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Many of Hawthorne's commentators have been puzzled by the fact that Hester, after so many years of contrition, should advise Dimmesdale to fly to England, and even offered to accompany him. Women have not the same idea of law that men have.
But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs to the King and Queen, "because of its superior excellence." And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in such matters. But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A reason for that, ye lawyers!
It is to be borne in mind, however, that the Talmud is not the Pentateuch, and that learned and sincerely pious commentators have differed, and do so still, as widely as the poles, upon passages quite as easily understood as the one now under discussion.
The Tiber and the Po serve to explain the verses which were made upon their banks; and the Alps and Apennines are made Commentators on those Authors, to whom they were subjects, so many centuries ago.
He writes now on all subjects as if he certainly intended to be a renegade, and was determined to make the contrast complete." It is to be hoped that the commentators of the future will not treat it as an authoritative record of Mr. Disraeli's estimate of Lord Macaulay's political character. To Hannah M. Macaulay. London: June 25, 1831.
"As to the works from which knowledge of this kind is to be obtained, Daguesseau has instanced Aristotle, Cicero, Grotius: I should add the best ancient and modern moralists, treatises on political economy published since the middle of the last century, the writings on political science in general, and on its details and application, of Macchiavelli, Bodin, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Mably, and the most enlightened of their disciples and commentators."
The Stonewall Brigade would hardly have been surprised had they seen their general surrounded by ponderous volumes, gravely investigating the teaching of departed commentators, or joining with quiet fervour in the family devotions.
But ARPACHSHAD was already a husband and a father at thirty-five. "That," said SARK, "is a remarkable circumstance that has escaped the notice of the commentators. It indicates unusual forwardness of character and a habit of swift decision. We hear nothing more of ARPACHSHAD, but we may be sure he made things move.
Besides, it has been divined by other continental commentators, that when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his escape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a figure-head; and, I would add, possibly called "The Whale," as some craft are nowadays christened the "Shark," the "Gull," the "Eagle."
Homer begins this paradox. Think of that lovely and exquisitely mischievous passage in the Iliad called The Cheating of Zeus. The salvationist school of commentators calls this an interpolation; but the spirit of it is implicit throughout the whole of Homer's dealing with the gods; whenever, at least, he deals with them at length, and not merely incidentally.
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