CHARACTER SKETCHES.
“With what prudence does the Son of Sirach caution us in the choice of our friends. And with what strokes of Nature, (I could almost say of Humour,) has he described the behavior of a treacherous and self-interested friend!”—Addison.
“The history of the ancient Hebrews,” says George Eliot, “gives the idea of a people who went about their business and their pleasures as gravely as a society of beavers; the smile and laugh are often mentioned metaphorically; but the smile is one of complacency, the laugh of scorn.”
Against the authority of so illustrious a name, the writer of these pages confesses a somewhat different impression. It is difficult to believe that such sentiments as the following could have arisen among a people whose only smile was that of complacency, whose only laughter that of scorn:
“He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.”
“A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.”
“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”
“Go thy way; eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart.”
“The voice of mirth,” “the voice of gladness” are phrases of frequent occurrence. The ancient Hebrews believed that there was a “time to laugh” as well as a “time to weep.” Grave and serious as they were, there must have been in them, after all, something sunny and pleasant. They did not find the heavens forever black and the earth forever cheerless.
When we turn to the historical and biographical portions of Scripture, we find here and there a bit of quaintness and drollery in pictures of life and delineations of character that must have brought to the faces of those who read them or heard them smiles other than those of complacency; that must have been enjoyed with laughter other than that of scorn.
Mr. Shorthouse says, “Nature and humor do not lie far apart; the source and spring of humor is human life.” “The essence of humor,” Carlyle remarks, “is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence.” “The man of humor,” writes another distinguished critic, “seeing at one glance the majestic and the mean, the serious and the laughable; indeed, interpreting what is little or ridiculous by light derived from its opposite idea, delineates character as he finds it in life, without any impertinent intrusion of his own indignation or approval.”
The writers of the Bible sketched manners and traits as they found them. Their pencils were faithful to nature. They reported what they saw. The features which provoke the smile, as well as those which move us to admire, condemn or weep, are pictured on their canvas. They had an eye for the ludicrous side of life, as well as for its more sober aspects. So, genial is much of their—often unconscious—humor, so far removed from bitterness or scorn, that it should seem as if Addison and Irving might have drawn some of their inspiration from these old Hebrews.
In this chapter we shall give some illustrations from their sketches of character.
I.—Abimelech.
In the time of the Judges the unprincipled Abimelech contrived to have himself proclaimed king in Shechem. Knowing his unfitness for the throne, and vexed at his successful machinations, Jotham, a man of ready wit, ridicules the pretensions of the monarch and the folly of the people, in an admirable fable. Addison says: “Fables were the first pieces of wit that made their appearance in the world, and have been still highly valued, not only in times of the greatest simplicity, but among the most polite ages of mankind. Jotham’s fable of the Trees is the oldest that is extant, and as beautiful as any that have been made since that time.”
Perching himself upon the top of a hill, that his parable may not be brought to an untimely end, he speaks to the multitude: “The Trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them. And they said to the Olive Tree, Reign thou over us. But the Olive Tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honor God and men, and go to be promoted over the Trees? Then said the Trees unto the Fig Tree, Come thou and reign over us. But the Fig Tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the Trees? Then said the Trees unto the Vine, Come thou and reign over us. And the Vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine which cheereth God and Man, and go to be promoted over the Trees?” Thus far the Trees have been unsuccessful. They have found among their fellows of the forest no available candidate whose character and record are good. They anticipated a difficulty of more modern times. But they are becoming desperate. They are determined to have a king. In this extremity what step do they take? “Then said all the Trees unto the Bramble, Come thou and reign over us.” The Bramble cannot plead business. It cannot say, as do the Olive and Fig and Vine, “I am of some better use.” There is no reason, so far as any beneficent occupation is concerned, why it should not be king. The offer is eagerly accepted, and the pompous bush delivers itself of this high and mighty coronation address: “If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the Bramble and destroy the cedars of Lebanon!”
This Bramble, Jotham explains, represents Abimelech, while the misguided trees are the men of Shechem. Having made this application, Jotham became convinced that his mission was ended, and abandoned Mount Gerezim for a place of greater security. “And Jotham ran away and fled, and went to Beer and dwelt there for fear of Abimelech his brother.” He did not wait to see what impression he had made. He was willing to let his story, moral and all, take care of itself; for in that day, as in every subsequent age, there was no room for a satirist in the kingdom of an incompetent ruler.
II.—Samson.
Farther on in the book of Judges, we have the portrait of Samson. How quaintly is the character drawn! A great lubberly, good-natured giant, but now and then bursting out into fits of unreasoning and uncontrolled anger—not unlike Ajax in the play. He is constantly making himself ridiculous in his love affairs.
In Love’s Labor Lost, the following dialogue occurs:—
“Armado.—Comfort me, boy. What great men have been in love?
“Moth.—Hercules, Master.
“Arm.—Most sweet Hercules! More authority dear boy, name more; and sweet my child, let them be men of good repute and carriage.
“Moth.—Samson, Master; he was a man of good carriage, for he raised the town gates on his back like a porter; and he was in love.”
He tries to joke in clumsy riddles: “Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness.” But his jokes were usually of a more practical and even more disastrous kind. L’Estrange, in his History of Humor, says: “The first character in the records of antiquity that seems to have had anything quaint or droll about it is that of Samson. Standing out amid the confusion of legendary times, he gives us good specimens of the fierce, wild kind of merriment relished in ancient days; and was very fond of making very sanguinary sport for the Philistines. He was an exaggeration of a not very uncommon type of man in which brute strength is joined to loose morals and whimsical fancy. People were more inclined to laugh at sufferings formerly than now, because they were not keenly sensitive to pain, and also had less feeling and consideration for others. That Samson found some malicious kind of pleasure and diversion in his reprisals on his enemies and made his misfortunes minister to his amusement, is evident from the strange character of his exploits. ‘He caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails, and when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and also the standing corn of the Philistines, with the vineyards and olives.’ On another occasion, he allowed himself to be bound with cords and thus apparently delivered powerless into the hands of his enemies; he then broke his bonds ‘like flax that was burnt with fire,’ and taking the jawbone of an ass which he found, slew a thousand men with it. His account of this massacre shows that he regarded it in a humorous light: ‘With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of