fail to be struck with the ingenuity with which the changes are rung on its main theme. So ingenious, indeed, does Job shew himself in enumerating the details of his misery and in imprecating curses upon them, that, at first, we are tempted to think his strain unnatural, artificial. But even a little thought and reading, if we cannot fall back on experience, will convince us that the picture is true to life. Every loving heart is thus ingenious in setting forth the grief occasioned by sorrows which touch it home. It takes a strange, and sometimes a fierce, delight in calling up all circumstances that deepen its sense of loss and swell the current of passionate emotion, in refusing all alleviations, in repelling all hope of relief, in converting any consolations which may be offered it into food for new regrets and a deeper despair. All literature is full, and notably the Greek tragedies, not only of sentiments akin to those of Job, but of equally ingenious and elaborate iterations of them and variations upon them. Sophocles, for example,states in the briefest sharpest form the ruling thoughts of the two first strophes in Job's "curse," and in stating them he does but express a very general sentiment of the ancient heathen world: "Not to be born is best in every way; once born, by far the better lot is then at once to go back whence we came." (Œd. Col. 1225.) For similar expansions and elaborations in the expression of grief, for this long harping on one sad string, we need not go beyond Shakespeare, who, indeed, in more than one of his finest passages, seems to have had this Chapter in his eye. Thus, for instance, in "King John," when Philip announces his pact of peace with England, and declares, The yearly course that brings this day about Constance replies: A wicked day, and not a holy day! What hath this day deserved? what hath it done, Among the high tides in the calendar? Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change! The passage is full of echoes from the Curse of Job; and the line, "Nay, rather turn this day out of the week," is but a paraphrase of the Verse, "Let it not rejoice among the days of the year, nor come into the number of the months." So, again, when bereft of Arthur, "her fair son," and urged; to patience by the King who had betrayed her, Constance breaks out into an invocation of death no less elaborate, though it is much more coarse than that of Job, and plays with the images suggested by her excited fancy in the same lingering detail;—an invocation, moreover, which can hardly fail to remind us of Job's description of himself as longing for death, and searching for it more than for hid treasure, as one who would be blithe and exceeding glad to find a grave, O amiable lovely death! Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, And I will kiss thy detestable bones, And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows, And ring these fingers with thy household worms, And be a carrion monster like thyself: Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest, And buss thee as thy wife. Misery's love, O come to me! Of the moral attitude assumed by Job when, at last, he gives his sorrow words, we need only observe that, though he neither lets go his integrity nor renounces God, he is not quite the man who said, "Shall we accept the good from God, and shall we not accept the evil?" He does not as yet charge God foolishly, indeed; he still retains so much reverence that he will not even name God, except once, and that passingly. But he indulges in more than one impatient fling at the God whom 1 But," i.e. "save," or "except." he will not openly accuse. condemned him to live when he longs to die, that it is He who has so fenced him in that he cannot stir, cannot even see a path out of his miseries and perplexities. Already, and before the provocations of his Friends drive him so to assert `his own righteousness as to impugn the justice of God, we can see that his patience is beginning to give way, that his woe is heavier than he can bear. He feels that it is God who has SECTION III. THE FIRST COLLOQUY. CHAPTERS IV.-XIV. At this point we pass into the Poem proper. It opens with three colloquies between Job and his Friends. In form these colloquies closely resemble each other. Each of the three Friends speaks in each of them; Eliphaz first, then Bildad, then Zophar -save in the last colloquy, when Zophar, having nothing more to say, wisely holds his peace and each of the three is separately answered by Job. But while similar in form, in spirit they differ widely. At the outset the Friends are content to hint their doubts of Job, their suspicion that he has fallen into some secret and heinous sin, in general or ambiguous terms; but, as the argument rolls on, they are irritated by the boldness with which he rebuts their charges and asserts his integrity, and grow ever more candid, and harsh, and angry in their denunciation of his guilt. With fine truth to nature the Poet depicts Job as passing through an entirely opposite process. At first, while they content themselves with hints and "ambiguous givings-out," with insinuating in general terms that he must have sinned, and set themselves to win him to confession and repentance, he is exasperated beyond all endurance, and challenges the justice both of man and of God; for it is these general charges, these covert and undefined insinuations of some "occulted guilt," which, because it is impossible to meet them, most of all vex and perturb the soul. But as, in their rising anger, they exchange ambiguous hints for open definite charges, by a fine natural revulsion Job grows even more calm and reasonable; for definite charges can be definitely met: why, then, should he any longer vex and distress his spirit? More and more he turns away from the loud foolish outcries of his Friends, and addresses himself to God even when he seems to speak to them. So often as we listen to him, indeed, we must remember that the great controversy is not between him and them, but between him and God. God is even more in his thoughts than they are; and even while answering them he is really expostulating with God. There is more logic in his replies to his three interlocutors than we commonly suppose; but a logical refutation of their arguments is by no means Job's first aim. What really dominates and engrosses him is the desire to see the end of the Lord" in so terribly mishandling him. If we would do justice to Job we must stedfastly bear in mind that, behind the three antagonists whom he could see and hear, and who were only too ready to speak, there stood an invisible Opponent who remained obstinately dumb to his most impassioned expostulations and outcries, and from whom he was throughout seeking to compel a response. And, on the other hand, if we would do justice to the Friends, we must remember that, in declaring the doom of the wicked-and on this point they ring an endless series of changes-they had Job in their eye even when they did not choose to name him; that, on the whole and in the main, what they affirm of the retributions which dog the steps of guilt is true: their mistake being that, in the teeth of all the facts of the case, they assume the guilt of Job, having indeed no other basis for their assumption than the logical fallacy, that since the wicked suffer, therefore all who suffer are wicked. The dogmatic prepossessions of the three Friends, which shape and penetrate all they say, may be reduced to three. First and chiefly, God is just: and therefore the good and ill of human life must be exactly apportioned to demerit and desert-good coming to the good, and evil to the evil. Secondly and this is a mere corollary of the first-the extraordinary evils which have accumulated on you, Job, prove that you must have been guilty of some exceptional and enormous sin, hidden from men perhaps, but known to and |