CHAPTER XI. ALLUSIONS TO HOLY SCRIPTURE AND IMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL WRITERS. THE Bishop of St. Andrews, in a little book on "Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible," has collected together all the passages from his writings in which allusions are made to Holy Scripture. A not less interesting collection might be made from the works of Tennyson; and in these days, when men are quarrelling in no very Christian mood about the letters of a book of which they too often forget the spirit, it might be instructive to remark the kind of interpretation our greatest living poet gives us of it. There might be more teaching for us, more illumination might be thrown on our Bible, and the way we ought to read it, by these passages, than by hundreds of conventional sermons, purporting to explain the Scriptures, but too often darkening counsel by words without knowledge.1 It would also be interesting to trace the influence of the great poets of antiquity on Tennyson's writings: of his classical scholarship abundant proofs might be adduced. In his earliest volume there are quotations from Cicero, Claudian, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, Sallust, Tacitus, Terence, and Virgil; the incidental allusions. to ancient history and mythology in his later works are numerous, and his two translations from the eighth and Among many others I will indicate the passages on Adam and Eve, in Lady Clara Vere de Vere, in The Day Dream, § L'Envoi, in In Memoriam, XXIV. 2, and in Maud, xvIII. 3; on Jacob, in the poem To (Poems, 1830); on Lot's Wife, in The Princess, p. 132; on Sinai, In Memoriam, xcvi. 5-6; on Joshua, in Locksley Hall; on Gideon, in the Sonnet on Buonaparte (Poems, 1833); on Jephtha's daughter, in A Dream of Fair Women; on Elijah, in the first version of The Palace of Art; on David, in Merlin and Vivien (Idylls of the King); on Solomon, in The Princess, p. 46; on Hezekiah, in Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue; on Jonah's gourd, in The Princess, p. 89; on Vashti, in The Princess; on Esther, Idylls of the King, p. 39; on Lazarus and Mary, In Memoriam, XXXI., XXXII.; on Herod, in The Palace of Art; on Stephen, in The Two Voices; on St. Paul, In Memoriam, cxx. 1. The attentive student of Tennyson will be able to add to these many other passages of equal beauty and significance. eighteenth books of the "Iliad" display a critical knowledge of Greek, rare even among professed scholars. A few allusions to the Greek and Roman writers, together with one or two imitations of more modern poets, I have collected here. IMITATIONS OF AND ALLUSIONS TO CLAS SICAL AND OTHER WRITERS. "I called him Crichton, for he seem'd All perfect, finish'd to the finger-nail.” Edwin Morris, or The Lake. 66 -But fetch the wine, Arrange the board and brim the glass; "Bring in great logs and let them lie, To make a solid core of heat In Memoriam, cvi. 4-5. "Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco Deprome quadrimum Sabina." Hor. Lib. 1. Carm. 9. "Shall not Love to me, As in the Latin song we learnt at school, Sneeze out a full God-bless-you right and left?” Edwin Morris, or The Lake. "Hoc ut dixit, Amor, sinistram ut ante, Dextram sternuit approbationem." Catull. Carm. XLV. 66 6 -O brook,' he says, O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme, 'Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? replies: ," &c. 'I come from haunts of coot and hern,' The idea of this song of the Brook is probably taken from a German lyric, "Das Bächlein “Du Bächlein, silberhell und klar, Du eilst vorüber immerdar, * : Wo kommst du her? Wo gehst du hin? "The Dying Swan." Compare this poem with the following passages from Shakespeare and from Plato : -'Tis strange that death should sing. "I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, SHAKESPEARE, King John, Act v. Sc. 7. |