As for Longfellow, he is shot through with Scripture.No man who did not know Scripture in more than a passing way could have written such a sentence as this: "There are times when the grasshopper is a burden, and thirsty with the heat of labor the spirit longs for the waters of Shiloah, that go softly." There are two strikingly beautiful expressions from Scripture.Take another familiar saying in the same essay when he says the prospect for poetry is brightening, since but a short time ago not a poet "moved the wing or opened the mouth or peeped." He did not run across that in general current writing.He got that directly from the Bible.In his poems is an amazing amount of reference to the Bible.One would expect much in the "Courtship of Miles Standish," for that is a story of the Puritans, and they spoke, naturally, in terms of the Bible; yet, of course, they could not do it in Longfellow's poem, if Longfellow did not know the language of the Bible very well.One might not expect to find it so much in "Evangeline," but it is there from beginning to end.In "Acadia," the cock crowed"With the self-sameVoice that in ages of old hadstartled the penitentPeter."
And,"Wild with the winds of September, Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of oldwith the angel."Evangeline saw the moon pass
Forth from the folds of the cloud, and one star followed her footsteps, As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael Wandered with Hagar."There is a great deal of that sort of thing in his writing.He has done for many what he did for Lowell one day.Discouraged in settling the form of a new edition of his own poems, Lowell took up a volume of Longfellow just to see the type, and presently found that he had been reading two hours.He wrote Longfellow he could understand his popularity, saying: "You sang me out of all my worries." That is a great thing to do, and Longfellow learned from the Scripture how to do that in the "Psalm of Life" and all his other poems.
We need only a word about Lowell himself.He was the son of a minister, and so knew the Bible from his infancy.He belonged to the Brahman caste himself, but a good deal of the ruggedness of the Old Testament got into his writing.It is in "The Vision of Sir Launfal." It is in his plea for international copyright where the familiar lines occur:
"In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing, The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing."There is hint of it in his quizzical lines about himself in the Fable for Critics.He says that he is in danger of rattling away"Until he is as old as Methusalem, At the head of the march to the last New Jerusalem."Whittier needs no words of ours.His hymns are part of our religious equipment."Snowbound" and all the rest of the beautiful, quiet, Quaker- like writing of this beloved poet are among our national assets.We join in his sorrow as he writes the doom of Webster and his fame, and we do not wonder that he chose for it the Scriptural title "Ichabod."Whatever is to be said about an individual here or there, it is true that great American literature shows the influence of the Bible.Like everything else in America, it has been founded on a religious purpose.Writers in all lines have been trained in the Bible.If they feel any religious influence at all, it is the Bible influence.
This has been a long journey from Shakespeare to Whittier, and it leaves untouched the great field of present-day writers.Let the unstarred names wait their time.Among them are many who can say in their way what Hall Caine has said of himself: "I think I know my Bible as fewliterary men know it.There is no book in the world like it, and the finest novels ever written fall far short in interest of any one of the stories it tells.Whatever strong situations I have in my books are not of my creation, but are taken from the Bible.The Deemster is a story of the Prodigal Son.The Bondman is the story of Esau and Jacob.The Scapegoat is the story of Eli and his sons, but with Samuel as a little girl; and The Manxman is the story of David and Uriah." Take up any of the novels of the day, even the poorer ones, but notably the better ones, and see how uniformly they show the Scriptural influence in material, in idea, and in spirit.What the literature of the future will be no one can say.This much is as sure as any fact in literary history, that the English Bible is part of the very fiber of great literature from the day it first appeared in our tongue to this hour.
