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 CHAPTER VI.

KOHELETH'S 'PORTRAIT OF OLD AGE;' THE EPILOGUE, ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN.

We have now arrived at the conclusion of the meditations of our much-tried thinker. It is strongly poetic in colouring; but when we compare it with the grandly simple overture of the book (i. 4-8), can we help confessing to a certain degree of disappointment? It is the allegory which spoils it for modern readers, and so completely spoils it, that attempts have been sometimes made to expel the allegorical element altogether. That the first two verses are free from allegory, is admitted, and it is barely possible that the sixth verse may be so too—may be, that is, figurative rather than allegorical. Poets have delighted in these figures; how fitly does one of them adorn the lament in Woolner's My Beautiful Lady,— Broken the golden bowl Which held her hallowed soul! The most doubtful part, then, is the description in vv. 3-5. I am not writing a commentary, and will venture to express an opinion in favour of the allegorists (it is not fair to call them satirically the anatomists). It is true that there is much variety of opinion among them; this only shows that the allegory is sometimes far-fetched, not that it is a vain imagination. Can there be anything more obscure than the canzoni