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Some commentators have thought that Aristotle merely referred to the area of the inhabited portion of the earth and not to the circumference of the earth itself, but his words seem doubtfully susceptible of this interpretation; and if he meant, as his words seem to imply, that philosophers of his day had a tolerably precise idea of the globe, we must assume that this idea was based upon some sort of measurement.
Some commentators translate this passage thus: "he took one out of his side, and put flesh in its place;" and they thence infer that Adam and Eve were created at once, and joined by the side to each other; that God afterward sent a deep sleep upon Adam, and then separated the woman from him. They were thus on a perfect equality till the period of the fall.
All your junior academical sophs, who set up for censors of the eminent writers, compile whole volumes; but methinks two pages which display some of the beauties of great geniuses, are of infinitely more value than all the idle rhapsodies of those commentators; and I will join in opinion with all persons of good taste in declaring, that greater advantage may be reaped from a dozen verses of Homer of Virgil, than from all the critiques put together which have been made on those two great poets.
They place it foremost amongst the standard works of the Church; they accept its admonitions and its doctrines, and accord thereto a literal significance; it is to them, and ever has been, the word of God, a compilation made by human agency of works by various inspired writers; they accept its teachings in fulness, modifying the meaning in no wise, except in the rare cases of undoubted mistranslation, concerning which Biblical scholars of all faiths differ and criticize; and even in such cases their reverence for the sacred letter renders them even more conservative than the majority of Bible commentators and critics in placing free construction upon the text.
Small wonder that devout commentators have discovered in this music, so uncorporeal and diaphanous, a Christian intention, and pretend that in Franck's mind Psyche was the believing soul and Eros the divine lover! Tenderness, seraphic sweetness were the man's characteristic, permeating everything he touched.
III. The German commentators say that in the Acts of the Apostles we find Gamaliel expressing himself as doubtful whether or no Christianity was of God, whereas had he known the facts related by Matthew he could have had no doubt at all. He must have KNOWN that Christianity was of God. Dean Alford answers that perhaps Gamaliel was not there.
It was a wail over the struggle for existence, the purposeless procession of the ages, the passing of the ancient empires as the commentators had pointed out and of the modern empires that would pass on to join them, till the earth itself as the scientists had pointed out passed away in cold and darkness. Flux and reflux, the fire and the water, the water and the fire!
This is all I know of him, saving these his raptures over Proclus, of which I have quoted only a small portion, and of which I can only say, in Mr. Thomas Carlyle's words, "What things men will worship, in their extreme need!" He seems to my simplicity to be at once the most timid and servile of commentators, and the most cloudy of declaimers.
Commentators on the poets have always found much field for ingenious quibbling and sounding speculation in the line of allegory. Let a poem be but considered an allegory, and there is no limit to the changes which may be rung upon it, not even Mrs. Malaprop's banks of the Nile restraining the creature's headstrong ranging.
Such rites, I said to myself, must be understood to be appreciated, and had I not been reading certain native commentators on the subject that very morning? Nevertheless, my attention was diverted from the main issue the bridegroom's face had fascinated me.
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