5. Wrifings. — Of the inner changes of mind and heart which ran parallel with this history Scripture is comparatively silent. Something may be learned from the books that Ijear his name, which, whether written by him or not, stand in the canon of the Old Test, as rep- resenting, with profound, inspired insight, the successive phases of his life; something, also, from the fact that so little remains out of so much — out of the songs, proverbs, treatises, of which the historian speaks (1 Kings iv, 32, 33). Legendary as may be the traditions which sjieak of Hezekiah as at one and the same time i)reserving some portions of Soloinon's writings (Prov. xxv, 1) and destroying others, a like process (if selection must have been gone through by the unknown rabbins of the Great Synagogue after the return from the exile. Slowly and hesitatingly they received into the canon, as they went on with tlieir unparalleled work of the expurgation by a people of its own literature, the two Ijooks which have been the stumiiling-blocks of commentators — Ec- desiastes and the Song of Songs ((iinsburg, Kohelclh, p. 13-15). Tliey give excerptii onlj' from the 3000 proverbs. Of the thousand and five songs (the precise number in<iicates a known collection) we know abso- lutely nothing. They were willing to admit Kohe- letii for the sake of its ethical conclusion; the Song of Songs, because at a very early i)eriod, possibly even then, it had received a mystical interpretation (Keil, Kiiiliit. ill flii.1 Alte Test. § 127) — because it was, at any rate, the history of a love which, if passionate, was also tender and pure and true. But it is easy to see that
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there are elements in that poem— the strong delight in ' visible outward beauty, the surrender of heart and will to one overpowering impulse — which migbt come to be divorced from truth and purity, and would then be per- ilous in proportion to their grace and charm. (But see lliiUin, Sulom. a Scepticismo Dejhmis [Host. 1710].) 8ucb a divorce took place, we know, in the actual life of Solomon. It could not fail to leave its stamp upon the idyls in which feeling and fancy uttered themselves. The poems of the son of David may have been like those of Hafiz. The scribes who compiled the canon of the Old Test, may have acted wisely, rightly, chari- tably to his fame in excluding them.
The wisdom of Solomon is specially dwelt on in Scripture — "God gave him wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand which is on the sea-shore." The term •' heart" is often used for "mind," and the meaning is, that Solo- mon was endowed with great faculties and capacities; and that his intellect was not only stored with vast and varied information, but was so active, shrewd, and pen- etrating as to be successful in its studies and investiga- tions. He had at once an unwearying eagerness in the pursuit of knowledge, and he had also the creative pow- er of genius. Nature and man were his study; botany and zoology shared his attention with men and man- ners; and his spirit gave utterance to its thoughts and emotions in jjoetry. He was a sage, a poet, and a nat- uralist— "he spake three thousand proverbs: and his Songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall : he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes" (1 Kings iv, 32, 33). The value of his zoological or bo- tanical researches we know not. No doubt his knowl- edge took minute cognizance more of external peculiar- ity than of inner structure, but it may have had the rudiments of a science, though he may not be compared to Linnfflus or Hooker, Cuvier or Owen. He was not so absorbed in royal cares or royal state and luxury as to forget mental culture. Amid much that was weak and wrong, he was "yet acquainting his heart with wis- dom" (Eccles. ii, 3). The " wisdom of Egypt" was pro- verbial in geometry, astronomy, and medicine ; but Sol- omon outstripped it. Arabia was the home of that sa- gacity that clothes itself in proverbs and of that subtle- ty which created riddles and queries; but "Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country." There had been men of noted intelli- gence in his own country, such as Ethan, who had charge of the temple music in David's time; Heman, one of the famous singers and " the king's seer in the words of God;" and Chalcol and Darda; but Solomon was "wiser than all men" (1 Kings iv, 29-31). (See the monographs De Sap. Sal. by Jloller [Kil. 1703J, Lund [Upsala, 170oJ,and Scherer [Argent. 1770].)
The books that remain meet us, as has been said, as at any rate representing the three stages of his life. The Song of Songs brings before us the brightness of his youth; the heart as yet untainted ; human love pas- sionate, yet undetiled, and therefore becoming, under a higher inspiration — half-consciously, it may be, to itself, but, if not, then unconsciously for others — the parable of the soul's aflfections. (See Krummacher, ^'ci/owo« and Shiilammith [Lond. 1838].) Then comes in the Book of Proverbs, the stage of practical, prudential thought, searching into the recesses of man's heart, seeing duty in little things as well as great, resting all duty on the fear of God, gathering, from the wide lessons of a king's experience, lessons which mankind could ill afford to lose. Both in Ecclesiastes (ii, 3-12) and yet more in Proverbs (i, 11-17 ; vii, 6-23) we may find traces of ex- periences gained in other ways. The graphic picture of the life of the robbers and the prostitutes of an Eastern city could hardly have been drawn but by one who, like Haroun al-Kashid and other Oriental kings, at times laid aside the trappings of royalty and plunged into the