Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/116

86 Advancing further, you perceive that where a work survives as an exception to the inherent The Book of Job. temper of a people, it is likely to exhibit greatness. The sublimest poem of antiquity is impersonal, yet written in the Hebrew tongue. The book of Job, the life-drama of the Man of Uz, towers with no peak near it; its authorship lost, but its fable associated in mind with the post-Noachian age, the time when God discoursed with men and the stars hung low in the empyrean. It is both epic and dramatic, yet embodies the whole wisdom of the patriarchal race. Who composed it? Who carved the Sphinx, or set the angles of the Pyramids? The shadow of his name was taken, lest he should fall by pride, like Eblis. The narrative prelude to Job has the direct epic simplicity,—a Cyclopean porch to the temple, but within are Heaven, the Angels, the plumed Lord of Evil, before the throne of a judicial God. The personages of the dialogue beyond are firmly distinguished: Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, Elihu,—to whom the inspiration of the Almighty gave understanding,—and the smitten protagonist himself, majestic in ashes and desolation. Each outvies the other in grandeur of language, imagination, worship. Can there be a height above these lofty utterances? Yes; only in this poem has God answered out of the whirlwind, his voice made audible, as if an added range of hearing for a space enabled us to comprehend the reverberations of a superhuman tone. I