Spanish flies are most largely used as an external application, being but rarely taken internally. They are applied as a topical stimulant for indolent ulcers, as rubefacients, and especially for blistering in inflammatory diseases. Taken internally in the form of tincture, they have been used in dropsy, in paralysis of the bladder, and for pro ducing aphrodisiacal effects. They have also been employed in lepra and other skin diseases ; and they have had a reputation in hydrophobia and other nervous disorders which
they do not deserve.A very large number of other insects belonging tj the family CantJiaridce possess blistering properties owing to their containing cantharidin. Of these the most remark able is the Telini fly of India (Jfylabris cicJtorii), the range of which extends from Italy and Greece through Egypt and Central Asia as far as China. It is very rich in cantharidin, yielding fully twice as much as ordinary cantharides. Several green-coloured beetles are, on account of their colour, used as adulterants to cantharides, but they are very easily detected by examination with the eye, or, if powdered, with the microscope.
CANTICLES. The book of Canticles, or the Song of Solomon, is called in Hebrew The Song of Songs (that i < (he choicest of songs), or, according to the full title which stands as the first verse of the book, The choicest of the songs of Solomon. In the Western versions the book holds the third place among the so-called Solomonic writings, following Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. In Hebrew Bibles it stands among the Megillot, the five books of the llagiographa which have a prominent place in the Syna gogue service. In printed Bibles and in German MSS. it is the first of these because it is read at the Passover, which is the first great feast of the sacred year of the Jews. Spanish MSS., however, place it second among the Megillot, givir.g the precedence to Ruth.
No part of the Bible has called forth a greater diversity of opinions than the Song of Solomon, and that for two reasons. In the first place, the book holds so unique a position in the Old Testament, that the general analogy of Hebrew literature is a very inadequate key to the verbal difficulties, the artistic structure, and the general conception and purpose of the poem. In point of language it is most nearly akin to parts of the Bible which, like the song of Deborah, belong to Northern Israel, agreeing with these not only in individual traits but in the general characteristic that the departures from ordinary Hebrew are almost always in the direction of Aramaic. Many forms unique in Biblical Hebrew are at once explained by the Aramaic dialects, but not a few are still obscure. The philological difficulties of the book are, however, less fundamental than those which lie in the unique character of the Song of Solomon in point of artistic form, and in the whole atmosphere of thought and feeling in which it moves. Even in these respects it is not absolutely isolated. Parallels to the peculiar imagery may be found in the, book of Hosea, in a few passages of the earlier chap ters of Proverbs, and above all in the 45th Psalm ; but such links of union to the general mass of the Old Testa ment literature are too slight to be of material assistance in the solution of the literary problem of the book. Here, again, as in the lexical difficulties already referred to, we are tempted or compelled to argue from the distant and insecure analogy of other Eastern literatures, or are thrown back upon traditions of uncertain origin and ambiguous authority.
The power of tradition has been the second great source of confusion of opinion about the Song of Solomon. To tradition we owe the title, which apparently indicates Solomon as the author and not merely as the subject of the book. The authority of titles in the Old Testament (see Bible) is often questionable, and in the present case it is certain on linguistic grounds that the title is not from the hand that wrote the poem ; while to admit that it gives a correct account of the authorship is to cut away at one stroke all the most certain threads of connection between the book and our historical knowledge of the Old Testament people and literature. We have already noted that, when judged by comparison with other parts of the Bible and by its Aramaic texture, the dialect points to a northern origin of the poem. It is to Northern Israel, moreover, that the whole local colouring and scenery belong ; so that even those commentators who still make Solomon the hero and author of the book are compelled to represent him as laying aside his kingly pomp to wander with a peasant girl through the gardens and forests of Galilee. The untenableness of this last attempt to rescue the authority of the title will appear as we proceed.
in favour of an allegorical interpretation, that is, of the view that from verse to verse the Song sets forth the history of a spiritual and not merely of an earthly love. To apply such an exegesis to Canticles is to violate one of the first principles of reasonable interpretation. True allegories are never without internal marks of their allegorical design. The language of symbol is not so perfect that a long chain of spiritual ideas can be developed without the use of a single spiritual word or phrase ; and even were this possible it would be false art in the allegorist to hide away his sacred thoughts behind a screen of sensuous and erotic imagery, so complete and beautiful in itself as to give no suggestion that it is only the vehicle of a deeper sense. Apart from tradition no one, in the present state of exegesis, would dream of allegorizing poetry which in its natural sense is so full of purpose and meaning, so apt in sentiment, and so perfect in imagery as the lyrics of Canticles. We are not at liberty to seek for allegory except where the natural sense is incomplete. This is not the case in the Song of Solomon. On the contrary, every form of the allegorical interpretation which has been devised carries its own con demnation in the fact that it takes away from the artistic unity of the poem and breaks natural sequences of thought.[1] The allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon had its rise in the very same conditions which forced a deeper sense, now universally discarded, upon so many other parts of scripture. Yet strangely enough there is no evidence that the Jews of Alexandria extended to the book their favourite methods of interpretation. The arguments which have been adduced to prove .that the LXX. translation implies an allegorical exegesis are inadequate ; and Philo does not mention the book at all. Nor is there any allusion to Canticles in the New Testament. The first trace of an allegorical view identifying Israel with the spouse appears to be in the Fourth Book of Ezra, near the close of the 1st Christian century (v. 24, 26 ; vii. 26). Up to this time the canonicity of the Canticles was not unquestioned; and the final decision as to the sanctity of the book, so energetically carried through by 11. Akiba, when ha declared that " the whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel ; for all the scriptures (or Hagiographa) are holy, but the Canticles most holy," must be understood as being at the same
time a victory of the allegorical interpretation over the
- ↑ An argument for the allegorical interpretation has been often drawn from Mahometan mysticism, from the poems of Hafiz, and the songs still sung by dervishes. See Jones, Poeseos Asiaticce Com., pt. iii. cap. 9; Rosenmiiller s remarks on Lo wili sPrcelectio xxxi., and Lane s Modern Egyptians, ch. xxiv. But there is no true analogy between the Old Testament and the pantheistic mysticism of Islam, and there is every reason to believe that, where the allegory takes a form really analogous to Canticles, tlie original sense of these songs was purely erotic.
