CHAPTER VI.
KOHELETH'S 'PORTRAIT OF OLD AGE;' THE EPILOGUE, ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN.
We have now arrived at the conclusion of the meditations of
our much-tried thinker. It is strongly poetic in colouring;
but when we compare it with the grandly simple overture of
the book (i. 4-8), can we help confessing to a certain degree
of disappointment? It is the allegory which spoils it for
modern readers, and so completely spoils it, that attempts
have been sometimes made to expel the allegorical element
altogether. That the first two verses are free from allegory,
is admitted, and it is barely possible that the sixth verse may be
so too—may be, that is, figurative rather than allegorical.
Poets have delighted in these figures; how fitly does one of
them adorn the lament in Woolner's My Beautiful Lady,—
Broken the golden bowl Which held her hallowed soul!
The most doubtful part, then, is the description in vv. 3-5. I am not writing a commentary, and will venture to express an opinion in favour of the allegorists (it is not fair to call them satirically the anatomists).[1] It is true that there is much variety of opinion among them; this only shows that the allegory is sometimes far-fetched, not that it is a vain imagination. Can there be anything more obscure than the canzoni
- ↑ The title only belongs to pre-critical writers like Dr. John Smith, who, in his Portrait of Old Age (1666), sought to show that Solomon was thoroughly acquainted with recent anatomical discoveries. In revising my sheets, I observe that even such a fairminded student as Dean Bradley speaks of 'the long-drawn anatomical explanations of men who would replace with a dissector's report a painter's touch, a poet's melody.' But the Dean only refers to ver. 6; I understand his language, though I think him biassed by poetic associations.
