Page:EB1911 - Volume 16.djvu/146

Rh Part of his voluminous correspondence has also appeared. The most interesting volumes are the following: Correspondance de F. de Lamennais, edited by E. D. Forgues (2 vols., 1855–1858); Œuvres inédites de F. Lamennais, edited by Ange Blaize (2 vols., 1866); Correspondance inédite entre Lamennais et le baron de Vitrolles, edited by E. D. Forgues (1819–1853); Confidences de Lamennais, lettres inédites de 1821 à 1848, edited by A. du Bois de la Villerabel (1886); Lamennais d’après des documents inédits, by Alfred Roussel (Rennes, 2 vols., 1892); Lamennais intime, d’après une correspondance inédite, by A. Roussel (Rennes, 1897); Un Lamennais inconnu, edited by A. Laveille (1898); Lettres de Lamennais à Montalembert, edited by E. D. Forgues (1898); and many other letters published in the Revue bleue, Revue britannique, &c.

A list of lives or studies on Lamennais would fill several columns. The following may be mentioned. A Blaize, Essai biographique sur M. de Lamennais (1858); E. D. Forgues, Notes et souvenirs (1859); F. Brunetière, Nouveaux essais sur la littérature contemporaine (1893); E. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes, ii. (1898); P. Janet, La Philosophie de Lamennais (1890); P. Mercier, S.J., Lamennais d’après sa correspondance et les travaux les plus récents (1893); A. Mollien et F. Duine, Lamennais, sa vie et ses idées; Pages choisies (Lyons, 1898); The Hon. W. Gibson, The Abbé de Lammenais and the Liberal Catholic Movement in France (London, 1896); E. Renan Essais de morale et de critique (1857); E. Schérer, Mélanges de critique religieuse (1859); G. E. Spuller, Lamennais, étude d’histoire et de politique religieuse (1892); Mgr. Ricard, L’école menaisienne (1882), and Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, tome i. (1832), and Nouveaux Lundis, tome i. p. 22; tome xi. p. 347.

LAMENTATIONS (Lamentations of Jeremiah), a book of the Old Testament. In Hebrew MSS. and editions this little collection of liturgical poems is entitled Ah how!, the first word of ch. i. (and chs. ii., iv.); cf. the books of the Pentateuch, and the Babylonian Epic of Creation (a far older example). In the Septuagint it is called , “Funeral-songs” or “Dirges,” the usual rendering of Heb. (Am. v. 1; Jer. vii. 29; 2 Sam. i. 17), which is, in fact, the name in the Talmud (Baba Bathra 15a) and other Jewish writings; and it was known as such to the Fathers (Jerome, Cinoth). The Septuagint (B) introduces the book thus: “And it came to pass, after Israel was taken captive and Jerusalem laid waste, Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said ,” a notice which may have related originally to the first poem only. Some Septuagint MSS., and the Syriac and other versions, have the fuller title Lamentations of Jeremiah. In the Hebrew Bible Lamentations is placed among the Cetubim or Hagiographa, usually as the middle book of the five Megilloth or Ferial Rolls (Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther) according to the order of the days on which they are read in the Synagogue, Lamentations being read on the 9th of Ab (6th of August), when the destruction of the Temple is commemorated (Mass. Sopherim 18). But the Septuagint appends the book to Jeremiah (Baruch intervening), just as it adds Ruth to Judges; thus making the number of the books of the Hebrew Canon the same as that of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, viz. twenty-two (so Jos. c. Ap. i. 8), instead of the Synagogal twenty-four (see Baba Bathra 14b).

External features and poetical structure.—These poems exhibit a peculiar metre, the so-called “limping verse,” of which Am. v. 2 is a good instance:

A longer line, with three accented syllables, is followed by a shorter with two. Chs. i.-iii. consist of stanzas of three such couplets each; chs. iv. and v. of two like Am. v. 2. This metre came in time to be distinctive of elegy. The text of Lamentations, however, so often deviates from it, that we can only affirm the tendency of the poet to cast his couplets into this type (Driver). Some anomalies, both of metre and of sense, may be removed by judicious emendation; and many lines become smooth enough, if we assume a crasis of open vowels of the same class, or a diphthongal pronunciation of others, or contraction or silence of certain suffixes as in Syriac. The oldest elegiac utterances are not couched in this metre; e.g. David’s (2 Sam. iii. 33 f. Abner; ib. i. 19-27 Saul and Jonathan). Yet the refrain of the latter, ’Eik náf ’lu gíbborím, “Ah how are heroes fallen!” agrees with our longer line. The remote ancestor of this Hebrew metre may be recognized in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, written at least a thousand years earlier:—

and again:—

Like a few of the Psalms, Lamentations i.-iv. are alphabetical acrostics. Each poem contains twenty-two stanzas, corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; and each stanza begins with its proper letter. (In ch. iii. each of the three couplets in a stanza begins with the same letter, so that the alphabet is repeated thrice: cf. Psalm cxix. for an eight-fold repetition.) The alphabet of Lamentations ii. iii. iv. varies from the usual order of the letters by placing Pe before Ain. The same was doubtless the case in ch. i. also until some scribe altered it. He went no further, because the sense forbade it in the other instances. The variation may have been one of local use, either in Judea or in Babylonia; or the author may have had some fanciful reason for the transposition, such as, for example, that Pe following Samech might suggest the word, “Wail ye!” (2 Sam. iii. 31). Although the oldest Hebrew elegies are not alphabetic acrostics, it is a curious fact that the word, “Was he a coward?” (Sc. ֹ ; Is. vii. 4), is formed by the initial letters of the four lines on Abner (om., line 3); and the initials of the verses of David’s great elegy are, which may be read as a sentence meaning, perhaps, “Lo, I the Avenger” (cf. Deut. xxxii. 41, 43) “will go forth!”; or the first two letters ( ) may stand for , “Alas, my brother!” (Jer. xxii. 18; cf. xxxiv. 5). In cryptic fashion the poet thus registers a vow of vengeance on the Philistines. Both kinds of acrostic occur side by side in the Psalms. Psalm cx., an acrostic of the same kind as David’s elegy, is followed by Psalms cxi. cxii., which are alphabetical acrostics, like the Lamentations. Such artifices are not in themselves greater clogs on poetic expression than the excessive alliteration of old Saxon verse or the strict rhymes of modern lyrics. (Alliteration, both initial and internal, is common in Lamentations.)

As the final piece, ch. v. may have suffered more in transmission than those which precede it—even to the extent of losing the acrostic form (like some of the Psalms and Nahum i.), besides half of its stanzas. If we divide the chapter into quatrains, like ch. iv., we notice several vestiges of an acrostic. The Aleph stanza (verses 7, 8) still precedes the Beth (verses 9, 10), and the Ain is still quite clear (verses 17, 18; cf. i. 16). Transposing verses 5, 6, and correcting their text, we see that the Jod stanza (verses 3, 4) precedes the Lamed (verses 6, 5), Caph having disappeared between them. With this clue, we may rearrange the other quatrains in alphabetical sequence, each according to its initial letter. We thus get a broken series of eleven stanzas, beginning with the letters (verses 7, 8), (9, 10),  (21, 22), (19, cf. Psalm cii. 13; and 20), (1, 2), (13, ; 14),  (3, 4), ל (6, ; 5,    ),  (11, 12),  (17, 18), and  (15, 16), successively. An internal connexion will now be apparent in all the stanzas.

General subject and outline of contents.—The theme of Lamentations is the final siege and fall of Jerusalem (586 ), and the attendant and subsequent miseries of the Jewish people.

In ch. i. we have a vivid picture of the distress of Zion, after all is over. The poet does not describe the events of the siege, nor the horrors of the capture, but the painful experience of subjection and tyranny which followed. Neither this nor ch. ii. is strictly a “dirge.” Zion is not dead. She is personified as a widowed princess, bereaved and desolate, sitting amid the ruins of her former joys, and brooding over her calamities. From verse 11c to the end (except verse 17) she herself is the speaker:—