Introductory. 13



as possible from the poetry, idyllic or mystic, of the Song of Lecture
Solomon ; or from the meditations on life, placed on the
borderland of prose and poetry, which some of us have
studied in the book of Ecclesiastes. It resembles indeed the
books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, as dealing with the
practical and the speculative interests of human life. But it
differs in other respects fundamentally from both. First, it
gathers all its teaching round a single personage, the hero of
the poem, who from the beginning to the end forms the one
centre of interest. And secondly, whatever problems it raises,
or whatever lessons it teaches, come to us, when once we have
read the first line of the actual Poem, through the lips, never of
the author himself, but of the speakers, human or divine or
other, whom he places on the stage. Whoever was the unknown
author of the book, he confines himself to placing before us
the persons who are to speak to us, and to indicating some-
thing, where necessary, of their circumstances and characters.
