420 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



so subjective a poetry, condemn anything as grotesque 

 and inharmonious that is not disproportionate to the 

 dominant emotion. This remark is peculiarly applicable 

 to the gigantic images and metaphors of the Old Testa 

 ment. In Western poetry an image is always liable to 

 criticism in itself, and nothing is admitted for purposes of 

 illustration that would be quite fantastic as the description 

 of a reality. But to the Hebrew no image is too bold to 

 give utterance to the emotion by which he is stirred. It 

 would be absurd to class the daring figures of the Psalms 

 and Prophets as examples of hyperbole. Hyperbole is the 

 licence that our poets take to impress their hearers more 

 deeply by representing objects as grander than they really 

 are, without absolutely distorting them from their true 

 form. But when the Psalmist represents hills as skipping 

 and clapping hands, when Joel ascribes to his locusts the 

 irresistible teeth of a lion, when the Assyrian king as 

 pictured by Isaiah boasts that he has dried up rivers with 

 the soles of his feet, or when Ezekiel figures the king of 

 Tyre as a cherub walking within the fiery bulwarks of 

 the mount of God, these gigantic metaphors refuse to be 

 judged by the limited licence accorded to Western poets. 

 Thus commentators are found who gravely argue that 

 language so strong must have a hidden allegoric meaning, 

 that the Prince of Tyre, for example, is Satan. To the 

 poets themselves such criticism would have seemed 

 ridiculous. They were accustomed to read nature wholly 

 in the light of subjective emotion or spiritual truth. The 

 boldness of the fancy with which they gave sensuous form 

 to their feelings was hampered by no habits of scientific 

 study of the laws of phenomena. Regardless of external 

 probability they sought only a just expression for sub 

 jective experience. What we are apt to call exaggeration 

 is really idealisation the elevation of the whole scene into 

 a symbol of the invisible. We have no right to caU that 

 fantastic which truly expresses internal intuitions moulded 

 by the fire of a subjectivity stronger than ours. 



