Quaerenda ; or, Two Historical Secrets. (Simpkin and Marshall.)— These
two secrets are the "Romance of Solomon, hidden in Scripture for 2,800 years," and the Lamp of Allah, a chapter of Asiatic history, with which, under the title of Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, we have been familiar from childhood. The author has a theory about Solomon, which he thinks is fairly deducible from the Canticles. The great King, he supposes, was in the habit of going hither and thither in disguise, with a view of acquiring such knowledge as might enable him to understand his people and rule them wisely. On one occasion he fell in with a beautiful lady in the Lebanon, as the Knight of Snowdon found fair Ellen Douglas in the Trosachs. The country was wild and somewhat dangerous, hence the expediency of dis- guise. The lady was the daughter of a highland chieftain, whose cheek the sun had tinged with brown, so that she felt it neces- sary to apologise for herself in the words, " Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun bath looked upon me." At the same time, she was tall and had a fine figure, and might be said to possess the beauty of Carmel, as it looks down upon the sea. The verse, "The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir," point to her remote and humble home amid the mountains. Solomon spoke of her as "his dove, and his undefiled being but one," out of a delicate reserve, which shrank from disclosing to her that her lover was, in fact, the lord of a vast harem. The purpose of the Song was to recall to her mind her once lowly condition, and to contrast it with her present grandeur and happiness. Such, in brief, is our author's view of Solomon's Song. The story of Aladdin's lamp was, he thinks, a Christian allegory, the composition of a member of the Paulician sect, which, in the opinion of some ecclesiastical historians, held doctrines akin to Protestantism, long before the time of Luther, or even of Wycliffe. It may be compared with Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," in the vividness with which the dogma of Satanic power is illustrated, though the Eastern sllegorist is more subtle and refined in his conception of the Evil One. It is curious to see how our author's ingenuity has contrived to evolve out of so old and familiar a story such a deep and mystical signification. It may well be that every Eastern story is, in fact, a religious allegory,—and "Aladdin's Lamp," perhaps, deserves pre-eminently to be thus treated.
Previous page
