Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 08
Religion
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 08
Literature -- Collections
Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has nevertheless
contrived to take-in a well nigh boundless extent of field; at least,
the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being
indispensable, we shall here glance over his First Part only in the
most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by
omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same
time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to
interest the Compilers of some Library of General, Entertaining,
Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of
these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in
view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of
publication, "at present the glory of British Literature"? If so, the
Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.
To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and
leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological,
metaphorical, cabalistico sartorial, and quite antediluvian cast, we
shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still
less have we to do with "Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to
the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock,
the whole progeny of aërial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,"--very
needlessly, we think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound
glances into the _Adam-Kadmon_, or Primeval Element, here strangely
brought into relation with the _Nifl_ and _Muspel_ (Darkness and
Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say, that its
correctness of deduction and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore
have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something
like astonishment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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