resemblance in them. "As a rolling thing before the
whirlwind,"--"as when a standard-bearer fainteth"--"as the rushing of
mighty waters,"--"as gleaning grapes when the vintage is done,"--"as a
dream,"--"as the morning dew,"--"as"--but the whole book is a garden of
similitudes; they are "like the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude."
It is, however, too true, that often-times the baldness of translation
deprives poetry, Eastern especially, of its fervour, its glow, its gush,
and blush of beauty: to quote Aristotle's example, it too frequently
converts the rosy-fingered Morn into the red-fisted; and so the poetry
of dawning-day, with its dew-dropped flowers, its healthy refreshment,
its "rosy-fingers" drawing aside the star-spangled curtain of night,
falls at once into the low notion of a foggy morning, and is suggestive
only of red-fisted Abigails struggling continuously with the deposits of
a London atmosphere. In like manner, (for all this has not been an
episode beside the purpose,) many a roughly rendered similitude of
Scripture might be advantageously vindicated; local diversities and
Orientalisms might be explained in such a treatise: for example, in the
'_Canticles_,' the "beloved among the sons," is compared with an
apple-tree among the trees of the wood: now, amongst us, an apple-tree
is stunted and unsightly, and always degenerates in a wood; whereas the
Eastern apple-tree, probably one of the citron class, (to be more
correct,) may be a magnificent monarch of the forest. "Camphire," to a
Western mind, is not suggestive of the sweetest perfume, and perhaps
the word may be amended into the marginal "cypress," or cedar, or some
other: as "a bottle in the smoke," loses its propriety for an image,
until shown to be a wine-skin. "Who is this that cometh out of the
wilderness, like pillars of smoke?"--probably intending the
swiftly-rushing columns of _sand_ flying on the wings of the whirlwind.
"Thine eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon," might well be softened
into fountains--tearful, calm, resplendent, and rejoicing; and in
showing the poetic fitness of comparing the bride to a landscape, it
might clearly be set out how emblematic of Jewish millennial prosperity
and of Christian universality, that bride was; while comparisons of a
like un-European imagery might be taken from other Eastern poets, who
will not scruple to compare that rare beauty, a straight Grecian nose,
with a tower, and admire above all things