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WILLIAM MORRIS

Notes on Woodcut Books

ON THE ARTISTIC QUALITIES OF THE WOODCUT BOOKS OF ULM AND AUGSBURG IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

The invention of printing books, and the use of wood-blocks for book ornament in place of hand-painting, though it belongs to the period of the degradation of mediaeval art, gave an opportunity to the Germans to regain the place which they had lost in the art of book decoration during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This opportunity they took with vigour and success, and by means of it put forth works which showed the best and most essential qualities of their race. Unhappily, even at the time of their first woodcut book, the beginning of the end was on them; about thirty years afterwards they received the Renaissance with singular eagerness and rapidity, and became, from the artistic point of view, a nation of rhetorical pedants. An exception must be made, however, as to Albert D?rer; for, though his method was infected by the Renaissance, his matchless imagination and intellect made him thoroughly Gothic in spirit. Amongst the printing localities of Germany the two neighbouring cities of Ulm and Augsburg developed a school of woodcut book ornament second to none as to character, and, I think, more numerously represented than any other. I am obliged to link the two cities, because the early school at least is common to both; but the ornamented works produced by Ulm are but few compared with the prolific birth of Augsburg.

It is a matter of course that the names of the artists who designed these wood-blocks should not have been recorded, any more than those of the numberless illuminators of the lovely written books of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the names under which the Ulm and Augsburg picture-books are known are all those of their printers. Of these by far the most distinguished are the kinsmen , Gunther Zainer of Augsburg and John Zainer of Ulm. Nearly parallel with these in date are Ludwig Hohenwang and John B?mler of Augsburg, together with Pflanzmann of Augsburg, the printer of the first illustrated German Bible. Anthony Sorg, a little later than these, was a printer somewhat inferior, rather a reprinter in fact, but by dint of reusing the old blocks, or getting them recut and in some cases redesigned, not always to their disadvantage, produced some very beautiful books. Schoensperger, who printed right into the sixteenth century, used blocks which were ruder than the earlier ones, through carelessness, and I suppose probably because of the aim at cheapness; his books tend towards the chap-book kind.

The earliest of these picture-books with a date is Gunther Zainer's Golden Legend, the first part of which was printed in 1471; but, as the most important from the artistic point of view, I should name: first, Gunther Zainer's Speculum Humanae Salvationis ; second, John Zainer's Boccaccio De Claris Mulieribus ; third, the AEsop, printed by both the Zainers, but I do not know by which first, as it is undated; fourth, Gunther Zainer's Spiegel des Menschlichen lebens , with which must be taken his German Belial, the cuts of which are undoubtedly designed by the same artist, and cut by the same hand, that cut the best in the Spiegel above mentioned; fifth, a beautiful little book, the story of Sigismonda and Guiscard, by Gunther Zainer, undated; sixth, Tuberinus, die geschicht von Symon, which is the story of a late German Hugh of Lincoln, printed by G. Zainer about 1475; seventh, John B?mlers Das buch der Natur , with many full-page cuts of much interest; eighth, by the same printer, Das buch von den 7 Tods?nden und den 7 Tugenden ; ninth, B?mler's Sprenger's Rosencranz Bruderschaft, with only two cuts, but those most remarkable.

To these may be added as transitional , between the earlier and the later school next to be mentioned, two really characteristic books printed by Sorg:

Der Seusse, a book of mystical devotion, 1482, and

the Council of Constance, printed in 1483; the latter being, as far as its cuts are concerned, mainly heraldic.

At Ulm, however, a later school arose after a transitional book, Leonard Hol's splendid Ptolemy of 1482; of this school one printer's name, Conrad Dinckmut, includes all the most remarkable books: to wit, Der Seelen-wurzgarten , Das buch der Weisheit , the Swabian Chronicle , Terence's Eunuchus . Lastly, John Reger's Descriptio Obsidionis Rhodiae worthily closes the series of the Ulm books.

It should here be said that, apart from their pictures, the Ulm and Augsburg books are noteworthy for their border and letter decoration. The Ulm printer, John Zainer, in especial shone in the production of borders. His De Claris Mulieribus excels all the other books of the school in this matter; the initial S of both the Latin and the German editions being the most elaborate and beautiful piece of its kind; and, furthermore, the German edition has a border almost equal to the S in beauty, though different in character, having the shield of Scotland supported by angels in the corner. A very handsome border , with a zany in the corner, used frequently in J. Zainer's books , e.g., in the 1473 and 1474 editions of the Rationale of Durandus, and, associated with an interesting historiated initial O, in Alvarus, De planctu Ecclesiae, 1474. There are two or three other fine borders, such as those in Steinhowel's B?chlein der Ordnung, and Petrarch's Griseldis , both of 1473, and in Albertus Magnus, Summa de eucharistiae Sacramento, 1474. A curious alphabet of initials made up of leafage, good, but not very showy, is used in the De Claris Mulieribus and other books. An alphabet of large initials, the most complete example of which is to be found in Leonard Hol's Ptolemy, is often used and is clearly founded on the pen-letters, drawn mostly in red and blue, in which the Dutch 'rubrishers' excelled. This big alphabet is very beautiful and seems to have been a good deal copied by other German printers, as it well deserved to be. John Reger's Caoursin has fine handsome 'blooming-letters,' somewhat tending toward the French style.

In Augsburg Gunther Zainer has some initial I's of strap-work without foliation: they are finely designed, but gain considerably when, as sometimes happens, the spaces between the straps are filled in with fine pen-tracery and in yellowish brown; they were cut early in Gunther's career, as one occurs in the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, c. 1471, and another in the Calendar, printed 1471. These, as they always occur in the margin and are long, may be called border-pieces. A border occurring in Eyb, ob einem manne tzu nemen ein weib is drawn very gracefully in outline, and is attached, deftly enough, to a very good S of the pen-letter type, though on a separate block; it has three shields of arms in it, one of which is the bearing of Augsburg. This piece is decidedly illuminators' work as to design.

Gunther's Margarita Davidica has a border which is much like the Ulm borders in character. A genealogical tree of the House of Hapsburg prefacing the Spiegel des Menschlichen lebens, and occupying a whole page, is comparable for beauty and elaboration to the S of John Zainer above mentioned; on the whole, for beauty and richness of invention and for neatness of execution, I am inclined to give it the first place amongst all the decorative pieces of the German printers.

Gunther Zainer's German Bible of c. 1474 has a full set of pictured letters, one to every book, of very remarkable merit: the foliated forms which make the letters and enclose the figures being bold, inventive, and very well drawn. I note that these excellent designs have received much less attention than they deserve.

In almost all but the earliest of Gunther's books a handsome set of initials are used, a good deal like the above mentioned Ulm initials, but with the foliations blunter, and blended with less of geometrical forms: the pen origin of these is also very marked.

Ludwig Hohenwang, who printed at Augsburg in the seventies, uses a noteworthy set of initials, alluded to above, that would seem to have been drawn by the designer with a twelfth century MS. before him, though, as a matter of course, the fifteenth century betrays itself in certain details, chiefly in the sharp foliations at the ends of the scrolls, etc. There is a great deal of beautiful design in these letters; but the square border round them, while revealing their origin from illuminators' work, leaves over-large whites in the backgrounds, which call out for the completion that the illuminator's colour would have given them. B?mler and the later printer Sorg do not use so much ornament as Gunther Zainer; their initials are less rich both in line and design than Gunther's, and Sorg's especially have a look of having run down from the earlier ones: in his Seusse, however, there are some beautiful figured initials designed on somewhat the same plan as those of Gunther Zainer's Bible.

Now it may surprise some of our readers, though I should hope not the greatest part of them, to hear that I claim the title of works of art, both for these picture-ornamented books as books, and also for the pictures themselves. Their two main merits are first their decorative and next their story-telling quality; and it seems to me that these two qualities include what is necessary and essential in book-pictures. To be sure the principal aim of these unknown German artists was to give the essence of the story at any cost, and it may be thought that the decorative qualities of their designs were accidental, or done unconsciously at any rate. I do not altogether dispute that view; but then the accident is that of the skilful workman whose skill is largely the result of tradition; it has thereby become a habit of the hand to him to work in a decorative manner.

To turn back to the books numbered above as the most important of the school, I should call John Zainer's De Claris Mulieribus, and the AEsop, and Gunther Zainer's Spiegel des Menschlichen lebens the most characteristic. Of these my own choice would be the De Claris Mulieribus, partly perhaps because it is a very old friend of mine, and perhaps the first book that gave me a clear insight into the essential qualities of the mediaeval design of that period. The subject-matter of the book also makes it one of the most interesting, giving it opportunity for setting forth the mediaeval reverence for the classical period, without any of the loss of romance on the one hand, and epical sincerity and directness on the other, which the flood-tide of renaissance rhetoric presently inflicted on the world. No story-telling could be simpler and more straightforward, and less dependent on secondary help, than that of these curious, and, as people phrase it, rude cuts. And in spite of their rudeness, they are by no means lacking in definite beauty: the composition is good everywhere, the drapery well designed, the lines rich, which shows of course that the cutting is good. Though there is no ornament save the beautiful initial S and the curious foliated initials above mentioned, the page is beautifully proportioned and stately, when, as in the copy before me, it has escaped the fury of the bookbinder.

The great initial 'S' I claim to be one of the very best printers' ornaments ever made, one which would not disgrace a thirteenth century MS. Adam and Eve are standing on a finely-designed spray of poppy-like leafage, and behind them rise up the boughs of the tree. Eve reaches down an apple to Adam with her right hand, and with her uplifted left takes another from the mouth of the crowned woman's head of the serpent, whose coils, after they have performed the duty of making the S, end in a foliage scroll, whose branches enclose little medallions of the seven deadly sins. All this is done with admirable invention and romantic meaning, and with very great beauty of design and a full sense of decorative necessities.

As to faults in this delightful book, it must be said that it is somewhat marred by the press-work not being so good as it should have been even when printed by the weak presses of the fifteenth century; but this, though a defect, is not, I submit, an essential one.

In the AEsop the drawing of the designs is in a way superior to that of the last book: the line leaves nothing to be desired; it is thoroughly decorative, rather heavy, but so firm and strong, and so obviously in submission to the draughtman's hand, that it is capable of even great delicacy as well as richness. The figures both of man and beast are full of expression; the heads clean drawn and expressive also, and in many cases refined and delicate. The cuts, with few exceptions, are not bounded by a border, but amidst the great richness of line no lack of one is felt, and the designs fully sustain their decorative position as a part of the noble type of the Ulm and Augsburg printers; this AEsop is, to my mind, incomparably the best and most expressive of the many illustrated editions of the Fables printed in the fifteenth century. The designs of the other German and Flemish ones were all copied from it.

Of the other contemporary, or nearly contemporary, printers B?mler comes first in interest. His book von den 7 Tods?nden, etc., has cuts of much interest and invention, not unlike in character to those of Gunther Zainer's Golden Legend. His Buch der Natur has full-page cuts of animals, herbs, and human figures exceedingly quaint, but very well designed for the most part. A half-figure of a bishop 'in pontificalibus' is particularly bold and happy. Rupertus a sancto Remigio's History of the crusade and the Cronich von allen Konigen und Kaisern are finely illustrated. His Rosencranz Bruderschaft above mentioned has but two cuts, but they are both of them, the one as a fine decorative work, the other as a deeply felt illustration of devotional sentiment, of the highest merit.

The two really noteworthy works of Sorg are, first, the Seusse, which is illustrated with bold and highly decorative cuts full of meaning and dignity, and next, the Council of Constance, which is the first heraldic woodcut work . These armorial cuts, which are full of interest as giving a vast number of curious and strange bearings, are no less so as showing what admirable decoration can be got out of heraldry when it is simply and well drawn.

To Conrad Dinckmut of Ulm, belonging to a somewhat later period than these last-named printers, belongs the glory of opposing by his fine works the coming degradation of book-ornament in Germany. The Seelen-wurzgarten, ornamented with seventeen full-page cuts, is injured by the too free repetition of them; they are, however, very good; the best perhaps being the Nativity, which, for simplicity and beauty, is worthy of the earlier period of the Middle Ages. The Swabian Chronicle has cuts of various degrees of merit, but all interesting and full of life and spirit: a fight in the lists with axes being one of the most remarkable. Das buch der Weisheit has larger cuts which certainly show no lack of courage; they are perhaps scarcely so decorative as the average of the cuts of the school, and are somewhat coarsely cut; but their frank epical character makes them worthy of all attention. But perhaps his most remarkable work is his Terence's Eunuchus , ornamented with twenty-eight cuts illustrating the scenes. These all have backgrounds showing the streets of a mediaeval town, which clearly imply theatrical scenery; the figures of the actors are delicately drawn, and the character of the persons and their action is well given and carefully sustained throughout. The text of this book is printed in a large handsome black-letter, imported, as my friend Mr. Proctor informs me, from Italy. The book is altogether of singular beauty and character.

The Caoursin , the last book of any account printed at Ulm, has good and spirited cuts of the events described, the best of them being the flight of Turks in the mountains. One is almost tempted to think that these cuts are designed by the author of those of the Mainz Breidenbach of 1486, though the cutting is much inferior.

All these books, it must be remembered, though they necessarily belong to the later Middle Ages, and though some of them are rather decidedly late in that epoch, are thoroughly 'Gothic' as to their ornament; there is no taint of the Renaissance in them. In this respect the art of book-ornament was lucky. The neo-classical rhetoric which invaded literature before the end of the fourteenth century was harmless against this branch of art at least for more than another hundred years; so that even Italian book-pictures are Gothic in spirit, for the most part, right up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, long after the New Birth had destroyed the building arts for Italy: while Germany, whose Gothic architecture was necessarily firmer rooted in the soil, did not so much as feel the first shiver of the coming flood till suddenly, and without warning, it was upon her, and the art of the Middle Ages fell dead in a space of about five years, and was succeeded by a singularly stupid and brutal phase of that rhetorical and academical art, which, in all matters of ornament, has held Europe captive ever since.

THE WOODCUTS OF GOTHIC BOOKS

Notes on Woodcut Books

Since the earliest of those I have to show is probably not earlier in date than about 1420, and almost all are more than fifty years later than that, it is clear that they belong to the latest period of Mediaeval art, and one or two must formally be referred to the earliest days of the Renaissance, though in spirit they are still Gothic. In fact, it is curious to note the suddenness of the supplanting of the Gothic by the neo-classical style in some instances, especially in Germany: e.g., the later books published by the great Nuremberg printer, Koburger, in the fourteen-nineties, books like the "Nuremberg Chronicle," and the "Schatzbehalter," show no sign of the coming change, but ten years worn, and hey, presto, not a particle of Gothic ornament can be found in any German printed book, though, as I think, the figure-works of one great man, Albert D?rer, were Gothic in essence.

The work, then, which I am about to show you has first the disadvantage of the rudeness likely to disfigure cheap forms of art in a time that lacked the resource of slippery plausibility which helps out cheap art at the present day. And secondly, the disadvantage of belonging to the old age rather than the youth or vigorous manhood of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, it is art, and not a mere trade "article;" and though it was produced by the dying Middle Ages, they were not yet dead when it was current, so that it yet retains much of the qualities of the more hopeful period; and in addition, the necessity of adapting the current design to a new material and method gave it a special life, which is full of interest and instruction for artists of all times who are able to keep their eyes open.

All organic art, all art that is genuinely growing, opposed to rhetorical, retrospective, or academical art, art which has no real growth in it, has two qualities in common: the epical and the ornamental; its two functions are the telling of a story and the adornment of a space or tangible object. The labour and ingenuity necessary for the production of anything that claims our attention as a work of art are wasted, if they are employed on anything else than these two aims. Mediaeval art, the result of a long unbroken series of tradition, is pre?minent for its grasp of these two functions, which, indeed, interpenetrate then more than in any other period. Not only is all its special art obviously and simply beautiful as ornament, but its ornament also is vivified with forcible meaning, so that neither in one or the other does the life ever flag, or the sensuous pleasure of the eye ever lack. You have not got to say, Now you have your story, how are you going to embellish it? Nor, Now you have made your beauty, what are you going to do with it? For here are the two together, inseparably a part of each other. No doubt the force of tradition, which culminated in the Middle Ages, had much to do with this unity of epical design and ornament. It supplied deficiencies of individual by collective imagination ; it ensured the inheritance of deft craftsmanship and instinct for beauty in the succession of the generations of workmen; and it cultivated the appreciation of good work by the general public. Now-a-days artists work essentially for artists, and look on the ignorant layman with contempt, which even the necessity of earning a livelihood cannot force them wholly to disguise. In the times of art, they had no one but artists to work for, since every one was a potential artist.

Now, in such a period, when written literature was still divine, and almost miraculous to men, it was impossible that books should fail to have a due share in the epical-ornamental art of the time. Accordingly, the opportunities offered by the pages which contained the wisdom and knowledge of past and present times were cultivated to the utmost. The early Middle Ages, beginning with the wonderful calligraphy of the Irish MSS., were, above all times, the epoch of writing. The pages of almost all books, from the 8th to the 15th century, are beautiful, even without the addition of ornament. In those that are ornamented without pictures illustrative of the text, the eye is so pleasured, and the fancy so tickled by the beauty and exhaustless cheerful invention of the illuminator, that one scarcely ventures to ask that the tale embodied in the written characters should be further illustrated. But when this is done, and the book is full of pictures, which tell the written tale again with the most conscientious directness of design, and as to execution with great purity of outline and extreme delicacy of colour, we can say little more than that the only work of art which surpasses a complete Mediaeval book is a complete Mediaeval building. This must be said, with the least qualification, of the books of from about 1160 to 1300. After this date, the work loses, in purity and simplicity, more than it gains in pictorial qualities, and, at last, after the middle of the 15th century, illuminated books lose much of their individuality on the ornamental side; and, though they are still beautiful, are mostly only redeemed from commonplace when the miniatures in them are excellent. But here comes in the new element, given by the invention of printing, and the gradual shoving out of the scribe by the punch-cutter, the typefounder, and the printer. The first printed characters were as exact reproductions of the written ones as the new craftsmen could compass, even to the extent of the copying of the infernal abbreviations which had gradually crept into manuscript; but, as I have already mentioned, the producers of serious books did not at first supply the work of the illuminator by that of the woodcutter, either in picture work or ornament. In fact, the art of printing pictures from wood blocks is earlier than that of printing books, and is undoubtedly the parent of book illustration. The first woodcuts were separate pictures of religious subjects, circulated for the edification of the faithful, in existing examples generally coloured by hand, and certainly always intended to be coloured. The earliest of these may be as old as 1380, and there are many which have been dated in the first half of the 15th century; though the dates are mostly rather a matter of speculation. But the development of book illustration proper by no means puts an end to their production. Many were done between 1450 and 1490, and some in the first years of the 16th century; but the earlier ones only have any special charHere, then, we find in ancient Indian literature a tale which may be fairly regarded as the origin of the "Judgment of Solomon." And it belongs to a large number of Oriental tales in which the situations and accents of the Biblical narratives concerning David and Solomon often occur. There is a cave-born youth, Asuga, son of a Brahman and a bird-fairy, with a magic lute which accompanies his verses, and who dallies with Brahmadetta's wife. A king, enamored of a beautiful foreign woman beneath him in rank, obtains her by a promise that her son, if one is born, shall succeed him on the throne, to the exclusion of his existing heir by his wife of equal birth; but he permits arrangements for his elder son's succession to go on until induced by a threat of war from the new wife's father and country to fulfil his promise. A prime minister, Mahaushadha, travels, in disguise of a Brahman, in order to find a true wife; he meets with a witty maiden , who directs him to her village by a road where he will see her naked at a bathing tank, though she had taken another road. This minister was, like David, lowly born; a "deity" revealed him to the king, as Jahveh revealed David to Samuel; he was a seventh minister, as David was a seventh son, and Solomon also.

Although the number seven was sacred among the ancient Hebrews, it does not appear to have been connected by them with exceptional wisdom or occult powers in man or woman. The ideas in which such legends as "The Seven Wise Masters," "The Seven Sages," and the superstition about a seventh son's second-sight, originate, are traceable to ancient Indo-Iranian theosophy. It may be useful here to read the subjoined extract from Darmesteter's introduction to the "Vend?d?d." Having explained that the religion of the Persian Magi is derived from the same source as that of the Indian Rishis, that is, from the common forefathers of both Iranian and Indian, he says:

"The Indo-Iranian Asura was often conceived as sevenfold: by the play of certain mythical formulae and the strength of certain mythical numbers, the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds, and the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds over which he ruled. The names and the attributes of the seven gods had not been as yet defined, nor could they be then; after the separation of the two religions, these gods, named Aditya, 'the infinite ones,' in India, were by and by identified there with the sun, and their number was afterward raised to twelve, to correspond to the twelve aspects of the sun. In Persia, the seven gods are known as Amesha Spentas, 'the undying and well-doing one'; they by and by, according to the new spirit that breathed in the religion, received the names of the deified abstractions, Vohu-man? , Asha Vahista , Khshathra Vairya , Spenta Arma?ti , Haurvat?t and Ameret?ot . The first of them all was and remained Ahura Mazda; but whereas formerly he had been only the first of them, he was now their father. 'I invoke the glory of the Amesha Spentas, who all seven have one and the same thinking, one and the same speaking, one and the same father and lord, Ahura Mazda,'"

In Persian religion the Seven are always wise and beneficent. The vast folklore derived from this Pars? religion included the Babylonian belief in seven powerful spirits, associated with the Pleiades, beneficent at certain seasons, but normally malevolent: they all move together, taking possession of human beings, as in the case of the seven demons cast out of Mary Magdalene. In Egypt the seven are always evil. But neither of these sevens are especially clever. In Buddhist legends they are not so carefully classified, the seventh son or daughter manifesting exceptional powers, sometimes of good, sometimes of evil, but they are usually referred to for this wit or wisdom. In the Davidian and Solomonic legends these notions are found as if merely adhering to some importation, and without any perception of the significance of the number seven. David is an eighth son in 1 Sam. xvi. 10-13, but a seventh son in 1 Chron. ii. 16. Solomon is a tenth son in 1 Chron. iii. 1-6, but the seventh legitimate son in 2 Sam. xii. 24-25. The word Sheba means "the seven," but the early scribes appear to have understood it as shaba, "he swears," as in Gen. xxi. 30-31, where after the seven ewe lambs have given the well its name, Beersheba, it is ascribed the significance of an oath. Bathsheba is commonly translated "Daughter of the Oath," but there can be little doubt that the name means "Daughter of the Seven," and that it originated in the astute tricks by which that fair foreigner made herself queen-mother and her son king, above the lawful heir, whom she was instrumental in getting out of the way by furthering his wishes.

Moral obliquities are little considered in these fair favorites of translunary powers. Visakha, in one Buddhist tale, gets herself chosen by the Brahman as bride of a great man by her care to veil her charms at the bath; in another tale she attracts a prime minister in disguise, and becomes his wife, partly by laying aside all of her clothing at a bathing tank where she knows he will see her. Bathsheba's fame is similarly various. Her nudity and ready adultery with the king did not prevent her from passing into Talmudic tradition as "blessed among women," and to her was even ascribed the beautiful chapter of Proverbs in praise of the virtuous wife! In the "Wisdom of Solomon" she is described as the "handmaiden" of the Lord in anticipation of the Christian ideal of immaculate womanhood.

A similar development might no doubt be traced in the beautiful story of Visakha of Shravasti, the most famous of the female lay-disciples of Buddha. The queries put to her by Buddha and her explanations of her petitions, which had appeared enigmatic, are related in Carus's Gospel of Buddha, and in form correspond with the very different questions and solutions that passed between the Brahman and the Tibetan Visakha, already mentioned. The name Visakha, from a Sanskrit root, meaning to divide, came to mean selection and intelligence, of all kinds, but in the matron of Shravast? wit becomes the genius of charity, and cleverness expands to enlightenment.

This exaltation of human knowledge and wisdom, travelling to find it, testing it with riddles and questions, belongs to the cult of the Magus and the Pundit.

With reference to the seventh son Visakha and his all-wise bride Visakha, a notable parallelism is found in the substantial identity of "Solomon" and "the Shunnamite," on account of whom he slew his brother Adonijah. Shunnamite is equivalent to Shulamite, substantially the same as Solomon , but here probably meaning that she was a "Solomoness," a very wise woman. That such was her reputation appears by the "Song of Songs."

An equally striking comparison may be made between the naming of Solomon and the naming of Mahaushadha, the Tibetan "Solomon" already mentioned as having married a wise Visakha. Among the many proofs of wisdom given by this village-born youth was the discovery of the real husband of a woman claimed by two men. One of the men being much the weaker, there could be no such trial as that proposed in the child's case by Visakha. Mahaushadha questioned the two men as to what they had last eaten, then made them vomit, and so found out which had told the truth. Let us compare this Tibetan minister's birth with that of Solomon:

"When the boy came into the world and his birth-feast was celebrated, the name of Mahaushadha was given to him at the request of his mother, inasmuch as she, who had long suffered from illness, and had been unable to obtain relief from the time of the boy's conception, had been cured by him."

"And Jahveh struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and ... on the seventh day the child died.... And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her; and she bare a son, and she called his name Solomon. And Jahveh loved him; and he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and he called his name Jedidiah for Jahveh's sake."

In the Revised Version "she called" is given in the margin as "another reading," but that it is the right reading appears by the context: it was she that was "comforted," and in her babe she found "rest"--which "Solomon" strictly means. Among the Hebrews the naming of a child was an act of authority, and it is difficult to believe that in any purely Hebrew narrative a woman would be described as setting aside the name given by Jahveh himself. But the high position of woman in the Iranian and the Buddhist religions is well known.

In comparative studies the questions to be determined concerning parallel incidents are--whether they are trivial coincidences; whether they are not based in such universal beliefs or simple facts that they may have been of independent origin; whether the historic conditions of time and place admit of any supposed borrowing; if borrowing occurred, which is the original? With regard to the above parallelisms I submit that one of them, at least,--the Judgment of Solomon,--is neither trivial nor based in simple facts, and could not have originated independently of the Indian tale; that the others, though each, if it stood alone, might be a mere coincidence, are too numerous to be so explained; that the time and conditions which rendered it possible that the names of the apes and peacocks imported by Solomon should be Indian proves the possibility of importations of tales from the same country.

The question remaining to be determined--which region was the borrower--cannot be settled, in the present cases, by the relative antiquity of the books in which they are found; not only are the ages of all the books, Hebrew and Oriental, doubtful, but they are all largely made up of narratives long anterior to their compilation. The safest method, therefore, must be study of the intrinsic character of each narrative with a view to discovering the country to whose intellectual and social fauna and flora, so to say, it is most related, and which of the stories bears least of the faults incidental to translation. I have applied this touchstone to the above examples, and believe that the Oriental stories are the originals. The Judgment of Solomon appears to me to have lost an essential link, a motif, which it retains in Buddhist versions. And I do not believe that any Hebrew Bathsheba could have set aside a name given her child by a prophet, in the name of Jahveh, in order to celebrate by another name the "rest" she found from her sorrows.

On the other hand, the borrowings by other countries from the legend of Solomon appear much more numerous. In some cases, as the legend of Jemsh?d, there appear to have been exchanges between the two great sages, but the Solomonic traditions seem preponderant in Vikramadatsya, the demon-commanding hero of India. Solomon became a proverb of wisdom and liberality in Abyssinia, Arabia, and Persia. Ideal Sulaimans and Solimas abound. Solomon has influenced the legends of many heroes, such as Haroun-Alraschid and Charlemagne, and I will even venture a suspicion that the fame, and perhaps the name, of Solon have been influenced by the legend of Solomon. Lexicographers give no account of Solon's name; he is assigned to a conjectural period before written Greek existed; his interviews with Croesus, given in Herodotus, are hopelessly unhistorical, and his moralisings to the rich man recall the book of Proverbs. The Solon of Plato's Critias is already a mythological voyager, a Sindebad-Solomon, and his romance of the lost Atlantis is like an idealised rumour of the Wise Man's Kingdom. Solon's "history" was developed by Plutarch, seven centuries after the era assigned to the sage, out of poetical fragments ascribed to him, and he is represented as a great trader and traveller in the regions associated with Solomon. It is doubtful whether this chief of the Seven Sages, whose Solomonic motto was "Know Thyself" , could he reappear, would know himself as historically costumed by writers in our era, from Plutarch to Grote.

At any rate there is little doubt of a reference to the Seven Spentas or to the Seven Sages in Proverbs ix. 1:

"Wisdom hath builded her house, She hath hewn out her seven pillars."

THE WIVES OF SOLOMON.

According to the first book of Kings, Solomon's half-brother, Adonijah, after the defeat of an alleged effort to recover the throne of which he had been defrauded, submitted himself to Solomon. He had become enamored of the virgin who had been brought to the aged King David to try to revive some vitality in him; and he came to Bathsheba asking her to request her son the king to give him this damsel as his wife. Bathsheba proffered this "small petition" for Adonijah, but Solomon was enraged, and ironically suggested that she should ask the kingdom itself for Adonijah, whom he straightway ordered to execution. The immediate context indicates that Solomon suspected in this petition a plot against his throne. A royal father's harem was inherited by a royal son, and its possession is supposed to have involved certain rights of succession: this is the only interpretation I have ever heard of the extreme violence of Solomon. But I have never been satisfied with this explanation. Would Adonijah have requested, or Bathsheba asked as a "small" thing, a favor touching the king's tenure?

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