lemnly to declare one to be a king, and to anoint a king, in the
Eastern parts, were but synonymies[17]." The elegant allusion to the
olive tree, "honouring both God and man" with its "_fatness_" or oil,
should not escape us, as corroborating this conjecture. This poem is
dated by the learned antiquary "about 200 years before the beginning of
the [Jewish] kingdom in Saul."

We have several instances in Scripture of the inauguration of the Jewish
kings by anointing, and of its being performed at the express command of
God[18]--a circumstance which was held to communicate an official
sanctity to their persons, their attire, &c. The noble David twice
spares the life of his bitterest enemy, Saul, upon this
ground.--"Jehovah shall smite him," he says; "or his day shall come to
die; or he shall descend into the battle, and perish"--"Who can stretch
forth his hand against Jehovah's anointed, and be guiltless[19]?"--and
he finely alludes to the general reverence of his country for these
appointments, when he exclaims, in his memorable ode over his fallen
rival, "The shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of
Saul, as though it had not been anointed with oil!"

With the spread of Christianity, or rather of the papal domination, over
the kingdoms of western Europe, came the adoption of this rite into the
coronation ceremonies of its princes. It at once increased the influence
of the church, and surrounded the monarch with a popular veneration. The
three distinct anointings yet retained (_i.e._ on the head, breast, and
hands or arms,) were said by Becket to indicate glory, holiness, and
fortitude: another prelate, one of the greatest scholars of his age,
assured our Henry III., that as all former sins were washed away in
baptism, "so also by this unction[20]."

"Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an ANOINTED king,"--

Richard II. is made to say, by Shakspeare, on the invasion of
Bolingbroke. Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to Marmion, speaks of a
singular ancient consecration of the kings of arms in Scotland, who seem
to have had a regular coronation down to the middle of the sixteenth
century,--only that they were anointed with _wine_ instead of oil[21].

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: Sandford does not omit to notice, that the dean of
Westminster, assisted by the prebendaries, duly performed this office
for the coronation of James II., "early in the morning."]

[Footnote 16: Vide Ju