On The Art of Reading Part 20

Else G.o.d is not righteous.

They are statuesque, as the drama is static. The speeches follow one another, rising and falling, in rise and fall magnificently and deliberately eloquent. Not a limb is seen to move, unless it be when job half rises from the dust in sudden scorn of their conventions:

No doubt but _ye_ are the people, And wisdom shall die with you!

or again

Will ye speak unrighteously for G.o.d, And talk deceitfully for him?

Will _ye_ respect _his_ person?

Will _ye_ contend for G.o.d?

Yet--so great is this man, who has not renounced and will not renounce G.o.d, that still and ever he clamours for more knowledge of Him. Still getting no answer, he lifts up his hands and calls the great Oath of Clearance; in effect 'If I have loved gold overmuch, hated mine enemy, refused the stranger my tent, truckled to public opinion':

If my land cry out against me, And the furrows thereof weep together; If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life: Let thistles grow instead of wheat, And c.o.c.kle instead of barley.

With a slow gesture he covers his face:

The words of Job are ended.

VII

They are ended: even though at this point (when the debate seems to be closed) a young Aramaean Arab, Elihu, who has been loitering around and listening to the controversy, bursts in and delivers his young red-hot opinions. They are violent, and at the same time quite raw and priggish. Job troubles not to answer: the others keep a chilling silence. But while this young man rants, pointing skyward now and again, we see, we feel--it is most wonderfully conveyed--as clearly as if indicated by successive stage-directions, a terrific thunder-storm gathering; a thunder-storm with a whirlwind. It gathers; it is upon them; it darkens them with dread until even the words of Elihu dry on his lips:

If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up.

It breaks and blasts and confounds them; and out of it the Lord speaks.

Now of that famous and marvellous speech, put by the poet into the mouth of G.o.d, we may say what may be said of all speeches put by man into the mouth of G.o.d. We may say, as of the speeches of the Archangel in "Paradise Lost" that it is argument, and argument, by its very nature, admits of being answered. But, if to make G.o.d talk at all be anthropomorphism, here is anthropomorphism at its very best in its effort to reach to G.o.d.

There is a hush. The storm clears away; and in this hush the voice of the Narrator is heard again, p.r.o.nouncing the Epilogue.

Job has looked in the face of G.o.d and reproached him as a friend reproaches a friend. Therefore his captivity was turned, and his wealth returned to him, and he begat sons and daughters, and saw his sons' sons unto the fourth generation. So Job died, being old and full of years.

VIII

Structurally a great poem; historically a great poem; philosophically a great poem; so rendered for us in n.o.ble English diction as to be worthy in any comparison of diction, structure, ancestry, thought! Why should we not study it in our English School, if only for purpose of comparison? I conclude with these words of Lord Latymer:

There is nothing comparable with it except the "Prometheus Bound" of Aeschylus. It is eternal, illimitable ... its scope is the relation between G.o.d and Man. It is a vast liberation, a great gaol-delivery of the spirit of Man; nay, rather a great Acquittal.

[Footnote 1: It is fair to say that Myers cancelled the Damascus stanza in his final edition.]

LECTURE XI

OF SELECTION

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1918

I

Let us hark back, Gentlemen, to our original problem, and consider if our dilatory way have led us to some glimpse of a practical solution.

We may re-state it thus: a.s.suming it to be true, as men of Science a.s.sure us, that the weight of this planet remains constant, and is to-day what it was when mankind carelessly laid it on the shoulders of Atlas; that nothing abides but it goes, that nothing goes but in some form or other it comes back; you and I may well indulge a wonder what reflections upon this astonis.h.i.+ng fact our University Librarian, Mr Jenkinson, takes to bed with him. A copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom is--or I had better say, should be--deposited with him. Putting aside the question of what he has done to deserve it, he must surely wonder at times from what other corners of the earth Providence has been at pains to collect and compact the ingredients of the latest new volume he handles for a moment before fondly committing it to the cellars.

'Locked up, not lost.'

Or, to take it in reverse--When the great library of Alexandria went up in flames, doubtless its ashes awoke an appreciable and almost immediate energy in the crops of the Nile Delta. The more leisurable process of desiccation, by which, under modern storage, the components of a modern novel are released to fresh unions and activities admits, as Sir Thomas Browne would say, a wide solution, and was just the question to tease that good man.

Can we not hear him discussing it? 'To be but pyramidally extant is a fallacy in duration.... To burn the bones of the King of Edom for lime seems no irrational ferity: but to store the back volumes of Mr Bottomley's "John Bull" a pa.s.sionate prodigality.'

II

Well, whatever the perplexities of our Library we may be sure they will never break down that tradition of service, help and courtesy which is, among its fine treasures, still the first. But we have seen that Mr Jenkinson's perplexities are really but a parable of ours: that the question, What are we to do with all these books acc.u.mulating in the world? really _is_ a question: that their mere acc.u.mulation really _does_ heap up against us a barrier of such enormous and brute ma.s.s that the stream of human culture must needs be choked and spread into marsh unless we contrive to pipe it through. That a great deal of it is meant to help--that even the most of it is well intentioned--avails not against the mere physical obstacle of its ma.s.s. If you consider an Athenian gentleman of the 5th century B.C. connecting (as I always preach here) his literature with his life, two things are bound to strike you: the first that he was a man of leisure, somewhat disdainful of trade and relieved of menial work by a number of slaves; the second, that he was surprisingly unenc.u.mbered with books. You will find in Plato much about reciters, actors, poets, rhetoricians, pleaders, sophists, public orators and refiners of language, but very little indeed about books. Even the library of Alexandria grew in a time of decadence and belonged to an age not his. Says Jowett in the end:

He who approaches him in the most reverent spirit shall reap most of the fruit of his wisdom; he who reads him by the light of ancient commentators will have the least understanding of him.

We see him [Jowett goes on] with the eye of the mind in the groves of the Academy, or on the banks of the Ilissus, or in the streets of Athens, alone or walking with Socrates, full of those thoughts which have since become the common possession of mankind. Or we may compare him to a statue hid away in some temple of Zeus or Apollo, no longer existing on earth, a statue which has a look as of the G.o.d himself. Or we may once more imagine him following in another state of being the great company of heaven which he beheld of old in a vision. So, 'partly trifling but with a certain degree of seriousness,' we linger around the memory of a world which has pa.s.sed away.

Yes, 'which has pa.s.sed away,' and perhaps with no token more evident of its decease than the sepulture of books that admiring generations have heaped on it!

III

In a previous lecture I referred you to the beautiful opening and the yet more beautiful close of the "Phaedrus." Let us turn back and refresh ourselves with that Dialogue while we learn from it, in somewhat more of detail, just what a book meant to an Athenian: how fresh a thing it was to him and how little irksome.

Phaedrus has spent his forenoon listening to a discourse by the celebrated rhetorician Lysias on the subject of Love, and is starting to cool his head with a stroll beyond the walls of the city, when he encounters Socrates, who will not let him go until he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias regaled him, or, better still, the ma.n.u.script, 'which I suspect you are carrying there in your left hand under your cloak.' So they bend their way beside Ilissus towards a tall plane tree, seen in the distance.

Having reached it, they recline.

'By Hera,' says Socrates, 'a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents! This clearing, with the agnus castus in high bloom and fragrant, and the stream beneath the tree so gratefully cool to our feet! Judging from the ornaments and statues, I think this spot must be sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs. And the breeze, how deliciously charged with balm! and all summer's murmur in the air, shrilled by the chorus of the gra.s.shoppers! But the greatest charm is this knoll of turf,--positively a pillow for the head. My dear Phaedrus, you have been a delectable guide.'

'What an incomprehensible being you are, Socrates,' returns Phaedrus. 'When you are in the country, as you say, you really are like some stranger led about by a guide. Upon my word, I doubt if you ever stray beyond the gates save by accident.'

'Very true, my friend: and I hope you will forgive me for the reason--which is, that I love knowledge, and my teachers are the men who dwell in the city, not the trees or country scenes. Yet I do believe you have found a spell to draw me forth, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round Attica and over the wide world.'

So they recline and talk, looking aloft through that famous pure sky of Attica, mile upon mile transparent; and their discourse (preserved to us) is of Love, and seems to belong to that atmosphere, so clear it is and luminously profound. It ends with the cool of the day, and the two friends arise to depart.

Socrates looks about him.

'Should we not, before going, offer up a prayer to these local deities?'

'By all means,' Phaedrus agrees.

_Socrates_ (praying): 'Beloved Pan, and all ye other G.o.ds who haunt this place, grant me beauty in the inward soul, and that the outward and inward may be at one! May I esteem the wise to be the rich; and may I myself have that quant.i.ty of gold which a temperate man, and he only, can carry.... Anything more? That prayer, I think, is enough for me.'

_Phaedrus._ 'Ask the same for me, Socrates. Friends, methinks, should have all things in common.'

_Socrates._ 'Amen, then.... Let us go.'