"My beloved is white and ruddy,
* * * * *
His locks are bushy, and black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks.
* * * * *
His aspect is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars,
His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.
This is my beloved, and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem."
Do you think that the daughters of Jerusalem would be so tactless as to
reply that they had seen a number of handsome youths with bushy black
hair and languishing eyes and fine forms, and that they represented an
admirable type of manly beauty? That would be to confess that they had
not seen the beloved, for he was unlike all others. "My beloved is
marked out with a banner among ten thousand."
The knowledge that is required is not contained in a catalogue of the
points in which he resembles the nine thousand nine hundred and
ninety-nine; it is a recognition of the incommunicable grace that is his
own.
Even in ordinary social intercourse the most delicate compliment is to
treat the person with whom you are talking as an exception to all rules.
That he is a clergyman or a commercial traveler tells you nothing of his
inner life. That is left for him to reveal, if it so pleases him. Even a
king grows tired of being addressed in terms appropriate to royalty. It
is a relief to travel incognito, and he is flattered when he is assured
that no one suspects his station in life. It makes him feel that he is
not like the ordinary run of kings.
No one likes to be pigeon-holed or reduced to a formula. We resent being
classed as old or middle-aged or young. Why should we be confounded with
our coevals? We may not be any better than they are; but we are
different. Nor is it pleasant to have our opinions treated as if they
were the necessary product of social forces. There is something
offensive in the curiosity of those who are all the time asking how we
came by our ideas. What if they do bear a general resemblance to those
of the honest people who belong to our party and who read the same
newspaper. We do not care to be reminded of these chance coincidences.
Because one has found it convenient and economical to buy a ready-made
suit of clothing, it does not follow that he is willing to wear the tag
which contains the statement of the price and size. These labels were
very useful so long as the garment was kept in stock by the dealer, but
the information that they convey is now irrelevant.
This sensitiveness in regard to personal identity is strangely lacking
in many modern students of literature. They treat the man of genius as a
phenomenon, to be explained by other phenomena and used to illustrate a
general law. They love to deal in averages and aggregates. They describe
minutely the period to which a writer belongs, its currents of thought,
its intellectual limitations, and its generally received notions. With a
knowledge of antecedent conditions there is the expectancy of a certain
type of man as the result. Our minds are prepared for some one who
resembles the composite photograph which is first presented to us. We
are, for example, given an elaborate account of the Puritan movement in
England. We form a conception of what the Puritan was, and then we are
introduced to Milton. Our preconceptions stand in the way of personal
sympathy.
The method of the Gentle Reader is more direct. He is fortunate enough
to have read Milton before he has read much about him, and he returns to
the reading with ever fresh delight. He does not think of him as
belonging to a past age. He is a perpetual contemporary. The seventeenth
century gave color to his words, but it did not limit his genius.
Seventeenth century Independency might be, as a general thing, lacking
in grace, but when we turn away from Praise-God-Barebones to John Milton
we find it transformed into a--
"divine philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets."
Into its austere beauty, into its wide free spaces, into its sensuous
charms, no one but Milton can conduct us. We must follow not as those
who know beforehand what is to be seen or heard, but as those who are
welcomed by a generous householder who brings out of his treasures
things new and old.