luxurious fashion of his age, and opened his haram for the reception of the most beautiful women who could be found, and would consent to live with him, it is obvious that this establishment commenced very shortly afterwards. At the time of his union with the illustrious fair one celebrated in the poems before us, it consisted, as he himself informs us, of sixty queens or ladies who had brought dowries with them, and of eighty concubines or ladies who were devoid of patrimony *. In the latter part of his reign his se- raglio became much more extensive and magnificent; for at one period it embraced not less than seven hundred queens and three hundred concubines f. Soloman was not an old man at his demise ; for he could not exceed fifty-eight years of age, and conse- quently the thirty-eighth of his reign. If, then, in less than forty years he collected the vast establish- ment of seven hundred queens and three hundred concubines, we may fairly calculate that he was not more than five or six years in amassing the number * Sol. Song, vi. 8. t 1 Kings, xi. 3. PREFACE. XV11 he possessed at the time he offered his addresses to the fair object of the Song of Songs, and, conse- quently, that he could not be more than about twenty-five or twenty-six. How long his partiality for this accomplished bride continued we know not. The histories of his life, which would probably have given us some informa- tion upon the subject, and were composed by the prophets Nathan, Ahijah, and Iddo *, have unfortu- nately followed the fate of all his own works, ex- cept the Book of Proverbs, of Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. The anonymous hiftories of him which are still preserved, however, in the sacred books of Kings and Chronicles, are minute and ex- plicit in many points ; and it is probable that the lady did not long live to enjoy his affection, or her name and some anecdoles relating to her would have been here communicated. That the Hebrew mon- arch conducted himself with great kindness towards her we may fairly conclude from the uniformity of his actions and the known generosity of his disposi- * 1 Chron. ix. 29. XVlll ■ PREFACE. tion— a generosity that induced him, seven or eight years after his marriage with the daughter of Pharaoh, to build for this princess a superb palace, in splendor resembling his own, at a distance from the city of David *; and which tempted him, in direct disobe- dience to the divine will, to erect temples and altars for the use of all his queens and concubines, dedi- cated to the respective deities whom they idolatrously worshiped f. These few detached and unsatisfactory anecdotes are the whole I have been able to collect of this beau- tiful and interesting personage. Imperfect as is the sketch, and obviously as much of it rests upon pro- bability alone, the reader will perhaps receive it with complacency. It is a new attempt, and as such is entitled to candor. It has been a question in all ages, whether the lite- ral and obvious meaning of these sacred amorets be the whole that was ever intended by the royal bard ? or, whether they afford not at the same time the veil * 1 Kings, iii. 1. vii. 8. ix. 24. — 2 Chron. viii. 11. ■\ l Kings, xi. 4. PREFACE. XIX of a sublime and mystical allegory, delineating the bridal union subsisting between Jehovah and his pure and Uncorrupted church ? Upon this subject we have no sufficient data to build a decisive opinion. To those who disbelieve the existence of such an allegory, they still afford a happy example of the pleasures of holy and virtuous love; they inculcate/ beyond the power of didactic poetry, the tenderness which the husband should manifest for his wife, and the deference, mo- desty, and fidelity, with which his affection should be returned ; — and, considered even in this sense alone, they are fully entitled to the honor of con- stituting a part of the sacred scriptures. For myself, nevertheless, I unite in the opinion of the illustrious Lowth, and believe such a sublime and mystic allegory to have been fully intended by the sacred bard. Regarded in this view, they afford an ad- mirable picture of the Jewish and Christian churches; of Jehovah's selection of Israel as a peculiar people from the less fair and virtuous nations around them ; of his fervent and permanent love for his elder church, so frequently compared by the Hebrew pro- XX PREFACE. phets to that of a bridegroom for his bride ; of the beauty, fidelity, and submission of the church in re- turn ; and of the call of the Gentiles into the pale of his favor, upon the introduction of Christi- anity, so exquisitely typified under the character of a younger sister, destitute, in confequence of the greater simplicity of its worship, of those external and captivating attractions which made so promi- nent a part of the Jewish religion. The Song of Songs is an oriental poem ; and this allegoric mode of describing the sacred union sub- sisting between mankind at large, or an individual and pious soul, and the great Creator, is common to almost all eastern poets from the earliest down to the present age. It is impossible, without such an eso- teric interpretation, to understand many of the pas- sages of the chaste and virtuous Sadi, or the more impassioned Hafiz ; and the Turkish commentators, Feridun, Sudi, and Seid Ali, following the example of the ancient Hushangis, have uniformly thus in- terpreted them, as they have also the writings of all the Sufi poets; though in many instances they have PREFACE. XXI unquestionably pursued their L-^a^. (^LkJ {Lisane Geib), or mystic meaning, to an extravagant length. The Leili and Mejnun of the Persians may be con- templated as the royal bridegroom and his beloved spouse of the Hebrews. The former have furnished a subject for a variety of the bards of Iran ; and perhaps the loves of the latter were celebrated by other poets of his own aera than the royal bridegroom himself; although, from the lapse of time, and the dispersion of the people to whom they were addressed, not a vestige of such effusions be now remaining. But whether, in the instance before us, Soloman in- tended, or not, to introduce the mystic allegory here assumed, it is incontrovertible that precifely such an allegory exists in the Mesnavi, or poem upon the loves of the same illustrious personages Leili and Mejnun, (m^sr « /^XaJ) by the elegant Ne- zami; who, as well as Hafiz, in the opinion of that chaste critic as well as profound scholar, sir William Jones, always appears to apply the name of Leili to the omnipresent spirit of God. This emblematic mysticism in the bards of Iran XXII PREFACE. is quite as conspicuous in thpse of India; and the Vedantis, or Hindu commentators, have been as eager as the Sufis themselves to attribute such a dou- ble meaning to their compositions. Of all the poems of the east, by far the nearest in subject, style, and imagery, to the Songs of Soloman, are the Gitagovinda, or Songs of Jayadeva. The sub- ject of the inimitable Jayadeva is the loves of Crishna and Radha, or the reciprocal attraction be- tween the divine goodness and the human soul. His style, like that of the Hebrew bard, is in the highest degree flowery and amatory, his poem consists of distinct songs or idyls, (&Jv>yu2J>) some of which are soliloquies, and others dialogues; but all of them, like the Song of Songs, confined to the same theme, and in some measure progressive in its history. They were originally set to music, and the different modes in which they .were sung are still pre- fixed to each of them by the poet himself. This in- valuable treasure however has long been lost ; nor could the unwearied exertions of sir William Jones succeed in obtaining either in Nepal or Cashmir a PREFACE. XXUl single copy with its appropriate melody. The Gita- govinda comprises a part of the tenth book of the Bhagavat, and is exquisitely translated by sir Wil- liam Jones, who has thrown all the different songs of which it consists into one entire piece, — a depar- ture from the original, however, which I cannot but lament. The similitude between Soloman and Ja- yadeva is so close and perpetual, that I shall have more frequent occasion to refer to the latter in my explanatory notes upon the former than to any other eastern bard whatever; and in every citation I shall give the version of our excellent and illustrious coun- tryman. If there be any foundation for the concep- tion of Dr. Hodgson, that the Songs of Soloman were in the possession of Anacreon, who drew seve- ral of his best pictures and images from this overflow- ing source of beauty * ; or in that of Dr. Lowth and. other scholars, that they were still better known to Theocritus f, who seems also, as the reader will * See note on idyl VII. (')- t Existimaverunt viri eruditi, Theocritum poetam suavissi- mum, Septuaginta illis interpretibus, aeijuuk'm, et in aula XXIV PREFACE. find in the appended notes, to have copied them nei- ther unfrequently nor unsuccessfully— there is yet far more foundation, as it appears to me, for a be- lief that they were familiar to the mind of Jayadeva, and afforded the first hint of his Gitagovinda. This exquisite poet flourished, it is said, antece- dently to Calidas, the Shakespear of India; and consequently at least as early as the beginning of the last century before the Christian aera*; and was born, as he tells us himself, in Cenduli, which many be* lieve to be Calinga : but since there is a town, ob- serves sir William Jones, of a similar name in Berdwan, the natives of it insist that the finest lyric poet of India was their countryman, and celebrate in honor of him an annual jubilee, passing a whole night in representing his drama, and in sing- ing his beautiful songs. Ptoleman Philadelphi una florentem, aliqua ex hoc carmine delibasse, et pene ad verbum expressa in sua Idyllia transtu- lisse. — De Sacra PocsL * Calidas was contemporary with the public-spirited Vi- crarnaditya, who reigned in the period here referred to, and PKETACE. .XXV We must not measure the taste or feelings of ori- ental writers by the standard of our own colder cli- mate or more modern times. The language of Solo- man, Jayadeva, or even Isaiah himself, to the more frigid critics of Europe, may frequently appear too warm and voluptuous for the purposes of the most ardent devotion ; but it never could convey any im- proper idea to the people to whom it was immediately addressed. A strain of nearly equal fervor, and em- bellished with figures nearly as luxurious, has occa- sionally, however, been indulged in this northern hemisphere; and the mathematical Barrow, the lo- gical Watts, and the ardent Mrs. Rowe, if they had been natives of Iran or India, instead of being na- tives of England, would have indulged in all the amatory, but pure and spiritual, enthusiasm of the Sufis or the Yosis. patronized, in conjunction with the celebrated author of Sa- contala, or the Fatal Ring, every poet, philosopher, or mathe- matician, who was posbest of real merit. Of the splendid gaiaxv which surrounded hrs court, Calidas is, however, uni- versally admitted to have been its more brilliant luminary. XXVI PREFACE. No translator I have yet met with has nevertheless rendered the Song of Songs with all the delicacy of diction to which the original is fairly entitled. The chief error of all of them results from their having uniformly given verbal renderings of Hebrew terms and idioms, which ought merely to have been trans- lated equivalently : a method by which any language in the world, when interpreted into another, may not only occasionally convey a meaning altogether different from what the author intended, but convert a term or phrase of perfect purity and delicacy in its original import, into one altogether indelicate and unchaste. This observation applies particularly to the organs of the human body ; most of which in* dependently of their literal sense, which is capable of univocal interpretation, have a metaphoric im- port that cannot be communicated by any literal ver- sion whatever. Thus among the Hebrews the liver ("HID) as we H as tne heart was supposed to be the seat of love and delight ; and in Psalm xvi. 9 — " My heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth," as it occurs in our common version, is literally " My heart is glad PREFACE. XXVll and my liver rcjoiceth." Yet who could behold such an interpretation wfthout a smile ? or, who, if he were to behold it, would admit that the original was fairly translated ? Among ourselves, in like manner, the spleen is supposed to be the region of disappointment and melancholy. But were a Jew to be told in his own tongue, that the inimitable Cow- per had long labored under the spleen, he would be ignorant of the meaning of his interpreter ; and, when at length informed of it, might justly tell him, that although he had literally rendered the words, he had by no means conveyed the idea ; and, conse- quently, that he had travestied rather than translated. Thus again the ancient Hebrews used the term navel (TUtf) m some such sense as we employ that of loins to describe the whole or the chief part of the waist : but, as, in our own language, they are never synonymous expressions, whenever the latter is in- tended by the former, instead of adopting the literal term navel, we should employ that of waist in its figurative meaning. What is the reader to under- stand by the following verse in its common accepta r XXVlll PREFACE. tion (Sol. Songs, yii. a) — " Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanleth not liquor?" None of our commentators, through inattention to this re- mark, have hitherto been able to explain it : and it has consequently fallen into the list of those phraseo- logies in this inimitable poem which a translator, to adopt the language of a modern interpreter — non espera nitescere posse. But exchanging the term na- vel for waist, to which the Hebrew substantive "nU7 equally applies as a synecdoche, and recalling to mind the exquisite elegance with which the ancients manufactured their vases, and the supreme blessing with which they regarded fertility, how obvious is the compliment of the royal bridegroom to his bride, as well as how delicate the language in which it is conveyed : Thy waist is a well-turned goblet Rejjlete with the ' luscious' fluid. But the Hebrew word TW or niTj though in its stricter acceptation it imply the navel, is a term of far more refinement than its English synonym, as designa- PREFACE. XXIX ting other ideas even independently of the waist) for it imports also a coil, a cord, a string, a musical string ; and hence a song or canticle, in which sense it is employed hy Soloman himself as the title of the very poem before us. There are lights and shades in all languages, as well as in all landscapes ; and the translator who has taste enough to seize and apply them will never suf- fer an indelicacy which does not exist in his original to enter into his copy. I have here enumerated but one example of ideas incorrectly transfused into our common versions : the reader will find many others pointed out in the progress of the appended notes. He will see that the term belly should in one or two instances have been rendered bosom ; that in others it is used synecdochally for the frame at large; and, consequently, that this latter term must convey a more precise translation of it, because it best pre- serves the delicacy of the original. The word thigh is by a similar figure occasionally employed for limb in general : and in every such case is better ex- changed for it, though in the Hebrew it is a term XXX PREFACE. sufficiently select. In like manner the Arabic (♦siy*.:^? which literally imports an arched club, and is metaphorically applied by the poets to the eyebrow of the fair from its supposed destructive power, is in reality more strictly rendered into English in its metaphoric sense, arched brow, than in its literal arched club. So also the term (^J \^ sugar- lipped, which, with ourselves, conveys a ludicrous idea, is more fairly rendered sweet- lipped, as a gene- ral phrase, or honey-lipped, as an equivalent meta- phor. The Song of Songs is therefore a portion of real history, conveying a spiritual allegory, and com- municated in diction highly delicate and refined. Be the original intention of this exquisite poem however what it may, the present attempt cannot, I am induced to hope, be objected to by any one. It is with an allegory as with an apologue : before it be applied, it is necessary that we understand the author's phraseology and metaphors, — in reality, the whole of his exoteric and literal meaning; and when this is once accomplished, the application PREFACE. XXXI will acquire a double force, and afford a double de- gree of instruction. There are many passages in the Song of Songs, independently of those already noticed, which have hitherto eluded the powers of the most sedulous commentators to illustrate, and many to which, perhaps, a wrong interpretation has been annexed. How far the present version may succeed in remedying these defects, in correcting error, and elucidating obscurity, must be left for the reader to determine. Such however is its object; and, to attain it, the author has not only studiously investigated the original himself, but has endea- voured to avail himself of the labors of prior critics and translators, so far as they seem to have been fortunate in their respective branches. Something he will be found to have drawn from the annotations of Patrick and Houbigant ; much from the Prelec- tions of Dr. Lowth : the laborious researches of Dr. Kennicott have assisted him largely ; and Mi- chaelis and Harmer have been occasionally consulted with success. In the prose version he has attended to the metrical arrangement of the original, such at XXXU PREFACE, least as it has appeared to himself after a careful perusal. In this, however, he does not pretend to follow the system of the very ingenious but fanciful bishop Hare, nor any other mode of metre which has hitherto been conjectured : for, even allowing a metrical arrangement on the first publication of the original, its division is at present rather a matter of taste than of precept. The German critics have differed from the English, and the English from one another. It becomes the author still further to state, that Mr. Green and Dr. Hodgson have been of very essential service to him; but that his greatest obli- gations are due to the anonymous writer of te The Song of Soloman, newly translated from the origi- nal Hebrew, with a Commentary and Annotations;' 1 published by Dodsley in 1764, which he has just learnt is the work of Dr. Percy, bishop of Dro- more. -Mrs. Francis's version is also an elegant performance, and many of her notes are beautifully illustrative; but, as being a dramatic paraphrase, it differs widely from the version now presented, / PREFACE. XXXU1 pertinacious adherence to the original Hebrew, and, as far as may be, to the language of the Bible trans- lation. Of the very elegant, though not very modern, Spanish version of Luis de Leon, who is reported to have suffered for his translation five years' imprison- ment in one of the dungeons of the Inquisition, I have not, after a wide research, been able to obtain a copy. While correcting the press, I have been favored by Mr. Tooke, of Great Ormond Street, with the elegant Latin version of Duport, which I find to be a transcript, with scarcely a single exception, from the standard English Bible, only that the translator has divided it into a variety of odes, of different mea- sures, of which the principal are Sapphic and Tambic. I have occasionally referred to it as I have proceeded. — I have also received a copy of Dr. Croxall's Fair Circassian, which, notwithstanding the general beauty of the versification, I shall dismiss without further notice, than that, if the author had critically consult- ed the original, he would have found that his plan departs with an equal degree of licentiousness from c XXXIV PKEFACfe. the history, the morality, and language of the en- tire poem. — To Mr. Henley I am obliged for a copy of the Italian version of Melesigenio, printed at Parma ; and have to regret that I did not receive it earlier. The arrangement of Melesigenio is differ- ent, as well from the present as from any prior at- tempt that has fallen into my hands. It is very nearly, however, the arrangement which would have been adopted by Dr. Geddes — as he has repeatedly ex- plained his plan to me — had he lived to have com- pleted this part of his intended labors. Melesige- nio conceives the entire book to consist, not of di- stinct idyls, but of distinct songs ; and these not confined to one and the same bride and bridegroom, but extending to different personages, and all of them ideal. He nevertheless believes the whole book to be allegoric ; in which, to adopt his own language, e one thing is said and another is intend- ed j' that it is designed to "represent the mystical union of Jesus Christ with his Church, or with every individual soul who composes a part of it; and especially, adds the devout bard, with that of PREFACE. XXXV the most holy Mary, inasmuch as she exceeds all others in excellence and purity *. Such is the doctrine of the modern Italian trans- lator, and such his plan. As to the former, I shall suffer him to enjoy it without any opposition on my part : with respect however to the latter, I shall take the liberty of observing, that as the different iterations and intercalary verses introduced clearly bespeak an unity of design in the construction of the whole book or fasciculus, so the similarity of form and mental qualities under which the bride and bridegroom are at all times represented evidently prove them to be one and the same pair. The ver- sification is nevertheless spirited and elegant, though in many instances far too paraphrastic for an in- terpretation that pretends to be literal*. The reader will find it occasionally referred to in the latter part of the notes. * Egli e tutto allegorico; ove una co«a d;ce Of the juice of my pomegranate. — 3 ' Already ' his left hand is under my head, And his right hand embraceth me. 4 I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem ! By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, That ye stir not, nor awake My beloved until he please. 53 Pomegranate wine in tides for thee should flow/ Each spice give fragrance, and each blossom blow. E'en now within his blest embrace I breathe, His right hand o'er me, and his left beneath. — Daughters of Salem born ! by all ye prize, The graceful hind, the roe with luscious eyes, 7 I charge you stir not — hushed be every breeze, Watch o'er my love, nor wake him till he please. 54 IDYL XI. VIRGINS, ROYAL BRIDE, KING SOLOMAN. virgins (perceiving them approaching). Ch. VIII. 5 Who is this that ascendeth from the wilderness Leaning on her beloved ? king soloman (entering with his Bride J. I excited thee ' to love ' under ' this ' citron-tree : Here thy mother led thee forth, Here she led thee forth who bare thee. ROYAL BRIDE. 6 O set me as a seal upon thy heart, As a seal upon thine arm ! For love is strong as death, ' And ' jealousy cruel as the grave : Its flames are arrows of fire, Which Jehovah kindleth ' in the heavens.' 55 IDYL XI. VIRGINS, ROYAL BRIDE, KING SOLOMAN. virgins (perceiving them approaching). Lo ! who is this, from where the desert l trends, Who hither, leaning on her love, ascends ? king solo man (entering with his Bride J. On this green couch, within this citron-grove, 'Twas here I first excited thee to love. 2 Here first thy mother led thee to my arms, 3 Here she who bore thee first displayed thy charms. ROYAL BRIDE. Oh ! as a signet print it on thy heart ! * Let never thence the fond memorial part ! For love is strong as death ; and, should it rave, Keen jealousy is cruel as the grave : Its flames are arrows, 5 piercing through the soul, Fierce as the flash when God's own thunders roll. 6 66 KING SOLOMAN. 7 ' Yet ' many waters cannot quench love, The floods cannot drown it. Should a man for love offer the wealth of his house, He would be utterly despised. 51 KING SOLOMAN. O let my fair th' unkind suspicion spurn : Love, once sincere, the breast will ever burn : — O'er rival passions, deepest instincts reign — Unquenched by waters, drowned not by the main. 7 'Tis sold, 'tis bought not — 'tis all price above : Fools, only fools, would strive to purchase love. 58 IDYL XII. ROYAL BRIDE, KING SOLOMAN. ROYAL BRIDE. Ch. VIII. 8 We have a sister e who is ' little, And hath no bosom. How shall we provide for our sister In the day when she shall be demanded ' in marriage ? v KING SOLOMAN. 9 Call her a wall — 'and' two towers of silver Will we build upon her ; Call her a door — ' and ' we will inclose her With wainscot of cedar. ROYAL BRIDE, 10 I myself am a wall, And my bosom resembles two towers, Therefore prevailed I in his eyes. — 11 Soloman hath a vineyard in Baal-hamon> He hath let out the vineyard to tenants ; 59 idyl xn. ROYAL BRIDE, KING SOLOMAN. ROYAL BRIDE. For thee I left a tender sister's arms, Whose bosom boasts no captivating charms : l No dower is her's, her graces to display — How may we aid her on her bridal day ? KING SOLOMAN. Call her a wall ; and o'er this wall shall tower 2 Two silver turrets of resistless poAver. Call her a door ; and cedars shall encase, 3 And lead, through fragrance, to the royal grace. ROYAL BRIDE. I am a wall, and o'er my bosom rise The two fair towers that vanquished first thine eyes. 4 - Wide o'er the range of Baal-hamon's plains 5 A fertile vineyard to the king pertains : 60 Each is to yield him, for the fruit of it, A thousand pieces of silver. 12 'This/ hitherto my vineyard, Is now thine, O Soloman ! A thousand pieces ' from each' it brought me, And two hundred ' was the salary' To the superintendants of its produce. king soloman (interrupting her) . 13 O thou beauty of the palm-tree gardens ! The damsels are attentive to thy voice, Let me ' too ' hear it. [Going. ROYAL BRIDE. 14 Make haste, O my beloved ! And resemble a roe, or a young hart, Upon the mountains of spices. 61 Its thrifty tenants every year present A thousand silver pieces each for rent. This, once my portion, now, O king ! is thine, A thousand silver pieces then were mine — From each a thousand j while the total soil Two hundred paid my stewards for their toil. king soloman (interrupting her). Pride of the palm-tree shades ! 6 thy gentle voice The virgins hear attentive, and rejoice : Let me, too, hear thee ; and, whate'er thy will, Speak it, O speak ! — with rapture I'll fulfil. [Going, ROYAL BRIDE. Haste, haste, my love ! with fond impatience dart j Haste.o'er the mountains, like the bounding hart. 7 END OF THE IDYLS. NOTES. NOTES. NOTES ON IDYL I. ( ! ) For more than nectar ] 1 HE metaphor is common to all oriental poets. Thus the inimitable Jaya- deva, in his Gitagovinda, (concerning which see the preface, p. xix.) " O suffer me to quaff the liquid bliss of those lips ! Restore thy slave with their water of life." Thus again: " Thou who sippest nectar from the radiant lips of Pedma, as the flattering Chacora drinks the moon-beams!" — So the accomplished Khakani, a celebrated poet of the eleventh century : Khakani, thy slave is intoxicated with the avine of thy beauty! The Greeks and Romans have been as little neglectful of the beauty of this figure. One of the closest parallelisms I have met with is in the following epigram, quoted by Longpierre from the Anthologia : Kafir, t»? p eipi^ijcE noQeampx ^eiXecnv vypoi?, NsKTap sriv to (pO^-n^x' to yap aiotxx t/iKTCtpoi; tirm. Nt>» ptQvu to

T0o» A&un, to £ av irvyMTM \m ^Xaaoi' TWcstov fAt (pfoctffov o&o» tun to tpfouuet' Aj^»5 am* \vyy& £ ? E /* ' OT0(A.a x»; t^on ^wap ni/SU^l* T£0» g£t/<7»}, TO 9b ffiV y\VKV ^iXTpon upthZv} Ex o*s wis; to» t puree. Stay, O Adonis ! loved Adonis, stay ! One last farewell, dear shadow! let me pay; Yet, yet embrace thee — lip to lip conjoin, Take thy last kisses, and return thee mine ; Kiss till the kiss shall live ; till from thy heart Thy fliient spirit through my limbs shall dart : Till once more on thy love, delicious draught! I banquet deep, and all its sweets be quaffed. The exquisite song of Ben Jonson upon this subject is known to every one. Its first verse is in perfect unison with the idea of the Hebrew bard : Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine ; And leave a kiss within the cup, And I'll not ask for wine. In the Lieder of the German bard Jacobi the idea is somewhat varied, and the kiss is compared to a dart instead of a draught : M'achtiger als Amor's bogen 1st ein kuss der zartlichkeit. The kiss of rapture strikes the heart Deeper than Love's most poignant dart. For the phrase ' fragrance of thine own sweet perfumes,' see idyl VI. ( 7 ). (i) ■ ■■ ■ and, with triumphant voice, "^ We will cele- More than o'er ivine, J irate thy love more than wine.' In the common version, ' We will remem- ber.* It is well observed by Dr. Hodgson, that H")'-f3 being NOTES. 67 in the conjugation Hiphil, does not mean ( to remember,' but * to cause to be remembered.' We will cause it to be remem- bered ; that is, we will praise or celebrate it. Thus in Isaiah, £xvi. 13. ")Ott "pU>, ' We will celebrate thy name.' (, 3 ) matchless excellence! and void of spot!] ' Thou art every way lovely.' In the Bible version, ' The upright love thee:' and in a manuscript notice of my friend Dr. Geddes, ' The virtuous do love thee.' — The original words DHUJ'O "T13riN contain a difficulty which none of the commentators seem able to surmount. The Bible version, however, can scarcely be admitted ; it is both very remote from the ori- ginal, and seems to be quitting the literal sense for the alle- goric. The interpretation of Sanchius (in Pol. Synops.), if it were but better supported, appears most consistent with the context. He paraphrases the words Omnes atnores insunt tibi, 'All loveliness dwells within thee :' and indeed the bride's speech, which follows, seems most naturally to suppose some such previous compliment. Without this, her vindication of her person follows very abruptly and awkwardly ; but, this admitted, her reply is both natural and apposite. " You compliment me on my beauty," says she, " which I can consider as nothing but irony and sarcasm — as an expression intended to satirize my want of it : but do not despise me on account of the darkness of my complexion ; for, though brown as the tents of the wild Arabs, I am finely formed a* the graceful foldings of the pavilions of Soloman : and even this darkness of my skin was not a natural blemish, but the effect of some severe usage I received in my younger years." " After all, it must be confessed that the Hebrew words, as they stand at present in the common text, can hardly be brought to yield the sense here given them. For even if we suppose the word "|OnN (love thee) to have crept into the text, instead of "pOU?' (abide in thee), we shall hardly find F 2 63 N" O T E S. another instance of ED>-|tf>»Q used in the sense of ' beauti- ful ' or ' personal ' charms." — Anonymous Translation of Soloman's Song, printed for Dodsley, 1764. The more accurate version is, perhaps, 'they justly love thee ;' which is of equal import with ' thou art justly or de- servedly beloved:' and such is the illustration of Mr. Green ; not essentially varying from the translation adopted in the present text. (4) -> my face is brotvn:~] The common version for ' brown ' reads ' black;' which is using the ori- ginal term rnirni? in a very hyperbolic sense indeed; its more general interpretation being ' brown,' ' discoloured/ shadowy,' like the twilight ; synonymously with the Persian (L-X.-I jlJ) tarik. And, from many passages which fol- low, it is obvious that even the term brown could only be applied to herself by the beautiful bride from an excess of diffidence and modesty; for in the ensuing idyls she is re- peatedly denominated fair, and even fairest of the fair; and the whiteness of her complexion is compared to the moon, to ivory, and to lilies. The whole can only mean, therefore, that, in her own opinion, she was not quite so fair as in an earlier period of her life, before her brothers had ungene- rously made her a kind of attendant upon themselves. Tasso has given precisely the same description of his mis- tress Leonora, in a well-known sonnet addressed to herself t Bruna sei tu, ma bella Qual virgine viola. Though brown thy visage, comely yet As the virgin violet. (5) Comely as tapestry -] With Dr. Hodgson I translate njJHl ' tapestry,' instead of * curtains.' It is per- fectly synonymous with the (o<3— >) perdbe of the Persians, NOTES. 69 or the aulwum of the Latins, which last, in his oration pro Ccel. Cicero has employed to signify the former of these terms. I cannot with this elegant critic, however, convert vHtf into, 'trees' in the present instance, and read therefore, with the common version, ' tents of Kedar,' instead of ' spice-trees of Kedar.' The wild Arabs are denominated in the Scriptures Kedareens: their tents, which by the Bedouins are called dow-arrah, are to this day constructed of coarse brown hair- cloth, obtained from their dark-coloured and shaggy goats. The darkness of their colour is thus described by Niebuhr, I. 187: "Leurs pavilions sont d'une toile epaisse, noire, ou rayee de noir et de blanc." ( 6 ) Yet scorn me not ] ' Yet look not dis- dainfully upon me.' — The original is more faithfully inter- preted thus, than according to the common version : ' Look not upon me.' \\Vf\ respexit, ne respiciatis, ' regard it not.' ( 7 ) My mother s children ] It is well conjec- tured by Houbigant, that by the phrase »DN 'JO, Filii matris me£? Boononcu x.xi' opix;, xa» o T»Tffo? avroti; iXacvm. ThTvp' tfjuvro xatovwEipiXa^M, /3oaxE ran; a»y«j> Kai won tccv Kfxva* ocye, Tm>pe.— — I fly to Amaryllis, and a guide For you, my kids, in Tityrus provide. Here o'er this hill, dear shepherd ! let them feed ; Then, Tityrus ! to yonder fountain lead. So Gessner, the Theocritus of Germany, in one of his idyls : " Komm mit mir! — du Alexis magst ir.dess die schafe und die ziegen hiiten." " Come with me, Micon! — and do thou, Alexis, guard meanwhile our sheep and goats." The first idyl is in the true style of pastoral poetry, and is admirably adapted to the costume of the people among whom it was written. Among all oriental nations— except- ing, from political motives, among the native Egyptians — the occupation of the shepherd was held in the highest ho- nour; but particularly among the Hebrews, whose patriarchs were for the most part of this class. The first conquerors of Egypt, who (according to a very ingenious conjecture of Mr.AUwood) were direct descendents of Chus, the grandson of Noah, were denominated, during the entire course of their superiority in this country, Yxaos (Hycsos) — which Ma- netho interprets ' royal ' or ' illustrious shepherds ' — from the partiality they evinced, through the whole duration of their dynasty, to this innocent and pleasant mode of life. '72 NOTES. And when, shortly after their extirpation, in consequence of an insurrection of the natives, the family of Jacob were driven into this quarter for food, they were allotted by Jo- seph the very district of Goshen (Cush-ain), to which the royal shepherds had retreated as their last post in the coun- try — a district peculiarly appropriated to pasturage ; and where they had entered into a convention with the insur- gents, who guarantied them a safe passage through Egypt, upon their engagement to exile themselves without farther molestation. The Hebrew kings, and even Jehovah him- self, were perpetually exhibited in the character of shepherds of Israel ; while the Jewish church was represented almost as frequently in the character of a shepherdess. Thus Jerem. vi. 2. I have compared the daughter of Zion to a damsel comely and delicate : The shepherds with their flocks, fhall come unto her; They shall pitch their tents around her, Their flocks shall every one feed in his place. The twenty-thirdPsalm abounds in a similar train of imagery, and affords one of the most beautiful instances of pastoral poetry that has ever been compiled in any language. The exalted characters of a royal shepherd and shepherdess are appropriated to Soloman and his beloved bride in the present idyl ; and together with the characters the sacred bard has, with the utmost degree of poetical precision, connected the manners and occupation of pastoral life. Something of the same figurative and popular representation occurs through- out the greater part of the whole diwan or fasciculus of idyls, of which the entire song consists; but the allegory is no where more purely preserved than in the instance before us. NOTES. "13 NOTES ON IDYL II. (') But the famed steed in Pharaoh' 's splendid car.~] The finest and most elegant of the daughters of Jerusalem is in this verse paralleled with the finest and most elegant of ani- mals, and one of pre-eminent beauty in its own class. The similar comparison with which Theocritus has complimented Helen is remarked by all the commentators : idyl IH. 29. 'At' As o'er the lawn a cypress or a steed, In graceful trappings, of Thessalian breed — So, chief of beauties, Lacedasmon's pride, The rosy-fingered Helen all outvied. It appears, from 2 Chron. i. 16, that Soloman frequently applied to Egypt for horses. The ensuing verse also notices a chariot which was purchased in the same country at the enormous price of six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse which cost not less than one hundred and fifty. It may be that this is the chariot and horse referred to in the passage before us ; but it is more probable, I think — as the name of Pharaoh is used in conjunction with them — that it was a chariot and horse, or horses, which had been received as a present by Soloman from the Egyptian monarch, with whom he was on terms of the closest political alliance, and with whose house he at one period connected himself more in- timately still by a matrimonial union with his daughter. If this be true, the present comparison will perhaps have an ad-vantage over that of Theocritus, as extending to the 94 NOTES. sumptuous trappings of the beautiful steed, and the grace- ful and brilliant ornaments of the royal bride. And that this was an idea very prominent in the poet's mind, may be easily collected from the eulogy with which the monarch immediately bursts forth on the magnifijcence of the bridal attire : How rich thy brows with radiant jewels bound! &c. I can by no means agree with the greater number of our com- mentators, therefore, who confine the comparison, or who even suppose it applies, to the excellent management or training to which the steed had been reduced, as an apt em- blem of the ready subjection of the bride. Such an idea has surely nothing bridal in it ; it is uncharacteristic, if not in- decorous, upon an occasion like the present. In the Bible version we find the reading ' To a company of horses.' In a manuscript note of Dr. Geddes, ' To one of my horses in the chariots of Pharaoh.' ( 2 ) thy neck that strings of pearls surround t] In the standard Bible, ' thy neck with chains of gold.' It does not appear, observes Br. Hodgson very justly, by any expression in the Hebrew, that they were ' chains of gold.' Were it necessary to take any liberty, they should rather be called * chains of pearls ' — pearls drilled and strung on thread ; for Hi"!, in Rabbinical writings, signifies, according to Buxtorf, * to string.' The Persian ladies, says Olearius, wear two or three rows of pearls round the head, beginning on the fore- head and descending down the cheeks and under the chin, so that their faces seem to be set in pearls. This coiffure he judged to have been very ancient among the orientals, and imagines it to be the same as is described in the text before us. — " The sultana Hafiten," says lady M. W. Montague, ft wore round her talpoche, or head-dress, four strings of NOTES. fj pearls, the finest and whitest in the world." Vol.ii. Ixxxix. —See Mr. Harmer's Outlines, and Mr. Parkhurst, Art. ")D. ( 3 ) And at his banquet ■ ] "QD03 in circuito suo; 'in the midst of his guests,' arrayed, according to cus- tom, in the figure of a circle. The phrase I if / vwaS^ (mejlis araj, ' gracing the banquet,' is in common use among the Persian poets, to delineate an elegant woman. ( 4 ) A casque of myrrh — ] "TlCn "VOtf is, ac- cording to Castalio, ' a wreath or nosegay of flowery myrrh.' Mr. Parkhurst has a better conjecture. It seems to be, says he, what Dioscorides, lib. i. 74, calls <7t«xt»j (stacte), and which he informs us makes a perfume of itself. It is very fragrant and dear, and is said to be at present unknown. The eastern ladies were accustomed to inclose this, as well as many other perfumes, in a casket of gold or ivory of the figure of a turret or small tower — as the Hebrew term ex- pressly signifies, j\y »bi'n — and to place such ornaments in their bosoms, suspended by an elegant chain from their necks. The Persians employ a little casket for the same purpose, which they denominate <&S U nafeh. (*) That grace the cypress in En-gedi's bowers — 1 In the common version, ' a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.' The "1SD, or cypress-plant, here referred to, is doubtful. It is not, assuredly, the cypress of our own gar- dens, but perhaps the aromatic plant which (according to sir Thomas Brown) is indigenous in Palestine, and produces ' a sweet and odorate bush of flowers, out of which was made the famous oleum cyprinum.' The correspondent term in the Septuagint is KvTtpa ; in the Vulgate Cypri. It is from these flowers the oriental hinna is obtained — a beautiful golden dye, with which the natives tinge their hair and the -76 NOTES. extremities of their fingers, and whence the Persian ladies frequently derive a name for themselves. Thus in a gazel of Gunna Beigum, quoted by sir W. Jones, 1.226*. Hai men t'arah' jigar khuni tera muddatse Ai hinna ciscl tujhe khwahishi pabusi hai. Like me, O Hinna! thy heart has long been full of blood: — Whose foot art thou desirous of kissing ? Mr. Harmer has given a particular account of this plant in his very valuable Outlines, extracted from the Travels of Rauwolff, a writer who flourished in the reign of Elizabeth. Hasselquist, Russel, and Shaw, have all made mention of the same plant, and attributed to it the same qualities. En-gedi, according to Mr. Maundrell, was situate about three miles east of Bethlehem. It was more|pelebrated for its aromatic shrubs than for its vines. But I have already ob- served, in note on idyl I.( 8 ), that the term CZTD ' vineyard' was applied to nurseries and estates of every description. ( 6 ) Doves' are thine eyes, ■ •• ] " To conceive the force of this expression we must not refer it to our com- mon pigeons, but to the large and beautiful eyes of the doves of Syria. They who have seen that fine eastern bird the car- rier-pigeon will need no commentary on this place." New Translation of Soloman's Song. — See Brown's Observations. (7) This flowery couch! — these flr, these cedar-beams ! > This leafy roof, — — — J For this elegant and equally accurate interpretation I am totally indebted to Dr. Hodgson, prior to whose version the whole passage, at least the whole of the irth verse of the common translation, was referred to the interior of the pa- lace. n33jn, in our Bibles translated * green,' is more pro- perly ' flowery,' and is generally so rendered by the best NOTES. 77 critics. The ' green ' or ' flowery bed,' as the passage is ordinarily interpreted, has little or no connexion with the remainder of the description : ' The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.' But by the interpretation here adopted the entire passage is rendered at once uniform and admirably picturesque. The lovers are not in a house, but a grove, where the spreading branches of the firs and the cedars are poetically called the beams and the roof of their chamber. Thus Milton, describing Adam's bower, Par. Lost, iv. 692. the roof, Of thickest covert, was inwoven shade, Laurel and myrtle ; and what higher grew Of firm and fragrant leaf. The following description of Homer is not widely dif- ferent from either, though it is to be understood literally : II. n. 191, to his fragrant chamber he repaired Himself, with cedar lined, and lofty-roofed. ( 8 ) A mere ivild rose, ] In the common version ' the,' or rather ' a rose of Sharon.' — Sharon was a canton of Palestine, not peculiarly remarkable for the beauty of its roses: and it is obvious from the context, that, so far from claiming any merit to herself by this figurative expres- sion, the fair bride means to delineate her person with ex- treme modesty and diffidence. We may learn from this, as well as from a variety of other passages, that she was not the daughter of Pharaoh king of Egypt, as contended for by many commentators ; — she was not of Egyptian origin* ra NOTES. or royal descent, but a rose of the fields of Sharon— a native of Palestine. In the Septuagint, the word * of Sharon ' is omitted, or rather exchanged for hassadeh, * of the field ;' and the Basil Latin version, and, if I recollect aright, the Spanish Bible of Cassiodoro Reyna, follow the same read- ing — rosacampi. This, as an explanation, is just; but it is obvious that the comment has usurped the place of the text.' (9) __» — mid the fair \ Thus Mos- So looks my love, so thines beyond compare. «* chus, id; B. 71. 0»a wtp a» XapiTKTcr* ^mrparti AQoypmiot. So Venus mid the Graces, peerless still. Or, as the same idea is given more diffusely by Theocritus, idyl, xviii- 20. Ol<* Ay«iMSwi yeHati) icxtu mi\x\ etXKa. — Xf»ff«fx£»a«{ etnfoum nap Evparoto tarrpoi;, TfTfiaxi; t|»jK0*Ta xapa», 9*)X»f « 0Cjj).V!7Ti'—— 'two Kxvj/.xTOi yocp Y1$Y) rifoTrooEt; annarivK^W Aote &' CCIiQtUV IV.WWV 2TEpflt*as V CIVq Trvxctfyu Tee. fxnumrx /xa rav fjL^ynpvv ottos. Fresh from the rock the playful fountains beat 'Mid myrtles, laurels, and the cypress sweet, Or where the vine's luxuriant tendrils run, And the young clusters ripen to the sun. Woke by the spring, the blackbird's luscious throat Pours all the various volume of his note ; To nightingale the nightingale replies, And all his love in honeyed accents sighs. There is so much of the imagery of the sacred bard — of melodious birds, and sportive harts and hinds — in the fol- lowing of Chaucer, that the reader will not be displeased with its insertion : On every bough the birdis herd I syng With voice of angell, in ther harmonie That busied 'hem, ther birdis forthe to bryng, And little prettie conies to ther plaie gan hie ; And furthir all about I gan espie 90 NOTES. The dredful roe, the buck, the hart and hind, Squirils and bestis small of gentle kind. ( 4 ) The glossy turtle wakes his voice to love f] So the tender Sadi, in his (•\L/Ln*a_> (Gulistan), or ' Bower of Roses' — a poem which should be translated into every European language, but which has hitherto, I believe, only appeared in German, by Olearius, 1654; and in French, by an anony- mous orientalist who dates his version 173?. I hear the love-sick turtle's gentle strain — Ah! heardst thou mine, together we'd complain. So also Ferdusi, uniting the two images together : From cypress-boughs, in mingling strain, The nightingale and dove complain. (s) Her Jigs the Jig-tree sweetens, ] " The fig- trees in Judsea bear double crops; the former of which is ripe in spring, and is denominated buccore, as the latter is kermouse. HOD signifies the 'unripe fig' (crudum,immaturumj: j^jpf is properly ' condivit aromatibus.' By a metaphor it is ap- plied to fruits, and signifies ' maturat, sen dulcorat, dukes reddity Pearce, Calasio, Lud. Capel. Anonymous Trans- lation ; which last I have just learnt is the work of Dr. Percy, the present bishop of Dromore. — Dr. Lowth retains the original meaning: Ficus dulci succo condivit fructus suos. NOTES. 91 ( 6 ) Fragrant and fresh, the lucid clusters shine, — ] With the ingenious Dr. Percy, I have here followed Le Clerc : M Aut "VIQD sunt minutae uvae, quae turn in medio flore cernun- tur, aut ea voce, cujus origo est ignota, significantur praecoces vites quae primum omnium fiorent." In many versions, however, both ancient and modern, instead of the ' tender grape ' or ' cluster,' the passage is rendered * the vines in blossom.' So the Greek, Vulgate, Arabic, and Syriac. So the Spanish version of the Jews: Las vides dencierne dieron olor. So also Dr. Lowth : Et vineae florescentes odorem diffundunt. ( 7 ) .'from thy clefts, thy fastnesses appear; \ Soloman hav- Here bend thy twice, my dove! J ing personi- fied his beloved under the character of a. dove, here boldly ascribes to her the manners of this timid bird; and, secluded as she was from him, requests her to quit the shelter which the clefts of the rocks, and the caves or hollows of the pre- cipices, to which he compares her palace of stone or marble, had afforded her. The common version, ' secret places of the stairs,' is erroneous; although magnificent edifices of stairs were occasionally erected in honour of the great or the renowned in eastern countries — a species of monument elevated, by the daughter of Ferdusi to the memory of her father, on the banks of the river at Tus. -WT means, how- ever, a fastness or precipice. The mistake has obviously originated from a wish in the translators to give a literal in- terpretation to this highly figurative phraseology. Stairs may well enough apply to the royal fair-one as a bride, but not as a dove. This personification of animals, and the ap- propriation of their characters and manners to mankind, is extremely common among the Hebrew poets. Consenta- 92 NOTES. neous with the present description is the following, in the celebrated prophecy of Balaam concerning the Kenites: Numbers xxiv. 21. Strong is thy dwelling-place; Thou buildest thy nest upon a rock. And again: Habakkuk ii. 9. Woe to him who panteth with an evil covetousness for his house, That he may build his nest on high ; That he may be secure from the assault of evil. Homer adopts a simile drawn from the same source in his description of the wounded Diana, which will pertinently illustrate the passage : II. . 493. Xrjaccjxo)/' bS' «f« tyi yt ahUjAivai a\a\\JAt Y,iv. As, when the falcon wings her way above, To the cleft cavern speeds th' affrighted dove, Straight to her shelter thus the goddess flew. For the peculiar situation and construction of the garden here referred to, see note on idyl VI. ( 8 ). ( 8 ) Root out the foxes : -] Foxes abounded in Judsea and Italy, and are noticed, both by sacred and pro- fane writers, as fond of grapes, and making great havoc in the vineyards. Thus Lament, v. 17, 18. For this our heart is faint: Because of these things our eyes are dim: Because of Mount Zion, which is desolate. — The foxes run over it. NOTES. 23 In like manner Theocritus, idyl E. 112. Mip££T£ @uno?\iy.%:, Kiuvxi Jj-> O^l^J J<3 .'; v. " ,8 NOTES. Who art thou ? — say :— with cypress shape, Soft, jasmine neck, but flinty heart: Tyrant! from whom 'tis vain to escape — O tell me who thou art ? I've seen thy bright narcissus-eye, Thy form no cypress can impart : Queen of my soul ! — I've heard thee sigh— O tell me who thou art ? Through vales with hyacinths bespread I've sought thee, trembling as the hart : O rose-bud-lip'd ! thy sweets were fled — Tell, tell me who thou art ? Wine lights thy cheeks ; thy steps are snares 5 Thy glance a sure destructive dart : Say, as its despot-aim it bears, W hat fatal bow thou art ? Thy new-moon brow the full moon robs, And bids its fading beams depart : — Tell, thou, for whom each bosom throbs. What torturer thou art? Drunk with the wine thy charms display, Thy slave Khakani hails his smart : I'd die to know thy name ! — then say What deity thou art ? (5) "Daughters of Salem born! — by all ye prize,'] In the disser- tation I have just referred to on the resemblances of Grecian and oriental poetry, I have divided the graceful figure of ite- ration, which we meet with equally in each, into the three classes of — verbal or literal iteration, or alliteration, as it is NOTES. 99 commonly called; lineal iteration, upon which I have now commented; and periodic iteration, or the repetition of a longer sentence than a single verse, and of which we meet with an instance in the present and three ensuing lines; which con- stitute together a kind of general chorus, or hurden for the whole diwan or fasciculus of idyls, of which the ' Song of Songs' consists; and which also, contrary to the opinion of signior Melesigenio, evidently proves its unity and mutual dependance. The burden, or periodic iteration before us, is repeated from the termination of idyl II, and once more recurs at the close of idyl X. Among the sacred poets the periodic iteration appears to have been in greatest favour with the psalmist, who is perpetually resorting to it ; and among those of Rome it has been principally employed, in conjunction with the two former varieties of the same figure, by Lucretius. The exquisite opening of his fourth book — Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante, &c. — throughout the whole course of the first twenty-five lines, is a mere repetition of the same number of lines commencing at b. i. v. 9<25. And there are many other passages, some of them even of greater length, in the same manner iterated in different parts of his unrivalled poem : several of them, indeed, not less than three or four times. While correcting the proof sheet of this note, the beautiful Italian version of xVIelesigenio is put into my hands; and I find the intercalary verse here referred to introduced and preserved with much spirit. The passage opens as follows : L'ho cercato nel mio letto Di gran notte il mio diletto; L'ho cercato, Ma trovato — non ve l'ho. H ? 100 NOTES. I also find that Dr. Hodgson's elegant interpretation of idyl II. 16, respecting the ' beams of cedar ' and ' rafters of fir,' is here adopted with a singular parallelism of thought : II molle erboso Suol d'un pratello E nostro letto ; Son nostro tetto Fronzuti e lied Cedri ed abeti, Che vago ostello Sembran formar. Longpierre has quoted an ancient and anonymous epigram so perfectly correspondent with the idyl before us, excepting that the research of the devious lover is not crowned with the same success, that I cannot avoid citing it, nor conceiving that the idea was suggested by this beautiful passage in the ' Song of Songs.' Lecto compositus, vix prima silentia noctis Carpebam, et somno lumina victa dabam : Cum me saevus Amor prensum, sursumque capillis Excitat, et lacerum pervigilare jubet. " Tu famulus meus (inquit) ames cum mille puellas, Solus, Io, solus, dure jacere potes ?" Exilio; et pedibus nudis, tunicaque soluta, Omne iter impedio, nullum iter expedio. Nunc propero, nunc ire piget; rursumque redire Poenitet; et pudor est stare via media. Ecce tacent voces hominum, strepitusque ferarum, Et volucrum cantus, turbaque fida canum. Solus ego, ex cunctis paveo somnumque, torumque, Et sequor imperium, sasve Cupido, tuum. NOTES. 101 In bed reclined, the first repose of night > Scarce had I snatched, and closed my conquered eyes, When Love surprised me, and, with cruel might, Seized by the hair, and forced me straight to rise. " What! shall the man whom countless damsels fire, Thus void (said he) of pity, sleep alone?" — 1 rise bare-footed, and, in loose attire, Block up each avenue, but traverse none. Now rush I headlong — homeward now retreat — ■ Again rush headlong, and each effort try ; Ashamed at heart to loiter in the street, Yet in my heart still wanting power to fly. Lo ! man is hushed — the beasts forbear to roar, The birds to sing, the faithful dog to bark — I, I alone the loss of bed deplore, Tyrannic Love pursuing through the dark. The second idyl of Moschus is constructed upon precisely the same plan. It thus opens most beautifully: Evp'jortY/ TtoTs Kvifpi; £rfl yXvy.vv 'tjKEV OVSlpOV 'NukTos ore rptrarov Xay^o; l12 {who). But such ingenuity is unneces- sary: for ip signifies 'what' as well as 'who;' and is thus elegantly rendered by Mr. Green himself in another passage. Deut. xxxiii. 29, Happy art thou, O Israel ! — what nation is like to thee, O people saved by Jehovah, Who is a shield for thy protection, And a sword for thy advancement ! ^S who, in Persian, is occasionally used in the same mam ner for / «_£*» ' what.' ( a ) in clouds of fragrant giant. ~\ Thus Homer, in his description of Jupiter on Mount Gargarus, 11. xv. 153. Aupi os fji.iv Svoev vsfto$ ssYspavwro. — Veiled in a fragrant cloud. (3) That from the wilderness ] " From the course ©r direction of the wilderness." See note on idyl XL I. NOTES. 103 (4) Behold the couch ] In our common version 'Behold his bed:' supposed by Dr. Percy to be the nuptial bed, intended as a present to his beloved bride. Mr. Green, following a suggestion of the same translator, renders it * Behold his pavilion — the bridal pavilion of Soloman.' It is not easy to conceive the meaning of such a version. The intention of the poet, however, is plain and obvious; and Mr. Harmer evinces his usual accuracy in interpreting this Hftft or p"H3N (which latter is the word here used, and is to be found no where else in the Bible) by the eastern term • a palanquin.' Melesigenio translates it in the same manner — II palanchin reale. The mode of travelling, or taking the air in a couch, litter, or vehicle of this name, supported upon the shoulders of slaves or servants, is extremely com- mon all over the east at the present day, and is unquestion- ably of immemorial date. These palanquins are often of most elegant and superb manufacture, as well as most volup- tuously soft and easy. Of this description was the couch or palanquin before us. There can be no doubt that it was a vehicle built in celebration of the royal nuptials ; and of its magnificence we may form some idea from the present descrip- tion. Escorted bv a chosen band of warriors, and veiled in this rich and fragrant vehicle, in all the style of oriental splen- dor, the enamoured monarch pays a visit to the beloved of his bosom. The oriental poets still allude to this aerial excur- sion* as they denominate it, in many of their effusions. Thus in the Pend-nameh of Atthar, in which the bird referred to is. the nightingale : 0>«Jo a v xaj lXj-I^O djN> &f -zs:^ 104 NOTES. When, like Soloman, the rose In her car aerial floats, The bird his song will soon compose That vies with David's dulcet notes. (5) Each, o'er his thigh, with tempered sword begirt. ] • They are all bearers of swords, being expert in war.' In the com- mon version * They all hold swords.' This is obviously inac- curate : for in the next member of the verse we are expressly told, that their swords were undrawn, and girt upon their thighs* " I am inclined to think," says Dr. Hodgson, " that l~in "'in^ D7D does not mean ' they all hold swords ;' but holders, possessors of swords ; that is, warriors. Thus J^2 i"TiH, though literally • feeding sheep,' means a ' feeder of sheep.' " Gen. iv. 2. («) And oer the down , ] 23~1B, the downy seat or couch of the palanquin. (?) ■ a broidered vest is thrown ~i I have given Worked by the fair / the version of Houbigant, who is followed by several of the translators. The passage is however doubtful ; though the common rendering is certainly erroneous: it may, nevertheless, be easily correct- ed into ' the middle thereof is wrought, as a proof of their love, by the daughters of Jerusalem.' Among the Asiatics at an early period of the world, and par- ticularly among the Hebrew ladies, the arts of tapestry and embroidery were carried to a very high degree of perfection ; concerning which the reader may consult a succession of en- tertaining memoirs by M. Ameilhon, inserted in the first and second volumes of the Memoirs of the National Institute of NOTES. 105 France; Lit. et Beaux Arts; and entitled Recherches sur les Couleurs des Anciens, et sur les Arts qui y ont rapport. Mrs. Francis has an illustration of this more common ren- dering so elegant and ingenious, that the reader cannot hut be pleased with it. " A Turkish couch," says she, " according to lady M. W. Montague, is made of wooden lattices, painted and gilded : — Soloman's carriage of the wood of Lebanon, its pillars of stiver. The inside of the Turkish couch was painted with baskets of flowers and nosegays, intermixed with little ynottoes, according to the fancy of the artist: the midst of Solo- man's was paved with love by the skilful daughters of Jeru- salem: f. e. with a rich beautiful sort of tapestry, curiously wrought with the needle, where flowers of different kinds, and various colours, mixed with, and surrounded, short sentences expressing the power of love, and the warmth and animation of that passion which a young bridegroom entertains for a fair, beautiful, and virtuous bride. Here was an ample field for the daughters of Jerusalem to display their genius, and their skill in needle-work. See Judges v. 20. Prov. xxxi. 22 — 24. The covering of this vehicle was of purple ; that of the Turkish couch of scarlet cloth, lined with silk, richly embroidered and fringed." I can by no means accede to the opinion or the version of signior Melesigenio, who conceives the whole of this descrip- tion to be a kind of pastoral ode of Soloman, not referring either to himself or his own bride, but to some imaginary shepherdess on the point of her nuptials, whom he represents as being placed in this bridal car herself; and whom her lover, in consequence of her extreme beauty and the ornaments with which she is decorated on the occasion, with an amo- rous image of eastern taste — tin amorosa iimnagine di gusto 106 NOTES. orientale — compares to the bride of Soloman conducted to her nuptial bed with actual and royal pomp : Porpora il mez/a ammanta, ove la bella S'adagia, che prescelta amor e prima Fia le belle di Solima sublima. He may -well commence his note ' Credo, ma forse pochi persuaderonne,' &c. ' I believe, but perhaps few will per- suade themselves to believe the same,' &c. ( 8 ) Crowned with the crown which, o'er the royal spouse,"] " It was usual with many nations to put crowns or garlands on the heads of new-married persons. The Misnah informs us that this custom prevailed among the Jews; and it should seem from the passage before us, that the ceremony of putting it on was performed by one of the parents. Among the Greeks the bride was crowned by her mother, as appears from the instance of Iphigcnia in Euripides, v. 903. Bochart supposes this the nuptial crown and other ornaments of a bride, alluded to in Ezek.xvi. 8 — 12- Geogr. Sacr. p. 2, 1. 1. — The nuptial crowns used among the Greeks and Romans were only chaplets of leaves or flowers. Among the Hebrews they were not only of these, but also occasionally of richer materials, as gold or sil- ver, according to the rank or wealth of the parties. See Sei- dell's Uxor Hebraica, lib. ii. c. 15. The original word used in the text is mt^:* (derived from ""ID3£ circumcinsit, circum- tr.rif), which is the same used to express a kingly crown in 2 Sam. xii. 30. 1 C'hron. xx. 9; and is often described to be of gold, Esth. viii. 15. Psaim xxi. 4; but appears to have been worn by those who were no kings, Job xix. 9, and was pro- bably often composed of less valuable materials; as of enamel- NOTES. 107 led -work, also of roses, myrtle, and olive-leaves. Vide Seidell." Dr. Percy's Translation of the Song of Soloman. — This note is so completely pertinent and explicit, that 1 shall abstain from enlarging on the subject, excepting by the addition of this single observation, that it was customary equally among the Greeks and orientals to wear crowns or garlands of different degrees of value, in proportion to the rank of the person pre- senting them, on festivals of every description; but that those prepared for the celebration of a nuptial banquet, as being a festivity of the first consequence, were of peculiar splendor and magnificence. The Italian translator, still adhering to the idea that Soloman is here describing some imaginary shep- herd and shepherdess alone, is compelled to understand tlw term crown in a metaphorical sense, and therefore renders it col sevtojtorido, ' with a garland of flowers.' (9) beneath thy shadowy hair.~\ Literal! r 'beneath their veil,' "[y^ft; a "d is so rendered by M. Mi- chaelis, as it is (not widely different) in Dr. Percy's trans- lation, ' now thy veil is removed.' I believe the common version to be unnecessarily deviated from in this instance, and have therefore adhered to it. The veil referred to is that of her tresses. The eye here described, and especially when compared with the delineation in idyl V. 65, seems to com- prize an equal mixture of majesty and tenderness — a combina- tion of the liquid eye of Venus and the radiance of that of Minerva: Anacr. od. xxviii. 'Aaa yXocvy.cv vug Afyvr^- 'Aaa £' vypov we KvQyjpije' In the language of (he elegant Italian translator of Lucretius, Marchetti : 108 NOTES. ' umidi Tremuli e lascivetti. Moist, sportive, tremulous. A version, however, he seems to have borrowed from the fol- lowing of Tasso, in his delineation of Armida: Qual raggio in onda le scintilla un riso, Negli umidi occhi, tremulo e lascivo. ( IO ) Fine as the goats of Gilcad are thy lochs ,•] The hair of the oriental goat is well known to be possessed of the fineness of the most delicate silk, and is often employed in modern times for the manufacture of muffs, which are vulgarly said to be composed of the beard of this animal. — Dr. Lowth imagines the colour of the hair to be here also referred to, as well as its fineness and splendor. " Caprarum pili," says he, " erant molles, nitidi, fulvi, sponsas capillis concolores." (") and each his mate has found. .] ' And none is bereaved among them.' I have followed Le Clerc and Lowth in rendering .nift^jlft 0*73117 simply twins — omnes inter se gemellce. ; and H^D.!^ {orla) ' bereaved' or ' deprived of its fellow.' Thus Hosea xiii. 8. : ^jyy^ 2~VD DttODN — ' I will meet them as a bear bereaved of her whelps.' The sheep of the east arc peculiarly fertile ; and their very name l^S ' s derived from this circumstance. ('*) Thy lips are ruhij silk ] Many of these images may be agreeably compared with the following delinea- tion of the beautiful Radha, by Jayadcva: " Thy lips, O thou most beautiful among women ! are a Bandhujiva flower ; the lustre of the madhuca beams on thy cheek ; thine eye out- NOTES. 109 shines the blue lotos; thy nose is a bud of the tila; the cunda- blossom yields to thy teeth. Surely thou descendest from heaven, O slender damsel ! attended by a company of youthful goddesses; and all their beauties are collected in thee." ( I3 ) Beneath thy fragrant tresses, as theyfow\ The hair among the ladies of Persia is still suffered to fall loosely over the forehead and cheeks, and is generally perfumed with the most exquisite essences. Hence Hafiz, in the first gazel of his diwan, thus expresses himself of the beautiful Shakhi Nebat: (Sj]j*^Sj 0J0 <^Jj Ly^ t^^ j*j[j iSy^t From that bright forehead what perfumes Shall load the Zephyr's wing ! What blood through all our fluttering hearts These musky locks shall fling ! And again in gazel iii, under the same letter : V\ hat heart those victor-locks would sway My bosom fain would know ; That thus, dishevelled to the day, In musky pomp they flow ? ('"0 O'er thy fair cheeks pomegranate blossoms 6!oir.~\ Tn the common version the word * cheek 1 is inaccurately rendered no NOTES. ' temples.' ' Blossom' or ' flower of the pomegranate' is the elegant version of Castellus. I have preferred it, as being more picturesque and equally true to the original. The more re- ceived interpretation, however, * as a section of the pome- granate ' is not destitute of beauty ; and the intermixed streaks, or shades of red and white, blushing into each other, which occur in the fruit of this superb plant, may remind us of the following verse of Taygetus: Qua= lac atque rosas vincis candore rubenti. Whose reddening white mocks roses steeped in milk. The fruit itself, apparently with a reference to the received opinion respecting the text before us, is thus picturesquely described by the unrivalled bard of the Tagus. Lusiad. Cant. ix. 59- Abrea Roma, mostrando a rubicunda Cor, com que tu rubi '. teu preqo perdcs } Entre os biagos do ultimo esta a jocunda Vide co hus cachos, roxos, e outros verdes. ■ the pomegranate of orange hue, Whose open heart a brighter red displays Than that which sparkles in the ruby's blaze. Mickle. (is") Gleams like the tower of David der the waste,'] This elegant building was situate on Mount Zion — " aloft on whose uttermost angle," says Sandys iii. 137, "stood the tower of David, whose ruins are yet extant, of a wonderful strength and admirable beauty, adorned wi/h shields and the arms of the mighty." The graceful neck of the fair bride is compared NOTES. Ill to this consummate structure ; and the radiance of the jewels that surrounded it to the splendor of the arms and shields with which the tower of David was adorned. The simile is exqui- site, and requires no comment. Tasso describes the same building, or a scion from its ruins, possessing the same name, in the following verses. Gerus. Liber, xix. 39* Ma intanto Soliman ver la gran torre Ito se n' e, che di David s'appella : E qui fa de' guerrier l'avanzo accorre, E sbarra intorno, e questa strada e quella. Straight to the tower that David's name retains The vanquished Soliman each effort strains ; There plants the troops that first accost his sight, Blocks up each entrance, and prolongs the fight. ( l6 ) Peep*, dad in dun, a young and timid roe.~\ The whole description is inimitably beautiful and delicate; but it has not hitherto been perfectly understood by the commentators, who have supposed the entire breast to be represented by the roe alone, instead of the elegant and prominent nipple, with its dun-coloured areola. Thus Melesigenio: Balzano simili Coteste due Mammelle tue A due novelli Dun parto Sgli Dainetti belli, Che insiem fra' gigli Pascendo van. 112 NOTES. The breast itself is obviously the bed of lilies, in which the young roc, or rather the fawn of the roe, is feeding ; and through which its fearful and tremulous face seems to peep. The same image occurs in the following of Jayadeva, in which a dark spot upon the clear dosom of the moon is com- pared to this very animal. " The moon, with a black fawn couched on its disc, advanced in its nightly course." And again shortly afterwards, " Black as the young antelope on the lunar orb." No translation, however, can in any degree vie with the curious felicity of the original : in which, as it is elegantly ob- served by Dr. Lowth, the word 13.32> here rendered ' roe' or * fawn,' signifies * loveliness' in general. The immediate species of roe here referred to is, as I have already observed, conjectured by sir William Jones to be the gazel of the Ara- bians ; concerning which see note on idyl II. (' 6 ). We learn from Matt. vi. 28, that in Syria the lilies grew common in the fields, and that they were of incomparable beauty. There is a surprising resemblance between this admirable and delicate delineation, and the well-known couplet of Fletcher, which affords us perhaps the only rival comparison to be met with in ancient or modern poetry : Hide, O hide those hills of /now Whereon the mountain-pink doth grosv! This beautiful imagery of the English bard is not, however, confined to Europe : the orientals were in possession of it before ourselves ; though it was unquestionably original to Fletcher ; and he is therefore entitled to the full merit of it. In the songs of the inimitable Jayadeva, the companions of the heavenly NOTES. 113 Radha thus address her: — "Ask those two round hillocks which receive pure dew-drops from the garland playing on thy neck, and the buds on whose top start aloft with the thought of thy darling — ask, and they will tell that thy soul is intent on the warfare of love." Thus again in the same exquisite poem — " May that Heri be your support, who, removing the lucid veil from the bosom of Pedma, and fixing his eyes on the deli' cious duds that grew on it " &c. (»7) o'er those balmy mountains mil I lie.] ' I will be- take me to these mountains of myrrhe,' &c. In the common version, and indeed in all the versions I have yet met with, it is • I will betake me to the mountain,' &c. ; and the general explanation is, that the entire person of the royal bride is hereby compared to a mass or heap of these precious perfumes. There is far more spirit, however, and no deviation from the original, in considering the compliment as applied to her lovely bosom alone — to those moun'ains of fragrant lilies over which the young and timid fawn was barely seen to peep. ( I8 ) thy beauteous frame lHafiz most gal- J* spotless all — a finish free from blame. S lantly begins one of his gazels with the very same idea : u^ y 114 NOTES, Yes — in thy lovely form perfection meets ; My heart is ravished with its honied sweets ; Mild as the rose that drinks the vernal air, And, through each part, as Eden's cypress fair. NOTES. 113 NOTES ON IYDL VI. (') Let dreams or dangers menace as they may,~\ To an ear not accustomed to the sudden transitions of oriental poetry, the original begins with great abruptness. It pre-supposes that the royal bride had been relating to her enamoured monarch some anecdote or tale of alarm ; and not improbably some such dream as occurs in idyl IV, or idyl VII : and the com- mencement of his speech is in answer to it. The summits of the mountains, mentioned in the text, were inhabited by wild beasts. I,e Iloque, in his description of Lebanon, expressly asserts that there were many tigers and bears on that mountain: and Russel informs us that the lion is found on the banks of the Euphrates, betwixt Bagdat and Bassorah. By this forcible ap- peal the royal speaker invites his beloved to his arms, as to Jk place of safety ; and encourages her to look towards him for security amidst any dangers, either actual or imaginary, of which she might be apprehensive. Melesigenio however gives an interpretation somewhat different. He commences his present song with the two last lines of the foregoing idyl (ch. iv. 7, of the Bible version)} and then supposes that his imaginary shepherd addresses his shepherdess, whom he repre- sents as feeding her flock of sportive kids on Mount Lebanon, in the terms that follow : Deh, da coteste, o sposa Di Libano scosceso erme pendici Meco deh vieni, meco. II pie non tardo A me deh volgi, e'l guardo 1 16 NOTES. Dai gioghi d' esto Amana, Sannire aspro, &c. This however seems an explanation, in equal opposition to the natural history of the mountains referred to, and the ob- vious intention of the poet himself. Mr. Harmer, with many others, who contend that the fair subject of the address was the daughter'of Pharaoh, and who would wish to interpret the passage as a literal description of her journey from Egypt to Jerusalem, find no small degree of perplexity in this passage. She could not pass over all these mountains, let her course lie in whatever direction it might ; and her immediate route ought to have been over none of them. They therefore relinquish the historic meaning en- tirely, and confine it to its sacred or esoteric reference. (*) m y sister-spouse ! ] Such is the literal and endearing term in the original ; the pronoun ' my ' between the two substantives being a useless interpolation of the versions. " Sister," observes the ingenious bishop of Dromore, " is either used here as a term of endearment, as it is by some understood Prov. vii. 4 ; and Apocrypha, xv. 8. in which, by a similar figure, Ahasuerus calls himself the brother of Esther ; or else it denotes that the bride was related to the royal bridegroom, or at least of the same tribe with him. The Hebrews used the words • brother ' and ' sister ' to ex- press any, even the most remote degree of consanguinity." Closely attentive to the language and costume of the sacred scriptures, Racine introduces Ahasuerus as employing in his address to Esther this very term, in his drama that bears her name : Acte ii. sc. vii. NOTES. 11? Esther! que craignc/.-vous? suis-je pas voire frerc? Est-ce pour vous quest fait un ordre si severe ?— Ne connoissez-vous pas la voix de votre epoux ? Encore un coup, vivez, et revenez a vous. Why fears my love? thy brother am I not? Can such decree molest my Esther's lot ? — Knows, then, thine ear a husband's voice no more ? — O be thyself! this wild distrust give o'er. (3) Thine eye but glances, ] The common version has literally rendered this passage as it occurs in the ordinary copies of the original — " Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes." No critic, however, has been satisfied with this ordinary lection of the Hebrew ; it being rather ludicrous, as Dr. Hodgson has observed, to say that she had ravished his heart with one eye. Dr. Percy has elegantly supplied the word ''Nl ' glance ' after Hl^Hj his version being 'with one glance of thine eye;' while that of Melesigenio is * with each of thine eyes' — coll' un, coll' altro occhietto. The Massorites themselves, sensible that the construction was ungrammatical, have proposed an emen- dation in the margin— j-|nNH for in^l ~~ H» being of the feminine gender. The valuable labours of Dr. Kenni- cott, however, have completely solved the difficulty, and put us into possession of the true meaning ; for in eighteen of the collated copies, instead of the imperfect term Tn^3 we find it actually written, as the Massorites had suspected, or at least amended it, .nil^l 'at once,' instead of 'one of.'-~ " Thou hast ravished my heart at once with thine eyes " — in- stantly, abruptly, with a single glance. Mrs. Francis, nevertheless, has adhered to the common 118 NOTES. reading, and has rendered it with all the elegance of which it is capable — From one bright eye a piercing dart Elanced, has vanquished all my heart. The luxurious Jayadcva has a similar image : " I meditate on her delightful embrace, on the ravishing glances darted from her eye." And more closely still in the following passage : " Deign to embrace thy slave, who acknowledges himself bought by thee, by a single glance from thine eye, and a toss of thy disdainful brow." So in a poem in modern Persian, quoted by sir William Jones, on the well-known loves of Mejnun and Laili : An ceh dil bordah zi Mejnun bi nigah Beh berem zud biyaver hemrah. Bring speedily with thee to my presence her who has stolen the heart of Mejnun with a glance. ( 4 ) Thy graceful neck subdues me as it turns.'] The word p^y here translated * turn,' signifies ' a turn ' or * turning round,' 'aspire,' 'a round itself,' or 'circle,' and hence a * clasp' or ' chain.' Its meaning in this place has been there- fore variously understood by different interpreters. Mr. Green, copying the Vulgate, renders it 'with one ringlet of thy neck;' and he is followed by Melesigenio, who explains the Hebrew term by ' i capelli intorno al collo e sul seno.' In the com- mon version it occurs ' with one chain of thy neck.' Dr. Hodgson, transmuting the word "inhO into rU"IN13 writes ' at once with the chain round thy neck;' an elegant lection, but which seems to require authority for the alteration he NOTES. 119 necessarily introduces into the original. I have adopted the ingenious version of the bishop of Dromore, which is equally elegant with that of Dr. Hodgson, and as much more spirited as it is more consistent with the original. The Hebrew p2V is equivalent to the Arabic C^»J*J which is often used in the sense here adopted. The following passage of Horace, presenting a parallel idea, is curiously happy in illustrating the reading contended for. Lib. ii. ode 12. Nam tu, quae tenuit dives Achaemenes, Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes, Permutare velis crine Liciniae, Plenas aut Arabum domos — 4 Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula Ctrvicem ? > But wouldst thou for all Persia's hoard, For all Mygdonia's plains afford, Or Kedar's balmy bliss, Wouldst thou Licinia's tresses spurn When once her neck with graceful turn Concedes the fragrant kiss ? (5) Thy lips -with dropping honey-combs are hung,] A bold and expressive figure, and equally common to Greeks and Orientals. Thus Homer, Iliad A. 249. Ta xou oLito y\u)) etnppscyKrfAsvT}. The whole of these seem to have been established metaphors, applied by the Hebrews upon nuptial occasions, to signify the unsullied purity of the bride, and the chastity and reserve she was to evince in the marriage-state. Among the Jews, at this day, the bridegroom before consummation puts up a prayer to God, in which is this petition—" Suffer not a stranger to enter into the sealed fountain, that the servant of our loves (the bride) may keep the seed of holiness and purity, and may not be barren." Addison's Pres. State of the Jews, ch. v. Selden's Uxor Hebraica, iii. 2. Dr. Percy's Translation of- Soloman's Song. " The first place that we directed our course to," says Mr. jMaundrell, in his Account of Bethlehem and its Vicinity, (April 1, 1696] was those famous fountains, pools, and gardens, which were the contrivance and delight of king Soloman, al- luded to Eccles. ii. 5, 6. About the distance of an hundred and forty paces from these pools is the fountain from which they principally derive their waters. This the friars told us was the slaled fountain, to which the holy spouse is compared, Cant. iv. 1?.; and they pretend a tradition that king Soloman shut up these springs and kept the door of them sealed with his signet, to preserve the waters for his own drinking, in their natural freshness and purity. Nor was it difficult thus to secure them, they rising under ground, and having no avenue to them but a little hole, like the mouth NOTES. 18S of a narrow well. These waters wind along through two rooms cut out of the solid rock, which are arched over with stone arches, very ancient, perhaps the work of Soloman him- self. Below the pool runs down a narrow, .rocky valley, inclo- sed on both sides with high mountains ; this, they told us, was the inclosed garden alluded to in the same song." Tra- vels, p. 87. (5) A paradise of plants ] In the Septuagint, which the present version follows, rfapaSstvos (paradisus). The Hebrew, however, is a term somewhat more general, DTlSj aU( * u ^ e the Arabic /.»LX*i*j is applicable to gar- dens, orchards, or inclosed plantations of any kind. The comparison is not uncommon among the orientals of modern day. Thus in one of the amorets of Mirza Abdulrahim of Ispahan, — agreeably to the orthography of sir William Jones, vol. i. 220. Tore tazi ghemi hejrari didah Pur guli daghi moh y abbat chidah. He had seen the depredations of grief through absence from a beloved object : He had plucked many a black-spotted flower from tie garden of love. So Haflz : ij-r*- ^j^S-* <-&^ U^" ^^ ?• ** How sweet her lids, where larks the bowyer Love, In that fair precinct of her garden move '. n6 NOTE S. ( I0 ) nard, i-.] So the Septuagini and Vulgate vxpfog, nardus. Ilebr. VI3 : Concerning which the reader may consult sir William Jones's elaborate treatise upon this plant. (") Nard, saffron, cinnamon, the dulcet airs,'] Thus the son of Sirach, who was a close copyist of the royal bard, Eccles. xxiv. 15* I gave a sweet smell like the cinnamon and asphaltus ; I yielded a pleasant odor like the best myrrh, Like galbanum and onyx, and fragrant storax, And like the fume of frankincense in the tabernacle. As the fir-tree I stretched out my branches, And my branches are the branches of honor and grace. Thus happily rendered by the author of the Danish Epi- metrum : Som balsom og kanel jeg vellugh spredte Rundt om mig ud, lig aedle myrrha-dust; Som galban, stakte og onych jeg qvseged ', Lig templets viraklugt jeg frydede. Lig terebinthen grene jeg udbredte, Af pragt og skjonhed fulde, &c. ( I3 ) The scented aloes, ] The dried wood of the aloes-tree has a very fragrant smell, and, in con- junction with many other odoriferous plants here referred to, was in high approbation among the Hebrews for its exquisite exhalation. — See note (?) of the present idyl. (u) and each shrub that showers'] Not widely different from Shakspeare in the following amatory sonnet : NOTES. 127 The forward violet thus did I chide : * Sweet thief! whence didst thou steal thy sweet, that smells, If not from my love's breath ? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.' The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair; " The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair ; A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both, And to his robbery had annexed thy breath ; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth, A vengeful canker ate him up to death : More flowers I noted, yet I none could see But scent or colour it had stolen from thee. ( I4 ) O pride of gardens / fount of end/ess sweets /] I have adopted the very spirited amendment of Dr. Percy, which, if I mistake not, I have seen introduced into one or two French translations. In the common version it occurs ' a fountain of gardens,' &c. — a phraseology extremely-insipid in comparison with the present, and not more true to the original. In Mr. Maundrell's Travels we meet with the following de^ scription, which has seldom been omitted by the commenta- tors in their illustrations of this beautiful passage. " There is a very deep rupture in the side of Libanus, running at least seven hours' travel directly up into the mountain. It is on both sides exceedingly steep and high, clothed with fragrant greens from top to bottom, and every-wheie refreshed with fountains falling down from the rocks in pleasant cascades — the ingenious work of nature. The streams all uniting at the 128 NOTES. bottom, make a full and rapid torrent, whose agreeable mur- muring is heard all over the place, and adds no small pleasure to it." Travels, p. 118. (■5) Awake, O North-wind ! come, thou Southern breeze. .] This bold and animated apostrophe, by which the royal bride continues the beautiful metaphor of a garden and its various delights, is peculiarly in the style of sacred poesy. Thus in the triumphal Song of Deborah, Judg. v. 12. Awake, Deborah, awake ; Awake, awake — rehearse the Song. Arise, Barak, arise ! Lead captive thy captivity, Son of Abinoam ! Or, as the last line might be rendered, Re echo thy responses, Son of Abinoam ! So again Psalm lvii. 8. Awake, O my glory ! awake, lute and harp ! I, too, will awake right early. Whence Mr. Gray, confessedly : Awake, yEolian lyre ! awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. The royal bride is not to be supposed to call for these opposite currents of air at the same time : but she implores their luxu- rious assistance at distinct and alternate periods. She addresses, the South-wind, that under his genial and maturating influence the fruits of her garden may ripen, and its gums and spices flow forth ; and the North-wind, that he may breathe a re- NOTES. 129 animating coolness during the languid heat of the noon, and fan her heloved with odoriferous gales. The beautiful Radha, in the Songs of JayadJva, bursts into a similar apostrophe: "O gale scented with sandal, who breathest love from the regions of the South, be propitious but for a moment." ( l6 ) That my beloved through its boxoers may roam,'] In the Gitagovinda the lovely Radha is in like manner invited to enter into the garden or the embraces of her beloved : " Enter, sweet Radha, the bower of Iieri ! seek delight, O thou whose bosom laughs with the foretaste of happiness! Enter, sweet Radha, the bower graced with a bed of asoca- leaves ! seek delight, O thou whose garland leaps with joy on thy breast' Enter, sweet Radha, the bower illumined with gay blossoms ! seek delight, O thou whose limbs far exceed them in softness ! Enter, O Radha, the bower made cool and fragrant by gales from the woods of Malaya ! seek delight, O thou whose amorous lays are softer than the breezes! Enter, O Radha, the bower which resounds with the murmur of honey-making bees! seek delight, O thou whose embrace yields more exquisite sweetness ! Enter, O Radha, the bower attuned by the melodious band of Cocilas ! seek delight, O thou whose lips, which outshine the grains of the pomegranate, are embellished, when thou speakest, by the brightness of thy teeth ! Long has he borne thee in his mind ; and now, in an agony of desire, he pants to taste nectar from thy lip." Not widely different the German Theocritus, though in lan- guage somewhat less animated/ " O wenn ich einst als braut in eure schatten fiihre, dann sollen euie faiben higher glihen, ihr blumen; dann duftet ihr K 130 NOTES. jeden wolgeruch zu ! dann bieget, ihr b'aume bieget, die schat- tigten aeste zu ihr herunter, mit siissen friichten behangen !" — Cloe rief ihm : " Alexis sie liebt dich ! Hier steht sie unter dem hollundeibaum ; komm, kiisse die thranem von ihren wangen, die sie vor liebe weint." — " O should 1 once enter your shades as her bridegroom ! then glow, ye flowers, with a livelier tinc- ture ; then wave, ye fragrances, all your wings around her; then bend, ye forests, bend over her your darkest branches loaded with most delicious fruits'." — Chloe beheld and called him: "Alexis, she loves thee — lo! where she lies beneath yonder chesnut-shades : go, kiss oil' the tears of love which glisten on her cheeksi" ( J 7) On milk I banquet, on the honied comb,'] Milk and honey form still a luscious repast in the opinion of many Afri- can and Asiatic nations, and are in common use among them. Of the latter this is more especially true; for it is often recurred to as food in situations where the former cannot be procured. Such, ever strict to nature, the Homer of Portugal states to have been the sustenance of the savage seized by the soldiers of De Gama in their voyage to the East-Indies : Lus. v. 27. Que tomarao per forca, em quanto apanha De mel os doces favos na montanha. n Whom on the forest height by force they caught, As, distant wandered from the call of home, He sucked the honey from the porous comb. Mickle. The honeV thus spontaneously distilling (in the language of Homer, /xsAj xxfofosiSofJi.evov) was supposed by the ancients NOTES. 131 to have been peculiarly sweet and luscious ; and we' find a distinction made in all sacred poetry, therefore, between the \D2.1 or common honey, and PB1 D^Slli, the wild drop- ping honey-comb. ( I8 ) Eat, O mi/ friend ! drink toith ample draught !~\ This address in the Bible version, and in all the readings T have yet met with, is applied to the friends or companions either of the bride or the bridegroom. To Dr. Geddes I am solely indebted for what appears to me a very elegant variation. The words are certainly a reply of the royal bride to the declaration of king Soloman, by which she excites him to a continuation of the banquet. My learned friend has left a manuscript obser- vation upon this passage to this very effect. Melesigenio con- tinues the common interpretation, which he amplifies perhaps unnecessarily : Compagni, su, cibatevi, Bevete, e ne' bicchieri Tulfate, o dilettissimi, Scordatevi i pensicri. 152 . NOTES. NOTES ON IDYL VII.. (') Asleep I lay, but fancy was awake.'] There can be no doubt that the beginning of this idyl is the rehearsal of a dream by the fair bride to her companions j and it bears so strong a resemblance to the following well-known Ode of Ana- creon, that Or. Hodgson cannot avoid conceiving the bard of Teos to have been acquainted with it, and to have drawn from it some of the outlines of his expressions. Without entering into so questionable a speculation, I will transcribe the ode referred to, upon which the learned reader may form his own judgment. Ode T. MstrovvKtiots it'j'S vpotis, Hrpepsrai of' Apy.ro; tj£ij Kara %£'f># r& Bou>rs, "MspoirMv Ss y whom he gene- rously succoured in his distresses. Had he known him, he would either have refused admission to him, or been guarded against his attacks. In several of our best versions of this ad^ NOTE S. 135 mii-able production, this circumstance is however either totally- forgotten, or the epigrammatic point completely ruined by a different turn to the passage, in consequence of which the poet is stated to have been intimately acquainted with his guest from the first. Thus in the elegant but too diffuse version of Mr. Moore : I heard the baby's tale of woe ; I heard the bitter night-winds blow ; And sighing for his piteous fate I trimmed my lamp and oped the gate. 'Twas Love ! the little wandering sprite, His pinions sparkled through the night — I knew linn by his bow and dart ; I knew him by my fluttering heart. Of these lines not a syllable of the last occurs in Anacreon, nor the first member of the preceding. The reader may compare the opening of the present idyl with one of Gesner, entitled Daphnis — " In stiller nacht hatte Daphnis sich zu seines madgens hutte geschlichen; den die liebe macht schiafios," &c. ( a ) my mid* filed! ] I have anxiously preserved the common version, for the original will admit of it, and it is not deficient in beauty. The Hebrew term TTfiJl might however, with more propriety, perhaps, be rendered my 'accomplished one' than my * undefilcd :' and it is so rendered by Mr. Green, while Dr. Hodgson has exchanged the common term for ' my perfect one.' My friend Dr. 136 NOTES. Geddes, in a manuscript notice on this verse, co-incides with the former of these critics. ( 3 ) I saw his fingers thrust -within the door,} That is * through the latch- or key-hole.' — " It was the ancient custom to secure the door of a house by a cross-bar, or bolt ; which, at night, was fastened with a little button or pin. In the upper part of the door was left a round hole, through which any person from without might thrust his arm, and remove the bar, unless this additional security were superadded. Clerc's Comment, and Claud. Salrnas. in Solinum, p. 649." Dr. Percy's Translation. ( 4 ) Swift, and the vase of fragrant myrrh overthrew;] ' Pure or perhaps ' liquid myrrh,' "Oy HID ; that which weeps or drops from the tree, the most esteemed, but most expensive of this class of perfumes. That it was no uncommon practice for eastern ladies to prepare vases of fragrance, as well as other presents, wilh which to welcome the visits of their lovers, we may learn from the following beit in the eleventh gazel of Hafiz, letter «. ♦ AJ For me the angel of my heart prepares Chaplets, and unguents, breathing fragrant airs. NOTES. 137 '■■"• i Dropped oer the bolt, 1 J has noticed, upon this passage, a couplet in the Seven Fountains of sir William Jones, so completely similar in idea, that it is not im- probable this admirable scholar had his eye directed to it at the time it was composed : She turns the key — her cheeks like roses bloom ; And on the lock her fingers drop perfume. It is thus elegantly rendered by Duport: Dumque seram tetigi, super ipsa manubria myrrhs Manare flagranti statim Coeperunt digiti, stacten et suaveolentem Stillare rorantes manus. ( 6 ) and stripped me of its veil.'] To tear away the veil from an eastern lady is one of the greatest indig- nities that can be offered to her; and is metaphorically used in many instances to express violation of her pet son. Thus Ca- bihah, the mother of the caliph Motaz, complained of Saleh the Turkish chief, 'He has torn my veil :' meaning hereby that he had dishonoured her. — Herbelot Bibl. Orient, art. Motaz. So llafiz in the following beit, in which, consistently with the tradition of the East, he speaks of the wife of Potiphar under the denomination of Zuleikha: 13$ NOTES. Led captive by the victor charms O'er Joseph's face that play, Her veil of cattily at length Zuleikha flings away. ( 7 ) Daughters of Salem ! ] The fair nar- rator here obviously closes the history of her dream, and ad- dresses herself immediately to her auditors with a message to the beloved of her heart. ( 8 ) What can ye say, but that I faint with love ?] The com- mon reading is given without this interrogation, which adds a high degree of animation to the passage, and is strictly consist- ent with the original. Houbigant proposes it in this way. — Attendant. "What should we tell him ?" — Bride. "That I am sick of love." — But to obtain this he introduces the unne- [ cessary alteration of 13T0n for VT3A and renders the text, at the same time, far less spirited and forcible. The passage may remind many of my readers of the follow- ing of Ariosto: Orland. Fur. xix. Se di disio non vuol morir, bisegna Che senza indugio ella se stessa aiti. Sick with desire, from him she would receive What only can her soul's dear health retrieve. Ho OLE. (9) Chief of ten thousand, ] I have pur- posely followed the common version, which is equally beaufi- ful and explicit. Mr. Parkhurst, however, translates the pas- sage rQ2"TO 7Q"T.j ' lighted with ten thousand lamps ; or NOTES. 139 dazzling as a gaudy bridegroom, surrounded with ten thou- sand lamps.' I see no necessity fortius variation. There can be no doubt, however, of the existence of such splendid ban- quets, as the ingenious lexicographer here adverts to, among oriental nations: to which we find a full reference in the fol- lowing verses of Lucretius: Rer. Nat. ii. 24. Si non aurea sunt juvenum simulacra per sedeis, Lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris, Lumina nocturnis epulis ut subpeditcntur: Nee domusargento fulget, auroque renidet, Nee citharae reboant laqueata aurataque templa. What though the dome be wanting whose proud walls A thousand lamps irradiate, propt sublime By frolic forms of youths in massy gold, Flinging their splendors o'er the midnight feast? Though gold and silver blaze not o'er the board, Nor music echo round the gaudy roof? ( I0 ) Of noblest mold his head; ] « His head is as th<- most fine gold.' The term 'golden' was equally used by Asiatics and Greeks, to denote consummate excellence and beauty. Thus Theocritus, idyl III. 28. ilSs y.ai d y^pvffBa. 'EAsva Sistpcuvsr . So shone the golden Helen •. The fiction of the first and happiest age of the world is uni- formly, for the same reason, denominated the age of gold. From the unclouded splendor with which the sun fertilises and 140 NOTES. matures the luxurious plains of Delos, Apollo himself was feigned to have been born in this island ; and all its productions »re said' to be of gold. Thus Callimachus, Od. ad Del. XpiKrecc ?oi Tor' tfocvra, SepsiXia ysivcn'o, AtjAe, &c. In reality, the Greek term for gold (%3u *v^ Her — trains of rleep-ve : led, Turkish maids entwine, Of cypress-mold, and cheeks that shame the rose, Locks black as tnusk, with lips surpassing wine, And amorous eyes in wanton sleep that dose. So the Turkish poet Mohammed Ben Abdallael Catib: ^ ^J^ U-^l' [jty. £fj Of black, ee/i blackest hue, and unconfined, Her shadowy tresses wantoned in the wind. ( I4 ) His eyes the milk-white doves, that gaily beam "» Nothing Near the full fountain, Jean pos- sibly surpass the exquisite beauty of the entire portraiture: but this inimitable delineation of the eyes is entftled to peculiar no- tice, and gives us the idea of an equal intermixture of gaiety and tenderness. We have a similar picture, and of nearly equal beauty, in the Gitagovinda. " His passion was inflamed by the glances of her eyes, which played like a pair of water-birds with azure plumage, that sport near a full-blown lotos on a pool in the season of dew" And again, " She whose wanton eye resem- bles blue water-lilies agitated by the breeze." NOTES. 143 The reading proposed by Dr. Hodgson, who renders the ex- pression here translated, ' sitting cheerfully by the rivers of water' — which ' dwell amongst the ripe corn,' is, in my estima- tion, very deficient in beauty, when compared with the com- mon version. The whole sentence, according to the doctor, should run thus: His eyes are like pigeons over torrents of water, That bathe themselves in milk And dwell amongst the ripe corn. The version of Melesigenio is different from either; yet I think by no means equal to that offered in the text : Di colombe in riva a' fiumi Son suoi lumi, Che nel latte stan nuotando, Riposando Come gemma nel caston. His eyes are like the dove's that look Gaily o'er the bank and brook ; Swimming with milk, and set with grace, Like a jewel in its case. The rendering of Duport is, I find, entirely consentaneous with that I have preferred: c » Sunt oculi, quales, en, cernimus essse columbis ruros aquarum ad rivulos : Pulchelli, nitidi, loti quasi lacte fuisseni, Ita albicant belle siti. 144 NOTES. ( , 3) Rich beds of sprouting spices are his cheeks;'] This description of the pullulating beard upon the cheeks of the accomplished bridegroom can only be rivalled by the admira- ble delineation of his eyes. In the Bible version, which is correctly rendered from the Hebrew, we read it ' His cheeks are as a bed: ' but the Septuagint, with greater accuracy, gives us the plural number. The idea is so perfectly consentaneous with the following exquisite verses of Lucretius, in which he describes the first sprouting forth of herbs and shrubs from the face of maternal earth, in the commencement of the world, that I cannot avoid transcribing them : Rer. Nat. v. 781. Principio, genus herbarum, viridemque nitorem, Terra dedit circum colleis ; camposque per omneis Florida fulserunt viridanti prata colore: Arboribusque datus est variis exinde per auras Crescundi magnum inmissis certamen habenis. Ut pluma, atque pilei primum, seta*que, creantur Quadrupedum membris, et corpore pennipotentum; Sic nova turn tellus herbas, virgultaque, primum Substulit. And, first, the race she reared of verdant herbs, Glistening o'er every hill ; the fields at large Shone with the verdant tincture ; and the trees Felt the deep impulse, and, with outstretched arms, Broke from their bonds, rejoicing. As the down Shoots fiom the winged nations, or from beasts Bristles or hair, so poured the new-born earth Plants, fruits, and herbage. NOTES. 14$ ('•') His lips of ruby-lily ; ] Such is the in- genious interpretation of bishop Patrick, who supposes the lily here instanced to be the same which, on account of its deep- red color, is particularly called by Pliny rubcns (ilium, and which he tells us was much esteemed in Syria. With equal elegance Bion, describing the death of Adonis, says, idyl A. 1 1. Km ro po£ov fsvysi ?w p/siAeo;.-— — And from his lips the roses fled. «• Melesigenio supports the same idea: Soni i labbri porporini ('5) Fragrant as myrrh, « ] 'Lilies dropping sweet-smelling myrrh.' An expression obviously de- noting the sweetness of his conversation. The original "^1/ is more correctly rendered by Dr. Hodgson ' liquid myrrh ;' and is elegantly supposed by sir Thomas Brown to refer to " the roscid and honey drops observable in the flowers of martagons and inverted flowered lilies ; and is probably the standing sweet dew on the white eyes of the crown-imperial, now common among us." Thus the disconsolate Madhava, in the songs of jayadiva: " I meditate on the flagrant lotos of her mouth, on her nectar-dropping speech, on her lips ruddy as the berries of the bimba." ( lfi ) While, through the polished ivory of his skii),~\ I have followed the version of the Septuagint, the interpretation of which is, ' ilis boil, is an ivory casket over a sapphire stone'— 146 NOTES. " meaning," says the bishop of Dromore, " that the blue veins were seen through his clear snowy skin, like a sap- phire stone through a thin transparent plate of ivory." A fine and elegant comparison! — So Ariosto, in his delineation of Angelica, Orland. Furios. cant. x. though with less felicity of image : : a quel parlare ella divegna Quale e di grana un bianco avorio asperso. While yet she spoke her rising blushes spread ; So polished ivory shows when stained with red. Hoole. ( I7 ) As marble pillars ] Perfectly polished and white. Thus Hafiz, indulging a similar idea, in a gazel already quoted: O thou whose polished legs like silver shine ! My heart is ravished as thou bring'st me wine. The phrase t, 9^ (mnA v Aak> (umyn sale J ' silver- legged,' is common in Persia to denote an elegance of this limb. (' 8 ) on a golden base : ] ' On pedestals of fine gold.' These doubtless refer to the magnificence of. his NOTE S. 147 sandals, bound probably with golden ribbands or laces. See note on idyl IX. («). Thus Virgil, ALn. xi. 488. surasque incluserat auro. with «old his lc6;s he laced Thus also Callimacbus, more at large, in his Hymn to Apollo, 82, YLpwrsa. t-jo ttoWwvi, To r svSvrov, vp sitntopTtig, 'H rsK'joy], ro r as^a to AvxTiov, r, ts potpsTpy Xpvtrsa. kcu to. TtsZiXa.' itoXvypvo-og yap AiroWu)'/. A golden robe invests the glorious god; His shining feet with go/den sandals shod ; Gold are his harp, his quiver, and his bow. Dodd. C 9 ) To feed on fragrance, and with lavish hand i Thus Mos- Pluck the young lilies, — — - S chus, descri* bing the beautiful Europa, idyl B. 28. '£ig emavtr, avopowre' fikag ? eireoigeQ' ktacipag 'HXixaf, oieTEixt, $v[Mi)pea,£, euitarpeiag' Truriv olzi crvva^vosv, W sg yjip'jv evTvvatTo^ H ors pwSpvyoiTO xpox itpo^p^criy Avavpob, H ItCvr ex. XsiUsWvog svifvox Xsipia. Kepcroi. This said, she rose, and joined her loved compeer?, Friends of her heart, of equal rank and years ; With whom the mazy dance she wove, or gave Her limbs, Anaurus ! to thy lucid wave, 148 NOTE S. Or, from the meads thy fragrant banks that bound, Plucked the sweet Idles gaily blooming round. Not widely different Virgil, Eel. ii. 45. Hue ade, O formose puer ! tibi lilia plenis Ecce ferunt nymphas calathis. Come, beauteous boy ! the nymphs in baskets bring For thee the loveliest Mies of the spring. Warton. (*°) Beauteous as Salem art thou, ] Jerusalem was esteemed the most charming place in all Palestine j and is called by Jeremiah, Lament, ii. 15. . the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth. ( 21 ) Graceful as Tirzas undulating grove ;] The very name of the place bespeaks its felicity of scenery — H3i"in, fr° ni JIJJ"! ' delectable.' — After the revolt of Eehoboam the kings of Israel made choice of this fascinating spot on which to erect the royal city: and it preserved its pre-eminence till the reign of Omri, who founded Samaria. ( Zi ) Dazzling as armies, that, in bright array, ~\ The origi- nal term here translated ' dazzling' certainly implies in one of its senses ' terrible,' n?^^, and is so rendered' in the Bible version ; but such a meaning is obviously inappropriate, and requires correction. Dr. Hodgson interprets it with more propriety • awe-striking.' In Persia, one of the most common NOTES. 149 epithets applied by a lover to his mistress is i !<_\j wvkkk^c^ f dehcshet andazj, which is perfectly synonymous, • awe-strik- ing,' or ' striking with fear.' — The comparison is well illustrated by Tasso in his description of Clorinda, iii. 22. Lampeggiar gli occhi, e folgorar gli sguardi Dolce ne lira, or che farian nel riso ? Keen flash her eyes, her look with fury glows, Yet e'en in rage each feature lovely shows : What charms must then her winning smile disclose ? And perhaps more fully by Anacreon, in his description of the various gifts bestowed by nature upon different animals, ode ii. Tot; av$pav ju,£. Sing thou of Thebes — let others tell How Troy's foundations rose and fell, My numbers shall alone repeat My own rencounters, and defeat. Me fleets and armies ne'er appall — 'Tis to a different host I fall : A host within thine eyes, my fair, That lurk and ply their arrows there. So Musaeus, Her. et Leandr. : / KaWo; yap ifspiifvo'T'ov au,wpt,ii)toiG yvvaixog OfcvTEpov fx,spoireorn'] I think it almost impossible to doubt that the question here proposed is a conti- nuation of the royal eulogy, and as such it is regarded by al- most all our best commentators. In the Bible translation, how- ever, as well as in that of Dr. Hodgson, and Melesigenio, it is separated both from the prior and posterior contexts ; and appears as an interpolation without any definite reference. The same injudicious separation, in the common version, oc- curs in Prov. xxxi. 28 and 29. which should thus be con- nected : Her children rise up and call her blessed; Her husband, and ' thus' he extolleth her: ' Many daughters have done well, but thou excellest them all : * Favor ' ib ' deceitful, beauty vain, "But" the woman ' who' feareth the Lord shall be praised.' The j udicious author of the Danish epimetrum has indeed thus rendered it : Lovprisende fremtrade siinnerne, Af hendes ross fuld strommer mandens mund, 4 Man cedel daad hesmangen qvinde fandt, ' Dog overtraf dem alle — alle du ! ' Kun dunst er ynde, skjonhed riders rov, ' Jehovas frygt er qvindens sande prts ; ' Saa priser denne da for virksom fl d, • Og offentlig lovsytiger hendes dyd 1' NOTES. 157 ( 31 ) Who thus advances lovely as the mom] The couplet in the original, that answers to this and the ensuing verse (for the third is of doubtful interpretation), may vie with the boldest and most beautiful imagery of the most successful poets of every nation. "o& "loa nsp^sn Ant >n nnnD nil rm *?d r& The bards of the East throng indeed with similes drawn from the same magnificent sources. Thus, in correspondence with that immediately before us, 2 Sam. xxiii. 4. As the light of the morning a sun shall arise, A morning bright without clouds, When the tender grass, after rain, springeth out of the earth. In a Bodleian manuscript of some authority, the first line of this latter passage occurs thus : ' As the light of the morning Jehovah, the sun, shall arise. So Isaiah, prophesying of Belshazar, exclaims, ch. xiv. 12. : O Lucifer ! son of the morning! how art thou fallen from heav'n ! It is by a similar image that Theocritus delineates the beau- tiful Helen: idyllH. > i Aw; avTsKXoiTCL xaXov $iefty, ' Ami nadib,' in which collocation it has a different meaning than when united as above, and implies, instead of the name of a person, the phrase 'of my willing' or 'loyal' peo- 168 NOTES. pie ; ' — it is a division which has been followed by many trans- lators. Thus Dr. Hodgson : Unexpectedly methought were drawn out for me The chariots of my loyal people. Such a sense however, if sense it may be called, I confess I do not understand. It is, neveitheless, thus rendered in the Sy- riac, Nescivit anima mea, posuit me in curru populi parati. • • And the Jews have followed it in their Spanish version, dated according to their own aera, 5466 : Nose : mi alma me pu/o quatreguas de pueblo liberal. The /Ethiopic, Arabic, and Sep- tuagint, are coincident with the common reading, or that re- tained in the text. ( 4 ) Return, O bride ofSolomnn ! ] In the Bible version, * Return, return, OShulamite!' Of the meaning of this word we can form no other conception than that now offered. Soloman is in the Hebrew !~IO /£• (Shelma or Sheloma) ; and JTD^VuL? (Shulmit or Shulamite), which is merely the same word with a feminine termination, is, of course, necessarily, equivalent to ~xfe or bride of Soloman. The reply of the at- tendant virgins is in perfect consonance with the following ad- dress of the companion of Rhadi to her heavenly mistress: " Delay not, O loveliest of women ! follow the lord of thy heart: behold, he seeks the appointed shade, bright with the ornaments of love, and confident of the promised bliss." Songs of Jayadcva. NOTES. 1G9 (5) Firm 'as in battle each conflicting host.~\ This interpreta- tion is, I think, clear and appropriate D^nQH n*?n!3D, Sicut chorum castrorum : and the Syriac and /Ethiopic meet it with but lit le variation. Thus the latter: ^Vf : T&AP : flft^T* 5 W* : ftiTi^T* :: Quid videbitis in Sulamitide quae venit sicut chori castrorum? " What see ye in the Shu- lamite, who approacheth like squadrons from their encamp- ments ?" i. e. " like antagonist squadrons to battle." The meaning is far clearer nevertheless when the sentence is di- vided, as in the Bible version, or the present text : and the force of the simile may be pertinently illustrate 1 by the follow- ing stanza from the Jerusalem Delivered, for which Tasso has been largely indebted however to Virgil. Cant. ix. 52. Come pari d'ardir, con forza pare Quinci austro in guerra vien, quindi, aquilone : Non ei fra lor, non cede il cielo, o'l mare ; Ma nube a nube, e flutto a flutto oppone. Cosl ne ceder qua, ne la piegare Si vede l'ostinata aspra tenzone. S'affionta insieme orribilmente urtando Scudo a scudo, elino ad elmo, e brando a brando. As when with equal ardor, equal might, Auster and Boreas join the jealous fight, Nor this nor that submits — through skies and main Clouds still with clouds, with surges surges strain ; So here, in firm and obstinate array, Devoid of triumph hangs th' unyielding fray : 170 NOTES. With balanced fury each his faulchion wields, Helms clash with helms, and shields with thundering shields. The passage in the original is nevertheless capable of a version somewhat different ; and is thus given in the Bible of the Spa- nish Jewsprinted at Amsterdam, anno 5466, according to their own sera : Torna, torna la Sulamit, y veremos en ti ; que vereis en la Solamit ? como dan$a de los reates. It must be allowed indeed that n*7inO signifies a rapid but graceful rencounter, such as is exhibited in the figure of a country or contre-dance. Dr. Hodgson varies the translation in the following manner : She is as the trumpet when armies stand ready for battle. .The word J^nO is use d undoubtedly in some instances to signify a musical instrument ; but we cannot to a certainty say that this instrument was a trumpet. As this Idyl is short, I shall transcribe the entire version of it by Duport, as a specimen of his general elegance. Hortulum intravi nucibus refertum, Vallium fruges cupiens videre, an Floreat vitis mea, germinetve Punica malus. Mox repentino cor amoris oestro Percitum, et raptum me inopina sensi, Fervidis acsi veherer quadrigis Amminadabi. NOTES. 171 Quin redi, formosa, redi, puella, Quin redi mox, O Sulamitis alma; Ut tuo aspectu proprius fruamur. Quid Sulamatis En habet speve hac, oculisve dignum, Quod flagratis sic studio videndi ? Prcelio binas acies paratas Ordine pulcbro. 172 NOTES. NOTES ON IDYL IX. (*) How fair, O princess, are thy sandalled feet /] Magnificent sandals constituted, in the East, a part of the dress of hoth males and females who could afford such a luxury. I have already noticed it, with respect to the former, in Idyl VII. ( lS ) but the oriental ladieswere peculiarly attentive to this fashion- able ornament. The sandals of Judith were so brilliant that, notwithstanding the general splendor of her bracelets, rings, and necklace, these principally succeeded in captivating the ferocious Holofernes ; for we are expressly told that " her san- dals ravished his eyes." Compare Judith x. 4. with xvi. 9« So Lucretius Rer. Nat. iv. 1 1 19. pulchra in pedibus Sicyonia rident. sandals rich Laugh from her feet by Sicyon artists wrought. It is obvious, from the character under which the royal bride is here addressed, that of princess or prince's daughter, that she was of noble descent. Many commentators have, indeed, endeavoured to deduce, from this appellation, that she was the daughter of Pharaoh king of Egypt; but I have al- ready noticed a variety of circumstances in the Preface, and shall have occasion to revert to them in several of the ensuing idyls, which evidently contradict such an idea : and, in fact, the very term here translated prince (3"H3) implies rather mere nobility than absolute royalty of birth; a "chief," a " ruler," a " noble" ; and can only thus be interpreted Psalm xlvii. 9 j as it is thus actually translated Isaiah xiii, 2. NOTES. 17S It is also obvious that the scene of the present idyl is a pri- vate bagnio or bath; probably constructed in gome secluded part of the royal pleasure-grounds, and unquestionably equal- Brig the magnificence of any which are still traced in modern .Asia. To this sequestered building the accomplished fair one retired with her attendants ; and it is here she once more re- ceives the royal bridegroom, after having indulged in the luxury of bathing, and le-adorned herself anterior to his admission. The exquisite beauty and proportion of her features excite the eulogy of her attendants as they undress her. ( z ) The graceful goblet ] The vessel here referred to in the way of comparison was probably of pottery or porcelain, in the manufactory of which the artists of many ancient nations acquired a perfection and elegance of design that is altogether unrivalled in the present day. Those of Mr Wedgewood's which are introduced into the British Mu- seum are, unquestionably, of exquisite workmanship, and do credit to the nation in which they have been formed; but the model and finish of the Roman antiques by which they are pla- ced are so superior as to excite the preference of the most care- less spectator. On the perfection of the ancients in the arts of potterv, painting, and many sister elegancies, the reader may advantageously consult two successive and elaborate treatises on this subject by M. Ameilhon, inserted in Memoirs of the French National Institute, Litei at. et Beaux Arts, torn. i. & iii. and entitled-Recherches sur les Couleurs des Anciens & sur les Arts qui y ont rapport. The comparison of a graceful and delicate waist to a vessel thus elegantly moulded is curi- ously pertinent and happy. (3) Hies not with tin/ wbist.'] The Hebrew word H1U? here translated waist, in its more confined and literal 174 NOTES. signification implies navel; and the Bible version therefore reads thus: 'Thy navel is " like" a round goblet, "which" wanteth not liquor.' But what are we to understand by such a reading? The entire passage has to this hour puzzled the whole host of critics : though I think nothing can be more ob- vious than its meaning in the original. I allow that the term "V)^ implies literally the navel ; but I contend that it is often figuratively used, as in the present version, for the waist at large, or the whole of the surrounding region — and this with great pertinence and beauty ; the one constituting the fountain of life in the foetus, the other in the adult, and the former being at all times the most prominent organ of the latter. It is in this sense employed Job xl. 16. in which place it is introduced in direct apposition with the word loins, our own figurative term for the same idea. Here, speaking of the behemoth, the Almighty exclaims 13ED nn»3 1J1M1 Behold his strength is in his loins — i. e. his back, And his virility in the navel of his belly, i. e. in his waist. i In a similar acceptation the word "Htt? or navel is employed in Prov. iii. 7- and for want of attention to this remark the passage has never been fully understood to the present moment : It shall be health (fertility ) to thy waist, And marrow to thy bones. The common rendering is, It shall be health to thy navel : but incapable of eliciting any meaning from such a phraseo- logy, our modern critics have suspected an error in the Hebrew term; and that instead of lesoreca ' to thy navel' the royal moralist, consistently indeed with the Syriac version, originally NOTES. 175 wrote lesereca ' to thy flesh ;' an alteration not supported I be- lieve by any ancient print or manuscript, and which the pre- sent interpretation renders altogether unnecessary. Divested of poetical imagery, what are the blessings here predicted? The very two which, in a temporal view, the Hebrews were accus- tomed to regard as the chief which could be bestowed upon them : Numerous shall be thy family, And many the years of thine own life. In commenting upon the opening of the present idyl, Patrick, Harmer, and Parkhurst have conceived that the royal poet, instead of delineating the personal cha.ms, 'the unbought graces' of his accomplished fair, is merely describing her dif- ferent habiliments with the splendid figures which were wrought on them. Against such an interpretation I cannot but strongly protest, as equally unpoetical, and unjust to the text. In the literal sense of the original I see no indelicacy Avhatever, and there ought to be no indelicacy in its translation. The royal bard is merely assuming a liberty, and that in the chastest manner possible, which we are daily conceding in our own age to every painter and sculptor of eminence. (f) And filled with fertile juices to the heart, ■» "From the ex- Dearer than aught the goblet can impart. J ternal shape of the graceful goblet the poet continues his simile with great dexterity and advantage to its internal contents; and, in the true spirit of his art, predicts to the royal bride, through the medium of her companions, the possession of that blessing of fertility which was regarded by every Hebrew lady as of ines- timable value. 176 NOTES. ( 5 ) Thy swelling bosom teems with nurture sweet. ] Here again I am compelled to deviate from the common version, and the interpretation of every prior commentator, as offering a sense which I confess I either do not understand, or see obvi- ous reason for rejecting. The Hebrew term "1^2. here translated bosom, might more strictly and literally perhaps be rendered belly, and is thus interpreted in our English bibles — ' thy belly " is like" a heap of wheat.' But ev^n the English term belly is divided by anatomists into upper and lower — the former being appropriated to the chest or prjecordia, and the latter to the abdominal region. Now the Hebrew term "TO 3 not only admits of this latitude of interpretation — but is occa- sionally employed, and particularly in the writings of Soloman, in passages in which to translate it otherwise than bv the term bosom or heart would be to subvert the very meaning of the writer himself. What are we to understand by the common rendering of belly in Job xv. 35- in which the same word oc- curs in the original ? They conceive mischief and bring forth vanity : And their belly prepareth deceit. So Prov. xviii. 8. The words of the tale-bearer are wounds, And penetrate the inmost recesses of the belly. Again, in the same book, chap. xx. 27. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord Searching all the inmost recesses of the belly. Who does not perceive that, in all these instances, the sacred writers intend the heart, or rather the bosom, and not the belly NOTES. 17? strictly so called, and that the passages should have been thus translated i Again : in Prov. xxii. 17, 18. where the same word occurs in the original, it would have been truly ludicrous to have in- terpreted it in the ordinary manner, and our Bible translators have therefore exchanged the word belly for the circuitous phrase within thee. Yet how much more elegant as well as more correct to have rendered it thus : Bend thine ear, and attend to the words of the wise. And apply thine heart unto my instructions: For pleasant 'shall they be' if thou retain them mthy bosom; They shall, moreover, be ornamental in thy lips. The belli/ may unquestionably be compared to a heap of wheat — but how much more graceful and appropriate is- the simile which applies it to the bosom (each equally overflowing with milky nutriment), and which resembles their supreme points, or palpitating nipples, with the dun-coloured areola which surrounds them, to two twin fawns of the roe! — The whole description indeed is only an iteration of the same ex- quisite passage as it occurs in Idyl V. (•<>), yet varied in one or two of its expressions, consistently with the common usage of our poet, to evince the richness of his fancy: and it is almost demonstrative that the term lilies at least should be applied, in the present case, to the bosom, and not to the belly, since such is its application in the former instance. It is impossible indeed that the common version can be correct, as it necessarily implies that corpulency was fashion- able among the Hebrew ladies, as we are told it is at present among those of Turkey. This in truth has been suspected; N 1T8 NOTES. but with what a deviation from positive fact, as well as with what a libel upon the more elegant taste of the Asiatics, we may readily determine from every existing comparison which relates to their shape and proportion ; and which decisively proves that a graceful slenderness, and majestic height of stature, and not corporeal obesity, were the devout wishes of their heart. The ti ue eastern beauty is therefore represented in the present, and in almost all other Asiatic poems, as being light as a fawn, tall as a cypress or cedar, erect as a palm-tree, slender as an arrow. The elegant slenderness of the beautiful Radha is peculiarly specificated by her poet Jayadeva; and its eulogy constitutes, as I have already observed Idyl II. (9), a part of one of his most frequent choruses or periodic iterations : " Surely thou descendest from heaven, o slender damsel ! attended by a company of youthful goddesses ; and all their beauties are collected in thee." So even a Turkish poet himself, Moham- med Ben Abdallah el Catib, who thus delineates the damsel of his choice: A slender maid, ancorpulent, and light, Whose polished bosom blinds the gazer's sight. And again, in the same gazel : Her waist was slender as the spirt/ cord, NOTES- 179 I repeat, therefore, that the common translation of this exquisite portion of the Song of Songs cannot possibly be correct. Should any critic, however, be too fastidious to ad- mit of the version here contended for in its stead, I would propose to him a total change in the punctuation of the entire passage, by which much of the obscurity and incongruity of the Bible rendering may be dispersed, though it Avill by no means possess the full beauty of the sense offered in 'he pre- sent text. The passage, as it has hitherto been read, is di- vided thus: ■pan »aran norp'w ruio dot ncnv TOs ■•bnti envy "WD Umbilicus tuus, crater rotundus, Non indigebit temperamento. Tuus venter Acervus triticorum circumseptus Liliis. Duo ubera tua Sicut duo hinnuli, gemelli caprea?. Into this accustomed punctuation I would introduce the follow- ing change : tnrt&n px "j-nw rrno D v on nony rpax wn D^Ejy wd 180 NOTES. Umbilicus tuus crater rotundus. Non indigebit temperamento tuus venter. Acervus triticorum, circumseptus Liliis, duo ubera tua ; Sicut duo hinnuli, gemelli capreae. Thus divided, the literal English is as follows; premising that, although the word belly might now be retained, it may be more delicately exchanged for that of womb, which the Hebrew "JDD as well as the Greek HOthitx. implies equally with the former sense : Thy waist is a goblet well-turned ; Thy womb shall not fail in its office ; A heap of wheat, circumvested With lilies, are thy two breasts : ' Soft' as two twins * which are' fawns of the roe. I will only add to this note, that it was customary among the Jews, as appears from Ruth iii. 7. and Hagg. ii. 16, to lay their wheat in heaps when first threshed out and fanned: ■which heaps, as it is ingeniously supposed by Lamy, were sportively strewed over, during the joyous time of harvest, with flowers of different descriptions, and especially with lilies. ( 6 ) Rises majestic as an ivory tower."] This part of the de- scription, like that which precedes it, is also an iteration from Idyl V., in which an accustomed variation is indulged, to prove the luxuriance of the poet's imagination. In Idyl V. the lovely neck of the royal bride is compared to ' the tower NOTES. 181 of David : ' in the present instance the resemblance is to 'a tower of ivory.' Each of the two similes has an appropriate beauty. In the former case she was completely arrayed in the full splendor of her jewels, and beamed with all tiie radiance of the polished armory with which the consummate structure of the tower of David was decorated. In the latter, she is divested of every adventitious ornament, and the native ivory of her neck is alone conspicuous. So Anacreon in his portraiture of Bathyllus, od. xxix, Tov ASovtSos tfapsXQujv But never can thy pencil trace His ivory neck of Paphian grace. (7) Than, by Bath-rahbim, Heshbon' s limpid stream.'] Hesh- bon was originally a city of the Moabites : from this people it was conquered by the Amorites in the reign of Sihon, and fell into the possession of Israel upon their triumph over the Amorite prince. It was admirably supplied with springs, of which that by the gate of Bath-rabbim was probably the most celebrated, and was highly estimated for the fertility and verdure of its plantations. Hence the lamentation of the prophet in consequence of a season of destructive drought; Isa. xvi. S, Q. The plantations of Heshbon are stricken, The vine of Sidmah languisheth. — With the grief of Jazer will I bewail the vine of Sidmah j I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon !— 182 UOTES. For the 'joyous' shout of thy summer-fruits, And of thy harvest, is laid low. ( 8 ) TJi unrivalled tower o'er Lebanon discerned.] The tower of Lebanon, like that of David, was a projection of admira- ble symmetry" and elegance : the beauty of the comparison is therefore obvious. ( 9 ) Thy head is Carmel ] There were two mountains of this name, the one situated in the south of Pales- tine, crowned with a city denominated from itself; the other rising from the shores of the Mediterranean midway between Ptolemais and Dora. Both mountains were celebrated for their fertility : and hence their appellation; the word Carmel in the original Hebrew (*7QHD) implying this idea. Of these mountains the former is unquestionably referred to in tb pre- sent passage ; the verdant and flowery forests and other pictu- resque beauties of which presented perpetual sources of ima- gery to the sacred bards. ( 10 ) In purple decked ] The original is of doubt- ful interpretation ; for it is uncertain whether the word p^}"\ here translated tresses, and which is no where else to be met with, refer to the hair itself, or to those anademata, mrtra*, " ornamental fillets, and playful head-dresses," which were invented as profusely in former times as at present. The Bible version adopts the former idea, ' the hair of thine head is like purple ; ' and much learned labor has been bestowed by seve~ NOTES. 183 ral commentators, who prefer this reading, in endeavouring to prove that the hair most esteemed among the Greeks was tinged of this hue, either entirely or intermixed with black: — in the language of a celebrated critic, introrsus quidem nigras, ad extremum vero rutilantes seu cum fiorido Tyriae conchas colore certantes. Calist. apud Cleric. : " Black towards the roots, but of a deep auburn, or colored with the Tynan murex, towards the extremities:" while Michaclis suspects that the word '^"IK refers rather to the beautiful spiral form of the conch itself than to the color which was obtained from it ; and conceives that the tresses of the royal bride were braided into this elegant figure. Of these different opinions the last appears to me rather an ingenious conceit than a pro- bable conjecture: and, aslhave already observed Idyl VII. ( JI ), that whatever may have been the fact with respect to the Greeks, which is nevertheless still doubtful, the favorite color of the hair in the time of Soloman, as well as in later periods, among the most polished oriental nations, was not purple, but pure jetty black, 1 have inclined to the first interpretation. ( X1 ) Arrest the jnonarch, and his heart enslave.'] 'The king is held captive in their flowing ringlets.' In the original as follows : which in the Bible version is rendered " the king is held in the galleries -," and by Dr. Percy, " Lo ! the king is detained in the antechamber:" while Mr. Green, not knowing what to make of the passage, has unjustifiably omitted it altogether. It is elegantly and poetically rendered by Duport : " The panting 184 NOTES. monarch clings to the walks or galleries of thy lovely form, as though bound to them with fetters." In ambulacris formae inhians tine Rex, ceu ligatus compede, permanet. Michaldis offers another interpretation : " The king is encir- cled in an upright (or erect) turban:" and Houbigant, uniting the present and prior parts of the verse, explains it, cirri capitis tui velut purpura regia, nodo pendens ex laquearibus : " The tresses of thy head are like the royal purple, hanging in fes- toons from the ceilings." There is no doubt, I think, that Houbigant is correct in thus, uniting the two members of the veise; but C^rn must suf- fer much contortion to be forced into the sense of ceilings; its more obvious meaning being outer galleries, when applied to a building; or external ornaments surrounding an object, when employed more generally : in consequence of which Dr. Hodg- son has offered the version introduced into the present text ; observing justly that 'dTT\ the Chaldee radix of QiJXn sj g»i- fies eucurrit', and that hence the expression, when applied to the hair, seems to denote its waving and flowing loosely over the shoulders. I have the more readily embraced this elegant interpretation because it presents an idea in perfect consonance with oriental poetry, which is perpetually representing the tresses of the fair as the nets or toils of Love, or the ambush in which he lies concealed. Thus Jami in his [4-x J i « v.. Jt^w aJ (Joseph and Zuleikha) cap. i. : NOTES. 185 When Love in graceful ringlets plants his toils, The fool he catches, and the wise man foils : But, thence released, the sage his snare discerns, And Reason's lamp with wonted lustre burns- So Rafia in his luxurious delineation of Casmir: -xzpv jjix-* ^^v^ ^jLj cxaI^.^1*^ A thousand secret snares, like links entwined, Lurk in those ringlets waving to the wind. This conceit is not uncommon to modern poets, — though I think those of Spain have evinced more partiality for it than the writers of any other country. Thus the gallant Gar- cilaso : De los cabellos de oro fue texida ha red que fabrico mi sentimiento. 186 NOTES. Those aureat locks the net enwove That bind my suffering soul to Love- in like manner the count de Norona, who promises, in the present day, to lestore to his countrymen no small portion of the classic taste they have long lost : He visto que Cupido Jugaba entre unas hebras, Largas, y finas, donde El amante se enreda. Love I've seen with wanton winglets Sporting mid the fair one's ringlets, Fluent, fine, and like a net For the careless lover set. It becomes me to state, at the same time, that the Syriac version, though it incl ne chiefly to that of Houbigaut, g ves a different sense to the entire passage from any 1 have yet of- fered : and a sense, moreover, so uniform and perspicuous that it would be unpardonable not to notice it : » « . • NOTES. 187 The difference in the Arabic is but trifling; though 1 believe there is no other version that coincides with the Syriac. In the Arabic it occurs thus : L-^jC ^s\\ ^Js b*.J-~o (J^y+Q jA9 y^ The literal rendering is as follows: " Thine erect head is like Carmel: and the braided ti esses of thy head as the royal pur- ple (purple of the king J suspended oxer theatres of entertain- ment;" i.e. " equally refulgent and glossy." The custom here referred to is still common in the East. The gardens and groves of the opulent were screened from the meridian heat of the sun, by hangings of exquisite workmanship, of which mention is made, 2 Kings, xxiii. 7. , and which equally pre- served the verdure of the scenery, and afforded a refreshing shade to those who chose to loiter or stretch themselves be- neath its luxury. The open theatres of the Romans were ele- gantly covered over in the same manner, and for the same purpose, as we learn from Lucretius, iv. 73. Et volgo faciunt id hitea, russaque vela, Et ferrugina, quom magnis intenta theatris, Per males volgata, tiabesque, trementia fluctant. Namque ibi concessum caveat subter, et omnem Scenalem speciem, patrum, matrumque, deorumque, Inficiunt, coguntque suo ' ! ui(are colore : Et, quanta circum mage sunt Lpclusa theatri 188 NOTES. Moenia, tam magis haec intus, perfusa lepore, Omnia confident, conrepta luce diei. This the crowd surveys Oft in the theatre, whose curtains broad, Bedeckt with crimson, yellow, or the tint Of steel cerulean, from their fluted heights Wave tremulous ; and o'er the scene beneath, Each marble statue, and the rising rows Of rank and beauty, fling their tint superb. While, as the walls with ampler shade repel The garish noon-beam, every object round Laughs with a deeper dye, and wears profuse A lovelier lustre ravished from the day. % ( ,3 ) Graceful thy farm the stately palm above.*] The cedar, the cypress, the pine and the palm tree, from their general beauty, and more especially their erect and stately growth, offer a common source of imagery for elegance and dignity of per- son among oriental poets. Thus the son of Sirach, who is a frequent copyist of the royal bard, in his delineation of Wis- dom, Eccles. xxiv. IS, 14.: I was erect as a cedar of Lebanon ; As a cypras upon the mountains of Hermon : I was erect as a, palm-tree in En-gedi. So the enamou red Hafiz : NOTES. 199 Like the reed my heart trembles, in hopes to possess That soft- waving pine-tree, and close its distress. In like manner Khakani: 7 AM Bright is the moon, hut brighter still thy face; The graceful cj/press yields to thee in grace. The Greeks have not been inattentive to this exuberant source of poetic ornament. I have already observed in Idyl II. ('), that Theocritus chose the cypress as most expressive of the form of the beautiful Helen ; and Homer is well known to have compared, in like manner, the beautiful Nausicaa to the very tree selected in our text, Odys. Z. iGi. Tovvov^ai