" HEBRON " IN BROWNING'S " SAUL."
(To TRH EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."1
Silk—There is a perplexing use of the name " Hebron " in Browning's " Saul " :—
"For I wake in the grey dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine."
It would seem that Hebron is regarded here as a mountain, but the Hebron of Jewish history and geography is not a
mountain but a city. In Mr. Augustine Birrell's two-volume edition of Browning's works, of which the editor modestly observes that "it makes no pretence to be critical," the three notes to " Saul " explain (1) that the jerboa is "the jump- ing hare"; (2) that Kidron is "a brook in [sic] Jeru- salem " ; and (3) that Hebron was "one of the three cities of refuge." How the fact that Hebron was a city of refuge
• accounts for its having a shoulder on which it can upheave the dawn is not obvious ; but I see that the pleasant editor some weeks ago was amusing his hearers by confessing that he never knew what "the welkin" is. Hebron had a mountain before it, for when Samson upheaved on his shoulder the gate of Gaza, and the two posts, he carried them, "bar and all, to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron." But the city was itself in a valley; "it is situated in a shallow valley, surrounded by rocky hills," and an adjoining hill or mountain could hardly be described as Hebron's shoulder. I suppose that Browning, who is generally careful and accurate in his innumerable allusions, forgot that Hebron was a city, and—possibly thinking of Hermon—fancied it to be a. mountain. And what sets me on writing to-day is that I see in the March number of Good Words that Mr. Stopford Brooke follows Browning into the same error. After referring to the mountain which held "a year's snow bound about for a breastplate," and suddenly left grasp of the sheet, he adds : "And Hebron carries himself in the same giant fashion" (p. 186). Is there any alternative to the conclusion that Browning and the divine who comments on him have fallen into a mistake about Hebron P—I am, Sir, &c., J. LLEWELYN DAVLES.
[Surely Browning wrote or meant "Hermon," and forgot to correct his proof. Those who have ridden under Hermon when journeying from Jerusalem to Damascus, and marked that giant shoulder which holds the snow even at the very end of a Syrian summer, cannot doubt the reference. Brown- ing was never in the Holy Land, but must have read many books of travel and talked with plenty of travellers, and few travellers return from Syria without having been deeply impressed by the might and majesty of Hermon,—a true king of mountains.—En. Spectator.]
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