Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc [8]
verses 6-20 of the 109th Psalm, or the last verse of the 137th Psalm? Would any conclusion of this sort be drawn in any other analogous case? In the course of my lectures on Dramatic Poetry, I, in half a score instances, referred my auditors to the precious volume before me--Shakespeare--and spoke enthusiastically, both in general and with detail of particular beauties, of the plays of Shakespeare, as in all their kinds, and in relation to the purposes of the writer, excellent. Would it have been fair, or according to the common usage and understanding of men, to have inferred an intention on my part to decide the question respecting Titus Andronicus, or the larger portion of the three parts of Henry VI.? Would not every genial mind understand by Shakespeare that unity or total impression comprising and resulting from the thousandfold several and particular emotions of delight, admiration, gratitude excited by his works? But if it be answered, "Aye! but we must not interpret St. Paul as we may and should interpret any other honest and intelligent writer or speaker,"--then, I say, this is the very petitio principii of which I complain.
Still less do the words of our Lord apply against my view. Have I not declared--do I not begin by declaring--that whatever is referred by the sacred penman to a direct communication from God, and wherever it is recorded that the subject of the history had asserted himself to have received this or that command, this or that information or assurance, from a superhuman Intelligence, or where the writer in his own person, and in the character of an historian, relates that the WORD OF THE LORD CAME unto priest, prophet, chieftain, or other individual--have I not declared that I receive the same with full belief, and admit its inappellable authority? Who more convinced than I am--who more anxious to impress that conviction on the minds of others--that the Law and the Prophets speak throughout of Christ? That all the intermediate applications and realisations of the words are but types and repetitions--translations, as it were, from the language of letters and articulate sounds into the language of events and symbolical persons?
And here again let me recur to the aid of analogy. Suppose a life of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law, or a life of Lord Bacon by his chaplain; that a part of the records of the Court of Chancery belonging to these periods were lost; that in Roper's or in Rawley's biographical work there were preserved a series of dicta and judgments attributed to these illustrious Chancellors, many and important specimens of their table discourses, with large extracts from works written by them, and from some that are no longer extant. Let it be supposed, too, that there are no grounds, internal or external, to doubt either the moral, intellectual, or circumstantial competence of the biographers. Suppose, moreover, that wherever the opportunity existed of collating their documents and quotations with the records and works still preserved, the former were found substantially correct and faithful, the few differences in nowise altering or disturbing the spirit and purpose of the paragraphs in which they were found; and that of what was not collatable, and to which no test ab extra could be applied, the far larger part bore witness in itself of the same spirit and origin; and that not only by its characteristic features, but by its surpassing excellence, it rendered the chances of its having had any other author than the giant-mind, to whom the biographer ascribes it, small indeed! Now, from the nature and objects of my pursuits, I have, we will suppose, frequent occasion to refer to one or other of these works; for example, to Rawley's Dicta et Facta Francisci de Verulam. At one time I might refer to the work in some such words as--"Remember what Francis of Verulam said or judged;" or, "If you believe not me, yet believe Lord Bacon." At another time I might take the running title of the volume, and at another the name of the biographer;--"Turn to your Rawley! HE will set
Still less do the words of our Lord apply against my view. Have I not declared--do I not begin by declaring--that whatever is referred by the sacred penman to a direct communication from God, and wherever it is recorded that the subject of the history had asserted himself to have received this or that command, this or that information or assurance, from a superhuman Intelligence, or where the writer in his own person, and in the character of an historian, relates that the WORD OF THE LORD CAME unto priest, prophet, chieftain, or other individual--have I not declared that I receive the same with full belief, and admit its inappellable authority? Who more convinced than I am--who more anxious to impress that conviction on the minds of others--that the Law and the Prophets speak throughout of Christ? That all the intermediate applications and realisations of the words are but types and repetitions--translations, as it were, from the language of letters and articulate sounds into the language of events and symbolical persons?
And here again let me recur to the aid of analogy. Suppose a life of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law, or a life of Lord Bacon by his chaplain; that a part of the records of the Court of Chancery belonging to these periods were lost; that in Roper's or in Rawley's biographical work there were preserved a series of dicta and judgments attributed to these illustrious Chancellors, many and important specimens of their table discourses, with large extracts from works written by them, and from some that are no longer extant. Let it be supposed, too, that there are no grounds, internal or external, to doubt either the moral, intellectual, or circumstantial competence of the biographers. Suppose, moreover, that wherever the opportunity existed of collating their documents and quotations with the records and works still preserved, the former were found substantially correct and faithful, the few differences in nowise altering or disturbing the spirit and purpose of the paragraphs in which they were found; and that of what was not collatable, and to which no test ab extra could be applied, the far larger part bore witness in itself of the same spirit and origin; and that not only by its characteristic features, but by its surpassing excellence, it rendered the chances of its having had any other author than the giant-mind, to whom the biographer ascribes it, small indeed! Now, from the nature and objects of my pursuits, I have, we will suppose, frequent occasion to refer to one or other of these works; for example, to Rawley's Dicta et Facta Francisci de Verulam. At one time I might refer to the work in some such words as--"Remember what Francis of Verulam said or judged;" or, "If you believe not me, yet believe Lord Bacon." At another time I might take the running title of the volume, and at another the name of the biographer;--"Turn to your Rawley! HE will set