I daresay, after all, that the best way is not to bother a boy
too early and overmuch with history; that the best way is to let
him ramp at first through the Scriptures even as he might through
"The Arabian Nights": to let him take the books as they come,
merely indicating, for instance, that Job is a great poem, the
Psalms great lyrics, the story of Ruth a lovely idyll, the Song
of Songs the perfection of an Eastern love-poem. Well and what
then? He will certainly get less of "The Cotter's Saturday Night"
into it, and certainly more of the truth of the East. There he
will feel the whole splendid barbaric story for himself: the
flocks of Abraham and Laban: the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt
for corn: the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the
gleaning, and Rispah beneath the gibbet: Sisera bowing in
weariness: Saul--great Saul--by the tent-prop with the jewels in
his turban:
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart.
Or consider--to choose one or two pictures out of the tremendous
procession--consider Michal, Saul's royal daughter: how first she
is given in marriage to David to be a snare for him; how loving
him she saves his life, letting him down from the window and
dressing up an image on the bed in his place: how, later, she is
handed over to another husband Phaltiel, how David demands her
back, and she goes:
And her husband (Phaltiel) went with her along weeping
behind her to Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, Go, return.
And he returned.
Or, still later, how the revulsion takes her, Saul's daughter, as
she sees David capering home before the ark, and how her
affection had done with this emotional man of the ruddy
countenance, so prone to weep in his bed:
And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David,
Michal Saul's daughter--