Moreover, a passage of some length which is in no other translation except that of St. Ambrose, is found in three manuscripts of the Septuagint, one' * of them being that from which the text of the Oxford edition of 1817 is taken. It is as follows: "But after much time had elapsed, his wife said unto him, how long wilt thou endure thus, saying, I will expect yet a little while, awaiting the hope of my salvation?' Behold thy memory hath passed away from the earth, the sons and daughters of my womb, whom I have with pain and sorrow brought forth in vain. Thou thyself sittest among filthy worms, passing the night under the open sky; and I am a wanderer and a servant, from place to place and from house to house, looking for the sun to go down that I may rest from the grief and labour that oppress me. Speak then a word against the Lord, and die!" If the text were to be considered singly, without reference to anything which may assist in determining its meaning, it would perhaps be impossible now to ascertain among these contrariant interpretations which is the true one. But the generous Englishman who in this country first in our language undertook the vindication of this Matriarch and by whom I have been led to make the present pertinent inquiry, has judiciously (as has been seen) observed in confirmation of his opinion, that the circumstance of her having been made a partaker in her husband's subsequent prosperity is proof that she also had been found righteous under all their trials. This is a valid argument deduced from the book itself. It would be invalidated were there any truth in what certain Talmudists say, that Job came into the world only to receive his good things in it; that when Satan was permitted to afflict him he began to blaspheme and to revile his Maker, and that therefore the Lord doubled his measure of prosperity in this life, that he might be rejected from the world to come. But when we remember that he is called "a perfect and an upright I.e. the Vatican MS. man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil," we may say with the great Cistercian Rabbinomastix, Hæc est magna blasphemia et convicium in Iob. Other Rabbis represent him as a fatalist, put into his mouth the common argument of that false and impious philosophy, and affirm that there is no hope of his salvation: what they say concerning him may safely be rejected. Others of the same school assert that there never was any such person as Job, in the teeth of the Prophet Ezekiel,—and that his whole history is only a parable: if their opinion were right it would be useless to inquire into the character of his wife; sed isti redarguuntur, says Bartolocci, ex nomine ipsius et nomine civitatis ejusdem. Just as, whatever inconsiderate readers may suppose who take these my reminiscences of the Doctor for a work of fiction, Daniel Dove was Daniel Dove nevertheless, and Doncaster is Doncaster. There is nothing then among the Jewish traditions, so far as my guides lead me, that can throw any light upon the subject of this inquiry. But there is among the Arabian, where it was more likely to be found; and though the Arabic translation supports the evil meaning of the equivocal text, the tradition on the contrary is in favour of Job's wife. It is indeed a legend, a mere figment, plainly fabulous; but it is founded upon the traditional character of Job's wife in Job's own country. There are two versions of the legend. The one Sale has given as a comment upon the text of the Koran, — "Remember Job when he cried unto his Lord, saying, Verily evil hath afflicted me; but Thou art the most merciful of those who show mercy!" When Job, says this legend, was in so loathsome a condition that as he lay on a dunghill none could bear to come near him, his wife alone attended him dutifully with great patience, and supported him with what she earned by her labour. One day the Devil appeared to her, reminded her of their former prosperity, and promised to restore all they had lost if she would worship him. He had overcome Eve by a less temptation; ulting that he had provoked Job to anger, assumed the form of an Angel of Light, and appearing to the people of the land, said he was sent by the Lord to tell them that Job had drawn upon himself the displeasure of the Most High, wherefore he had lost the rank of Prophet which theretofore he had held, and they must not suffer him to remain among them, otherwise the wrath of the Lord would be extended to them also. Job then breathed the prayer which is in the Koran, and the legend proceeds as in the other version, except that nothing is said concerning the manner in which he was discharged of his vow, the vow itself being annulled when Rasima's innocence was made known. the Matriarch did not yield like the Mother of Mankind, but neither did she withstand it; she took a middle course, and going to her husband repeated to him the proposal, and asked his consent: whereat he was so indignant that he swore if he recovered to give her an hundred stripes; and then it was that he uttered the ejaculation recorded in the Koran. Immediately the Lord sent Gabriel, who took him by the hand and raised him up; a fountain sprung up at his feet, he drank of it, and the worms fell from his wounds, and he washed in it, and his health and beauty were restored. What his wife had done was not imputed to her for sin, doubtless in consideration of the motive, and the sense of duty and obedience to her lord and master which she had manifested. The Koran, where it touches upon this She also became young and beautiful again; | legend, says, it was said to Job, "take a and that Job might keep his oath and handful of rods in thy hand, and strike thy neither hurt her nor his own conscience, he wife therewith, and break not thine oath." was directed to give her one blow with a Sale observes upon this that as the text palm branch having an hundred leaves. does not express what this handful of rods was to be, some commentators have supposed it to be dry grass, and others rushes, and others (as in the legend) a palm branch. But the elder Wesley takes the words in their direct and rigorous meaning, and says that as the Devil had no small part in the Koran, this passage indubitably bears his stamp, for who but the Devil would instigate any one to beat his wife? This erudite commentator (he deserves to be so called) vindicates the Matriarch in one of his Dissertations, and says that in the speech for which Job reproved her she only advised him to pray for death in the mouth of a Greek or Roman matron it might have been understood as an exhortation to suicide; Hæc ore Græcæ aut Romanæ mulieris prolata ut heroica quædam exhortatio esset suspecta. The legend, as related in D'Herbelot, is more favourable to her and exempts her from all blame. According to Khondemir, whom he follows, what Job's wife, here called Rasima, provided for her miserable husband, Satan stole from her, till he deprived her at last of all means of supporting him, and thus rendered him utterly destitute. As soon as the tempter had effected this, he appeared to Rasima in the form of a bald old woman, and offered if she would give him the two locks which hung down upon her neck, to supply her every day with whatever she wanted for her husband. Rasima joyfully accepted the proposal, cut off her locks and gave them to the false old woman. No sooner was Satan possessed of them than he went to Job, told him that his wife had been detected in dishonouring herself and him, and that she had been ignominiously shorn in consequence, in proof of which he produced the locks. Job when he saw that his wife had indeed been shorn of her tresses, believed the story, and not doubting that she had allowed the Devil to prevail over her, swore if ever he recovered his health to punish her severely. Upon this Satan ex His favourable opinion is entitled to more weight, because it was formed when he made the book of Job his particular study, whereas in an earlier work, the History of the Bible in verse, he had followed the common error, and made Satan as the last and worst of Job's torments play his wife against him, saying that the fiercest shock which the Patriarch sustained was from the tempest who if he has leisure and disposition to raised by her tongue. The expositors who comment upon this text of the Koran without reference to the legend, have differed in opinion as to the offence which Job's wife had committed thus to provoke her husband, some asserting that he swore to punish her with stripes because she had stayed too long on an errand, — an opinion by no means consistent with his patience. Returning to the main argument I conclude, that if upon the meaning of the doubtful word in the Hebrew text authorities are so equipoised as to leave it doubtful, these traditions being of Arabian growth have sufficient weight to turn the scale; even if it were not a maxim that in cases of this kind the most charitable opinion ought to be preferred. And as Dr. Southey has classed this injured Matriarch in a triad with Xantippe and Mrs. Wesley, I cannot but hope that the candid and learned Laureate, who, as I before observed, has condescended to clear the character of some Irish cast-off cavalry horses, will, when he has perused this chapter, render the same justice to Job's wife; and in the next edition of his Life of Wesley, substitute Hooker's in her place. recollect his own thoughts and actions, will not conclude his life in some sort a miracle, and imagine himself distinguished from all the rest of his species by many discriminations of nature or of fortune." This remark he makes in relation to what Sir Thomas Brown asserts of the course of his own life, that it was "a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable." Now it is not known that any thing extraordinary ever befell him. "The wonders," says Johnson, "probably were transacted in his own mind: self-love, cooperating with an imagination vigorous and fertile as that of Brown, will find or make objects of astonishment in every man's life.” nor What the Philosopher of Norwich considered as miraculous was probably this, that he had escaped from “Pyrrho's maze,” and had never been contaminated in Epicurus' sty; that he had neither striven for place among the "wrangling crew" sought to make his way with the sordid herd; that he had not sold himself to the service of Mammon; but in mature years and with deliberate judgment had chosen a calling in which he might continually increase his knowledge and enlarge his views, and entertain a reasonable hope that while he endeavoured to relieve the sufferings of his fellow creatures and discipline his own mind, the labours wherein his life was passed would neither be useless to others nor to himself. He might well consider it a miracle of divine mercy that grace had been given him to fulfil the promise made for him at his baptism, and that he had verily and indeed renounced the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. He might indeed take comfort in his "authentic reflections how far he had performed the great intention of his Maker;-whether he had made good the principles of his nature and what he was made to be; what characteristic and special mark he had left to be observable in his generation; whether he had lived to purpose or in vain; and what he had added, acted, or performed, that might considerably resemblance; and a certain mirth entered as speak him a man.” largely into the composition of the Doctor's, as it did into Charles the Second's, to whom in all moral respects no one could be more utterly unlike. The elements have seldom been so happily mixed as they were in the Philosopher of Norwich; he could not have been perfectly homogeneous if a particle of the quintelement had been superadded;-such an ingredient would have marred the harmony of his character: whereas the Philosopher of Doncaster would have been marred without a large portion of it. There were more resemblances between Sir Thomas Brown and the Doctor than Fluellen discovered between Henry of Monmouth and Alexander the Great. Both graduated in the same profession at the same university; and each settled as a practitioner in a provincial town. (Doncaster indeed was an inconsiderable place compared with Norwich; and Brown merely procured his degree at Leyden, which was not in his time, as it was in Daniel Dove's, the best school of physic in Europe.) Both too were Philosophers as well as Physicians, and both were alike speculative in their philosophy and devout Both were learned men. Thomas Brown might have said of himself with Herbert, I know the ways of learning; both the head Sir Or of itself, like a good housewife, spun All these stand open, or I have the keys. It was a greater dissimilarity, and altogether to be regretted, that my Doctor left no "characteristic and special mark to be observable in his generation;" but upon this I shall make some observations here after. What led me to compare these persons, incomparable each in his own way, was that my Doctor, though he did not look upon his own history as miraculous, considered that the course of his life had been directed by a singular and special Providence. How else could it have been that being an an only child, the sole represen The Doctor could not have said this; he only son, would rather have said, I am but one who do the world despise And would my thoughts to some perfection raise, tative in his generation of an immemorial line, his father, instead of keeping him attached to the soil, as all his forefathers had been, should have parted with him for the sake of his moral and intellectual im Yet he was as justly entitled to the appel-provement, not with a view to wealth or lation of a learned man by his multifarious knowledge, as he was far from pretending to it. There were many things of which he was ignorant, and contented to be ignorant, because the acquirement would not have been worth the cost. Brown would have taken with just confidence a seat at the Banquet of the Philosophers, whereas Dove would have thought himself hardly worthy to gather up the crumbs that fell from their table. A certain melancholy predominated as much in the constitution of Sir Thomas's mind, as in that of Charles the First, to whom his portrait bears so remarkable a LORD STIRLING. worldly advancement, but that he might seek wisdom and ensue it?-that with no other friend than the poor schoolmaster of a provincial townlet, and no better recommendation, he should have been placed with a master by whose care the defects of his earlier education were supplied, and by whose bounty, after he had learned the practical routine of his profession, he was sent to study it as a science in a foreign university, which a little before had been raised by Boerhaave to its highest reputation;—that not only had his daily bread been given him without any of that wearing anxiety which usually attends upon an unsettled and precarious way of life, but in the very house which when sent thither in U boyhood he had entered as a stranger, he found himself permanently fixed, as successively the pupil, the assistant, the friend, and finally the successor and heir of his benefactor;-above all, that he had not been led into temptation, and that he had been delivered from evil. "My life," said an unfortunate poor man who was one of the American Bishop Hobart's occasional correspondents, "has been a chapter of blunders and disappointments." John Wilkes said that "the chapter of accidents is the longest chapter in the book;" and he, who had his good things here, never troubled himself to consider whether the great volume were the Book of Chance, or of Necessity, the Demogorgon of those by whom no other deity is acknowledged. With a wiser and happier feeling Bishop White Kennett when he was asked "where are we?" answered the question thus," in a world where nothing can be depended on but a future state; in the way to it, little comfort but prayers and books." White Kennett might have enjoyed more comfort if he had been born in less contentious times, or if he had taken less part in their contentions, or if he had been placed in a less conspicuous station. Yet he had little cause to complain of his lot, and he has left behind him good works and a good IN these days when honours have been so profusely distributed by the most liberal of Administrations and the most popular of Kings, I cannot but think that Tom Fool ought to be knighted. And I assure the reader that this is not said on the score of personal feeling, because I have the honour to be one of his relations, but purely with regard to his own claims, and the fitness of things, as well as to the character of the Government. It is disparaging him, and derogatory to his family, which in undisputed and indisputable antiquity exceeds any other in these kingdoms, —it is disparaging him, I say, to speak of him as we do of Tom Duncombe, and Tom Cribb, and Tom Campbell; or of Tom Hood and Tom Moore, and Tom Sheridan; and before them of Tom Browne and Tom D'Urfey, and Tom Killigrew. Can it be supposed if he were properly presented to his Majesty (Lord Nugent would introduce him), and knelt to kiss the royal hand, that our most gracious and goodnatured King would for a moment hesitate to give him the accollade, and say to him "Rise Sir Thomas!" I do not ask for the Guelphic Order; simple Knighthood would in this case be more appropriate. It is perfectly certain that Sir Thomas More, if he were alive, would not object to have him for a brother knight and namesake. It is equally certain that Sir Thomas Lethbridge could not, and ought not. Dryden was led into a great error by his animosity against Hunt and Shadwell when he surmised that "dullness and clumsiness |