A RECENSION OF BIBLICAL COSMOLOGY

Draft in the hand of the writer, from the bundle of the Carp papers, Brasenose College Archives. It carries no title of a periodical, no signature and no date. The pamphlet it reviews is Mr. Casaubon's Biblical Cosmology*. The text is given as it stands, with the writer's cancellations omitted.*

Biblical Cosmology. By the Rev. Edward Casaubon, Rector of Lowick. Pamphlet. Printed for the Author.

It is some years since the public was informed, in the usual manner, that a Rector in the Midland counties had in hand a work which should bring together the religious traditions of mankind and show them to be the corruptions of a single original. The announcement was made with becoming gravity; it has been repeated at intervals; and the gentleman's friends have been observed to speak of the work in the tone in which one speaks of a thing that exists. What has actually appeared is a succession of pamphlets, of which the present is the first in order and the least in consequence. We have read it with the attention which an author is entitled to expect from the reviewer of a first performance, and we are bound to say that we have laid it down with the impression that the great work is likely to be heard of rather longer than it will be seen.¹

We make this observation first because the pamphlet itself invites it. A treatise on the cosmogony of Moses may be written in a season. A key to all mythologies is not so written; and a writer who undertakes the second, and delivers the first, has either mistaken the magnitude of his undertaking or has found that the materials resist him. Mr. Casaubon is a man of reading, and we are far from supposing the former. The pamphlet is, however, a pledge, and a pledge of a particular kind: it is the earnest, offered to the public for the payment of a debt of which nothing but the earnest has yet been paid. We should be glad to know when the remainder is to be expected.

The author's method, so far as a pamphlet permits it to be gathered, is the old one of the comparison of names. A word in the Hebrew is set beside a word in the Greek, and the Greek beside an Egyptian or a Phoenician; and where the sounds approach, the persons are declared to be the same. We have no objection to the comparison of names, which is a legitimate and sometimes a fruitful employment of learning. We object to its being made to bear a weight which sound alone cannot bear. Every reader of the older writers on this subject will remember with what facility a name may be found in a word, if the word is resembled by it in two or three of its letters; and the author of the present pamphlet, whatever his reading, has given us no rule by which a true resemblance may be distinguished from a fortuitous one. The etymologist who admits no such rule can derive anything from anything. We do not say that Mr. Casaubon has done this; we say that his readers have no means of knowing that he has not.²

It will be said that the method is not his own, and the observation is just. The reader who is acquainted with the work of Mr. Bryant, which is now half a century old, will find in these pages very little to surprise him. The plan is Mr. Bryant's; the persons are Mr. Bryant's, with their migrations and their confusions of names; the conclusion to which all is directed is the conclusion of Mr. Bryant. Where the present writer departs from his master, it is to correct him, and the corrections are such as a diligent reader might make for himself. We do not deny that there is merit in following a great predecessor at a little distance and amending his errors. But it is the merit of a commentator, and it should not be advanced as the merit of a discoverer; and a gentleman who proposes to give the world a key to the whole subject should be asked what he proposes to add, after the corrections, to that which Mr. Bryant has already given.³

We have one remark more, and it concerns the quarter from which the author has drawn his evidence. A writer who treats of the traditions of the East is expected to have drawn upon the East. Mr. Casaubon has not. His authorities for what is Egyptian, Persian or Indian are the authorities of the library; they are those which any scholar of the day may consult upon his own shelves; and, where the Indian material is concerned, they are those who have themselves received it through the Brahmans, and not those who have read it. We say this without censure. It is not a fault in a clergyman of Warwickshire that he has not been to Benares. But it is a limitation, and the author has nowhere acknowledged it; and a key which is made at second hand cannot be expected to open a lock which was made at first.⁴

We conclude, therefore, as we began. The pamphlet is the work of a man of industry and of respectable acquirements. It is learned, and it is grave, and it will be read by those who are already of the author's opinion with every satisfaction. To those who are not, it offers no reason for becoming so, and no promise that a reason will come; and we shall wait, with such patience as we have, for the great work of which it is the forerunner.