Of all writers known to me, however, none is so sympathetic to Koheleth as Dr. Plumptre, in whose pleasing article in Smith's Dictionary we have the germ of the most interesting commentary in the language. A still wider popularity was given to the Herder-Plumptre theory by Dr. Stanley, who eloquently describes Ecclesiastes as 'an interchange of voices, higher and lower, within a single human soul.' 'It is like,' he continues, 'the perpetual strophe and antistrophe of Pascal's Pensées. But it is more complicated, more entangled, than any of these, in proportion as the circumstances from which it grows are more perplexing, as the character which it represents is vaster, and grander, and more distracted.'[1] In his later work, Dr. Plumptre aptly compares the 'Two Voices' of our own poet (strictly, he remarks, there are three voices in Ecclesiastes), in which, as in Koheleth, though more decidedly, the voice of faith at last prevails over that of pessimism.[2] I fear, however, that Dr. Plumptre's generous impulse carries him farther than sober criticism can justify. The aim of writing an 'ideal biography' closing with the 'victory of faith' seems to me to have robbed his pen of that point which, though sometimes dangerous, is yet indispensable to the critic. The theory of the 'alternate voices,' of which Dr. Plumptre is, not the first,[3] but the most eloquent advocate, seems to me to be an offspring of the modern spirit. It is so very like their own case—the dual nature[4] which a series of refined critics has attributed to Koheleth, that they involuntarily invest Koheleth with the peculiar qualities of modern seekers after truth. To them, in a different sense from M. Renan's, Ecclesiastes is 'un livre aimable,' just as Marcus Aurelius and Omar Khayyâm are the favourite companions of those who prefer more consistent thinking.
Certainly the author of Ecclesiastes might well be satisfied with the interest so widely felt in his very touching confidences. It is the contents, of course, which attract so many
