known to be particularly attached. May we not, therefore, with some shadow of reason, suspect that, under the allegory of Solomon choosing a wife from the Egyptians, might be darkly typified that other Prince of Peace, who was to espouse a church chosen from among the Gentiles?"
As to the explanation of the allegory, this learned prelate properly advises, "that we ought to be cautious of carrying the figurative application too far, and of entering into a precise explication of every particular; as these minute investigations are seldom conducted with sufficient prudence not to offend the serious part of mankind, learned as well as unlearned."[1]
Bishop Lowth also takes this poem to be of a dramatic form, and adopts the division of Bossuet into seven parts.
1764. The excellent and judicious remarks of Lowth were followed by an elegant version of Solomon's Song, with a brief Commentary and Annotations, by Thomas Percy, D.D., Bishop of Dromore. The author vindicates the theory of Grotius, Lowth, &c., that this poem literally describes the nuptials of Solomon; and, like Bossuet and Lowth, divides it into seven parts, answering to the seven days of the supposed duration of the nuptials, which are distinguished from each other by different solemnities. In terms, even more severe than those of Bishop Lowth, Percy censures those commentators, "who have been so busily employed in opening and unfolding the allegorical meaning of this book as wholly to neglect that literal sense which ought to be the basis of their discoveries. If a sacred allegory may be defined a figurative discourse, which, under a lower and more obvious meaning, delivers the most sublime and important truths; then it is the first duty of an expositor to ascertain the lower and more obvious meaning. For till this is done, it is impossible to discover what truths are couched under it. Without this all is vague and idle conjecture. It is erecting an edifice without a foundation, which,
- ↑ See Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, Lect. xxx.; p. 345, Gregory's Translation, Third Edition.
