The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

330
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
could succeed it would only be by becoming callous.
Then the final result would be not to excite deeper
sympathy, but the very reverse, and at the same time
a distinctly lowering and coarsening effect would be
produced in us. And yet we may not smother up
abuses in order to spare our own feelings. There are
evils that must be dragged out to the light in order
that they may be execrated, punished, and destroyed.
Uncle Tom's Cabin broke the back of American slavery
before President Lincoln attacked it. Where, then,
shall we find the middle position between repul-
sive realism and guilty negligence ? We have the
model for this in the Biblical treatment of painful
subjects. Scripture never gloats over the details of
crimes and vices ; yet Scripture never flinches from
describing such things in the plainest possible terms.
If these subjects are ever to become the theme of art
—and art claims the whole of life for her domain
imagination must carry us away to the secondary
effects rather than vivify the hideous occurrences
themselves. The passage before us affords an ex-
cellent illustration of this method. With a few keen,
clear strokes the poet sketches in the exact situation.
But he shows no disposition to linger on ghastly
details. Though he does not shrink from setting them
before us in unmistakable truth of form and colour,
he hastens to a more ideal treatment of the subject,
and relieves us with the imaginary picture of the
spoiled banquet. Even Spenser sometimes excites
a feeling of positive nausea when he enlarges on some
most loathsome picture. It would be unendurable
except that the great Elizabethan poet has woven the
witchery of his dainty fancy into the fabric of his
verse. Thus things can be said in poetry which would
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