VOLUME XVI, SLICE II

Lamennais, Robert de to Latini, Brunetto

ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:

LAMENNAIS, HUGUES ROBERT DE LANTARA, SIMON MATHURIN LAMENTATIONS LANTERN LAMETH, ALEXANDRE VICTOR LANTERN-FLY LAMETTRIE, JULIEN OFFRAY DE LANTERNS OF THE DEAD LAMIA LANTHANUM LAMMAS LANUVIUM LÄMMERGEYER LANZA, DOMENICO GIUSEPPE MARIA LAMOIGNON LANZAROTE LAMONT, JOHANN VON LANZI, LUIGI LAMORICIÈRE, JUCHAULT DE LAOAG LA MOTHE LE VAYER, FRANÇOIS DE LAOCOON LA MOTTE, ANTOINE HOUDAR DE LAODICEA LAMOUREUX, CHARLES LAODICEA, SYNOD OF LAMP LAOMEDON LAMP-BLACK LAON LAMPEDUSA LAOS (territory) LAMPERTHEIM LAOS (Thai race) LAMPETER LÂO-TSZE LAMPOON LA PAZ (department of Bolivia) LAMPREY LA PAZ (capital of Bolivia) LAMPROPHYRES LA PÉROUSE, JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE GALAUP LAMPSACUS LAPIDARY, and GEM CUTTING LAMPSTAND LAPILLI LANARK LAPIS LAZULI LANARKSHIRE LAPITHAE LANCASHIRE LA PLACE, JOSUÉ DE LANCASTER, HOUSE OF LAPLACE, PIERRE SIMON LANCASTER, HENRY LAPLAND LANCASTER, SIR JAMES LA PLATA LANCASTER, JOHN OF GAUNT LAPORTE, ROLAND LANCASTER, JOSEPH LA PORTE LANCASTER, THOMAS LAPPA LANCASTER (England) LAPPARENT, ALBERT COCHON DE LANCASTER (Ohio, U.S.A.) LAPPENBERG, JOHANN MARTIN LANCASTER (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) LAPRADE, PIERRE MARTIN RICHARD DE LANCE LAPSE LANCELOT LAPWING LANCET LAPWORTH, CHARLES LANCEWOOD LAR LAN-CHOW-FU LARA LANCIANO LARAISH LANCRET, NICOLAS LARAMIE LAND LARBERT LANDAU LARCENY LANDECK LARCH LANDEN, JOHN LARCHER, PIERRE HENRI LANDEN (Belgium) LARCIUS, TITUS LANDER, RICHARD LEMON and JOHN LARD LANDES (department in France) LARDNER, DIONYSIUS LANDES (region of France) LARDNER, NATHANIEL LANDESHUT LAREDO LANDGRAVE LA RÉOLE LANDLORD AND TENANT LARES LANDON, CHARLES PAUL LA RÉVELLIÈRE-LÉPEAUX, MARIE DE LANDON, LETITIA ELIZABETH LARGENTIÈRE LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE LARGILLIÈRE, NICOLAS LANDOUR LARGS LAND REGISTRATION LARGUS, SCRIBONIUS LANDSBERG AM LECH LARINO LANDSBERG-AN-DER-WARTHE LARISSA LANDSBERG BEI HALLE LARISTAN LANDSEER, SIR EDWIN HENRY LARIVEY, PIERRE LAND'S END LARK LANDSHUT LARKHALL LANDSKNECHT LARKHANA LANDSKRONA LARKSPUR LANDSTURM LARNACA LANDWEHR LA ROCHE LANE, EDWARD WILLIAM LA ROCHEFOUCAULD LANE, GEORGE MARTIN LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRANÇOIS DE LANE, JAMES HENRY LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-LIANCOURT, FRÉDÉRIC LANESSAN, JEAN MARIE ANTOINE DE LA ROCHEJACQUELEIN, DE LANFRANC LA ROCHELLE LANFREY, PIERRE LA ROCHE-SUR-YON LANG, ANDREW LAROMIGUIÈRE, PIERRE LANG, KARL HEINRICH LARRA, MARIANO JOSÉ DE LANGDELL, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS LARSA LANGDON, JOHN LARTET, EDOUARD LANGE, ANNE FRANÇOISE ELIZABETH LARVAL FORMS LANGE, ERNST PHILIPP KARL LARYNGITIS LANGE, FRIEDRICH ALBERT LA SABLIÈRE, MARGUERITE DE LANGE, JOHANN PETER LA SALE, ANTOINE DE LANGEAIS LASALLE, ANTOINE CHEVALIER COLLINET LANGEN, JOSEPH LA SALLE, RENÉ ROBERT CAVELIER LANGENBECK, BERNHARD KONRAD VON LA SALLE, ST JEAN BAPTISTE DE LANGENSALZA LA SALLE (Illinois, U.S.A.) LANGHAM, SIMON LASAULX, ARNOLD CONSTANTIN FRANZ VON LANGHOLM LASCAR LANGHORNE, JOHN LASCARIS, CONSTANTINE LANGIEWICZ, MARYAN LASCARIS, JOANNES LANGLAND, WILLIAM LAS CASAS, BARTOLOMÉ DE LANGLEY, SAMUEL PIERPONT LAS CASES, EMMANUEL AUGUSTIN JOSEPH LANGLOIS, HIPPOLYTE LASHIO LANGPORT LASKER, EDUARD LANGREO LASKI LANGRES LAS PALMAS LANGTOFT, PETER LASSALLE, FERDINAND LANGTON, JOHN LASSEN, CHRISTIAN LANGTON, STEPHEN LASSEN, EDUARD LANGTON, WALTER LASSO, ORLANDO LANGTRY, LILLIE LASSO LANGUAGE LAST LANGUEDOC LASUS LANGUET, HUBERT LAS VEGAS LANGUR LASWARI LANG VON WELLENBURG, MATTHÄUS LATACUNGA LANIER, SIDNEY LA TAILLE, JEAN DE LANJUINAIS, JEAN DENIS LATAKIA LANMAN, CHARLES ROCKWELL LATEEN LANNES, JEAN LA TÈNE LANNION LATERAN COUNCILS LANNOY, GUILLEBERT DE LATERITE LANOLIN LATH LA NOUE, FRANÇOIS DE LATHE LANSDOWNE, WILLIAM FITZMAURICE LATHROP, FRANCIS LANSDOWNE LATIMER, HUGH LANSING LATINA, VIA LANSING MAN LATINI, BRUNETTO LANSQUENET

LAMENNAIS, HUGUES FÉLICITÉ ROBERT DE (1782-1854), French priest, and philosophical and political writer, was born at Saint Malo, in Brittany, on the 19th of June 1782. He was the son of a shipowner of Saint Malo ennobled by Louis XVI. for public services, and was intended by his father to follow mercantile pursuits. He spent long hours in the library of an uncle, devouring the writings of Rousseau, Pascal and others. He thereby acquired a vast and varied, though superficial, erudition, which determined his subsequent career. Of a sickly and sensitive nature, and impressed by the horrors of the French Revolution, his mind was early seized with a morbid view of life, and this temper characterized him throughout all his changes of opinion and circumstance. He was at first inclined towards rationalistic views, but partly through the influence of his brother Jean Marie (1775-1861), partly as a result of his philosophical and historical studies, he felt belief to be indispensable to action and saw in religion the most powerful leaven of the community. He gave utterance to these convictions in the _Réflexions sur l'état de l'église en France pendant le 18^(ième) siècle et sur sa situation actuelle_, published anonymously in Paris in 1808. Napoleon's police seized the book as dangerously ideological, with its eager recommendation of religious revival and active clerical organization, but it awoke the ultramontane spirit which has since played so great a part in the politics of churches and of states.

As a rest from political strife, Lamennais devoted most of the following year to a translation, in exquisite French, of the _Speculum Monachorum_ of Ludovicus Blosius (Louis de Blois) which he entitled _Le Guide spirituel_ (1809). In 1811 he received the tonsure and shortly afterwards became professor of mathematics in an ecclesiastical college founded by his brother at Saint Malo. Soon after Napoleon had concluded the Concordat with Pius VII. he published, in conjunction with his brother, _De la tradition de l'église sur l'institution des évêques_ (1814), a writing occasioned by the emperor's nomination of Cardinal Maury to the archbishopric of Paris, in which he strongly condemned the Gallican principle which allowed bishops to be created irrespective of the pope's sanction. He was in Paris at the first Bourbon restoration in 1814, which he hailed with satisfaction, less as a monarchist than as a strenuous apostle of religious regeneration. Dreading the _Cent Jours_, he escaped to London, where he obtained a meagre livelihood by giving French lessons in a school founded by the abbé Jules Carron for French émigrés; he also became tutor at the house of Lady Jerningham, whose first impression of him as an imbecile changed into friendship. On the final overthrow of Napoleon in 1815 he returned to Paris, and in the following year, with many misgivings as to his calling, he yielded to his brother's and Carron's advice, and was ordained priest by the bishop of Rennes.

The first volume of his great work, _Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion_, appeared in 1817 (Eng. trans. by Lord Stanley of Alderley, London, 1898), and affected Europe like a spell, investing, in the words of Lacordaire, a humble priest with all the authority once enjoyed by Bossuet. Lamennais denounced toleration, and advocated a Catholic restoration to belief. The right of private judgment, introduced by Descartes and Leibnitz into philosophy and science, by Luther into religion and by Rousseau and the Encyclopaedists into politics and society, had, he contended, terminated in practical atheism and spiritual death. Ecclesiastical authority, founded on the absolute revelation delivered to the Jewish people, but supported by the universal tradition of all nations, he proclaimed to be the sole hope of regenerating the European communities. Three more volumes (Paris, 1818-1824) followed, and met with a mixed reception from the Gallican bishops and monarchists, but with the enthusiastic adhesion of the younger clergy. The work was examined by three Roman theologians, and received the formal approval of Leo XII. Lamennais visited Rome at the pope's request, and was offered a place in the Sacred College, which he refused. On his return to France he took a prominent part in political work, and together with Chateaubriand, the vicomte de Villèle, was a regular contributor to the _Conservateur_, but when Villèle became the chief of the supporters of absolute monarchy, Lamennais withdrew his support and started two rival organs, _Le Drapeau blanc_ and _Le Mémorial catholique_. Various other minor works, together with _De la religion considérée dans ses rapports avec l'ordre civil et politique_ (2 vols., 1825-1826), kept his name before the public.

He retired to La Chênaie and gathered round him a host of brilliant disciples, including C. de Montalembert, Lacordaire and Maurice de Guérin, his object being to form an organized body of opinion to persuade the French clergy and laity to throw off the yoke of the state connexion. With Rome at his back, as he thought, he adopted a frank and bold attitude in denouncing the liberties of the Gallican church. His health broke down and he went to the Pyrenees to recruit. On his return to La Chênaie in 1827 he had another dangerous illness, which powerfully impressed him with the thought that he had only been dragged back to life to be the instrument of Providence. _Les Progrès de la révolution et de la guerre contre l'église_ (1828) marked Lamennais's complete renunciation of royalist principles, and henceforward he dreamt of the advent of a theocratic democracy. To give effect to these views he founded _L'Avenir_, the first number of which appeared on the 16th of October 1830, with the motto "God and Liberty." From the first the paper was aggressively democratic; it demanded rights of local administration, an enlarged suffrage, universal freedom of conscience, freedom of instruction, of meeting, and of the press. Methods of worship were to be criticized, improved or abolished in absolute submission to the spiritual, not to the temporal authority. With the help of Montalembert, he founded the _Agence générale pour la défense de la liberté religieuse_, which became a far-reaching organization, it had agents all over the land who noted any violations of religious freedom and reported them to headquarters. As a result, _L'Avenir's_ career was stormy, and the opposition of the Conservative bishops checked its circulation; Lamennais, Montalembert and Lacordaire resolved to suspend it for a while, and they set out to Rome in November 1831 to obtain the approval of Gregory XVI. The "pilgrims of liberty" were, after much opposition, received in audience by the pope, but only on the condition that the object which brought them to Rome should not be mentioned. This was a bitter disappointment to such earnest ultramontanes, who received, a few days after the audience, a letter from Cardinal Pacca, advising their departure from Rome and suggesting that the Holy See, whilst admitting the justice of their intentions, would like the matter left open for the present. Lacordaire and Montalembert obeyed; Lamennais, however, remained in Rome, but his last hope vanished with the issue of Gregory's letter to the Polish bishops, in which the Polish patriots were reproved and the tsar was affirmed to be their lawful sovereign. He then "shook the dust of Rome from off his feet." At Munich, in 1832, he received the encyclical _Mirari vos_, condemning his policy; as a result _L'Avenir_ ceased and the _Agence_ was dissolved.

Lamennais, with his two lieutenants, submitted, and deeply wounded, retired to La Chênaie. His genius and prophetic insight had turned the entire Catholic church against him, and those for whom he had fought so long were the fiercest of his opponents. The famous _Paroles d'un croyant_, published in 1834 through the intermediary of Sainte-Beuve, marks Lamennais's severance from the church. "A book, small in size, but immense in its perversity," was Gregory's criticism in a new encyclical letter. A tractate of aphorisms, it has the vigour of a Hebrew prophecy and contains the choicest gems of poetic feeling lost in a whirlwind of exaggerations and distorted views of kings and rulers. The work had an extraordinary circulation and was translated into many European languages. It is now forgotten as a whole, but the beautiful appeals to love and human brotherhood are still reprinted in every hand-book of French literature.

Henceforth Lamennais was the apostle of the people alone. _Les Affaires de Rome, des maux de l'église et de la société_ (1837) came from old habit of religious discussions rather than from his real mind of 1837, or at most it was but a last word. _Le Livre du peuple_ (1837), _De l'esclavage moderne_ (1839), _Politique à l'usage du peuple_ (1839), three volumes of articles from the journal of the extreme democracy, _Le Monde_, are titles of works which show that he had arrived among the missionaries of liberty, equality and fraternity, and he soon got a share of their martyrdom. _Le Pays et le gouvernement_ (1840) caused him a year's imprisonment. He struggled through difficulties of lost friendships, limited means and personal illnesses, faithful to the last to his hardly won dogma of the sovereignty of the people, and, to judge by his contribution to Louis Blanc's _Revue du progrès_ was ready for something like communism. He was named president of the "Société de la solidarité républicaine," which counted half a million adherents in fifteen days. The Revolution of 1848 had his sympathies, and he started _Le Peuple constituant_; however, he was compelled to stop it on the 10th of July, complaining that silence was for the poor, but again he was at the head of _La Révolution démocratique et sociale_, which also succumbed. In the constituent assembly he sat on the left till the _coupe d'état_ of Napoleon III. in 1851 put an end to all hopes of popular freedom. While deputy he drew up a constitution, but it was rejected as too radical. Thereafter a translation of Dante chiefly occupied him till his death, which took place in Paris on the 27th of February 1854. He refused to be reconciled to the church, and was buried according to his own directions at Père La Chaise without funeral rites, being mourned by a countless concourse of democratic and literary admirers.

During the most difficult time of his republican period he found solace for his intellect in the composition of _Une voix de prison_, written during his imprisonment in a similar strain to _Les paroles d'un croyant_. This is an interesting contribution to the literature of captivity; it was published in Paris in 1846. He also wrote _Esquisse de philosophie_ (1840). Of the four volumes of this work the third, which is an exposition of art as a development from the aspirations and necessities of the temple, stands pre-eminent, and remains the best evidence of his thinking power and brilliant style.

There are two so-called _Oeuvres complètes de Lamennais_, the first in 10 volumes (Paris, 1836-1837), and the other in 10 volumes (Paris, 1844); both these are very incomplete and only contain the works mentioned above. The most noteworthy of his writings subsequently published are: _Amschaspands et Darvands_ (1843), _Le Deuil de la Pologne_ (1846), _Mélanges philosophiques et politiques_ (1856), _Les Évangiles_ (1846) and _La Divine Comédie_, these latter being translations of the Gospels and of Dante.

Part of his voluminous correspondence has also appeared. The most interesting volumes are the following: _Correspondance de F. de Lamennais_, edited by E. D. Forgues (2 vols., 1855-1858); _Oeuvres inédites de F. Lamennais_, edited by Ange Blaize (2 vols., 1866); _Correspondance inédite entre Lamennais et le baron de Vitrolles_, edited by E. D. Forgues (1819-1853); _Confidences de Lamennais, lettres inédites de 1821 à 1848_, edited by A. du Bois de la Villerabel (1886); _Lamennais d'après des documents inédits_, by Alfred Roussel (Rennes, 2 vols., 1892); _Lamennais intime, d'après une correspondance inédite_, by A. Roussel (Rennes, 1897); _Un Lamennais inconnu_, edited by A. Laveille (1898); _Lettres de Lamennais à Montalembert_, edited by E. D. Forgues (1898); and many other letters published in the _Revue bleue_, _Revue britannique_, &c.

A list of lives or studies on Lamennais would fill several columns. The following may be mentioned. A Blaize, _Essai biographique sur M. de Lamennais_ (1858); E. D. Forgues, _Notes et souvenirs_ (1859); F. Brunetière, _Nouveaux essais sur la littérature contemporaine_ (1893); E. Faguet, _Politiques et moralistes_, ii. (1898); P. Janet, _La Philosophie de Lamennais_ (1890); P. Mercier, S.J., _Lamennais d'après sa correspondance et les travaux les plus récents_ (1893); A. Mollien et F. Duine, _Lamennais, sa vie et ses idées_; _Pages choisies_ (Lyons, 1898); The Hon. W. Gibson, _The Abbé de Lammenais and the Liberal Catholic Movement in France_ (London, 1896); E. Renan _Essais de morale et de critique_ (1857); E. Schérer, _Mélanges de critique religieuse_ (1859); G. E. Spuller, _Lamennais, étude d'histoire et de politique religieuse_ (1892); Mgr. Ricard, _L'école menaisienne_ (1882), and Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits contemporains_, tome i. (1832), and _Nouveaux Lundis_, tome i. p. 22; tome xi. p. 347.

LAMENTATIONS (_Lamentations of Jeremiah_), a book of the Old Testament. In Hebrew MSS. and editions this little collection of liturgical poems is entitled [Hebrew: eiha] _Ah how!_, the first word of ch. i. (and chs. ii., iv.); cf. the books of the Pentateuch, and the Babylonian Epic of Creation (a far older example). In the Septuagint it is called [Greek: Thrênoi], "Funeral-songs" or "Dirges," the usual rendering of Heb. [Hebrew: kinot] (Am. v. 1; Jer. vii. 29; 2 Sam. i. 17), which is, in fact, the name in the Talmud (_Baba Bathra_ 15a) and other Jewish writings; and it was known as such to the Fathers (Jerome, _Cinoth_). The Septuagint (B) introduces the book thus: "And it came to pass, after Israel was taken captive and Jerusalem laid waste, Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said...," a notice which may have related originally to the first poem only. Some Septuagint MSS., and the Syriac and other versions, have the fuller title _Lamentations of Jeremiah_. In the Hebrew Bible Lamentations is placed among the _Cetubim_ or Hagiographa, usually as the middle book of the five _Megilloth_ or Ferial Rolls (Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther) according to the order of the days on which they are read in the Synagogue, Lamentations being read on the 9th of Ab (6th of August), when the destruction of the Temple is commemorated (_Mass. Sopherim_ 18). But the Septuagint appends the book to Jeremiah (_Baruch_ intervening), just as it adds Ruth to Judges; thus making the number of the books of the Hebrew Canon the same as that of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, viz. twenty-two (so Jos. c. Ap. i. 8), instead of the Synagogal twenty-four (see _Baba Bathra_ 14b).

_External features and poetical structure._--These poems exhibit a peculiar metre, the so-called "limping verse," of which Am. v. 2 is a good instance:

"She is fállen, to ríse no móre-- Maid Israël! Left lórn upón her lánd-- none raísing hér!"

A longer line, with three accented syllables, is followed by a shorter with two. Chs. i.-iii. consist of stanzas of three such couplets each; chs. iv. and v. of two like Am. v. 2. This metre came in time to be distinctive of elegy. The text of Lamentations, however, so often deviates from it, that we can only affirm the _tendency_ of the poet to cast his couplets into this type (Driver). Some anomalies, both of metre and of sense, may be removed by judicious emendation; and many lines become smooth enough, if we assume a crasis of open vowels of the same class, or a diphthongal pronunciation of others, or contraction or silence of certain suffixes as in Syriac. The oldest elegiac utterances are not couched in this metre; e.g. David's (2 Sam. iii. 33 f. Abner; ib. i. 19-27 Saul and Jonathan). Yet the refrain of the latter, '_Eik náf 'lu gíbborím_, "Ah how are heroes fallen!" agrees with our longer line. The remote ancestor of this Hebrew metre may be recognized in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, written at least a thousand years earlier:--

_Ea-báni íbri kutáni_ | _Nímru sha çéri_ "Eabani, my friend, my little brother! | Leopard of the Wild!"

and again:--

_Kíki lúskut_ | _Kíki luqúl-ma_ Íbri shá arámmu_ | _Itémi tittish_ "How shall I be dumb? | How shall I bewail? The friend whom I love | Is turned to clay!"

Like a few of the Psalms, Lamentations i.-iv. are alphabetical acrostics. Each poem contains twenty-two stanzas, corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; and each stanza begins with its proper letter. (In ch. iii. each of the three couplets in a stanza begins with the same letter, so that the alphabet is repeated thrice: cf. Psalm cxix. for an eight-fold repetition.) The alphabet of Lamentations ii. iii. iv. varies from the usual order of the letters by placing _Pe_ before _Ain_. The same was doubtless the case in ch. i. also until some scribe altered it. He went no further, because the sense forbade it in the other instances. The variation may have been one of local use, either in Judea or in Babylonia; or the author may have had some fanciful reason for the transposition, such as, for example, that _Pe_ following _Samech_ ([Hebrew: sp]) might suggest the word [Hebrew: sifdu], "Wail ye!" (2 Sam. iii. 31). Although the oldest Hebrew elegies are not alphabetic acrostics, it is a curious fact that the word [Hebrew: aidach], "Was he a coward?" (Sc. [Hebrew: libo]; Is. vii. 4), is formed by the initial letters of the four lines on Abner (om. [Hebrew: ve], line 3); and the initials of the verses of David's great elegy are [Hebrew: ha amshech eze], which may be read as a sentence meaning, perhaps, "Lo, I the Avenger" (cf. Deut. xxxii. 41, 43) "will go forth!"; or the first two letters ([Hebrew: he'alef']) may stand for [Hebrew: hoi ahi], "Alas, my brother!" (Jer. xxii. 18; cf. xxxiv. 5). In cryptic fashion the poet thus registers a vow of vengeance on the Philistines. Both kinds of acrostic occur side by side in the Psalms. Psalm cx., an acrostic of the same kind as David's elegy, is followed by Psalms cxi. cxii., which are alphabetical acrostics, like the Lamentations. Such artifices are not in themselves greater clogs on poetic expression than the excessive alliteration of old Saxon verse or the strict rhymes of modern lyrics. (Alliteration, both initial and internal, is common in Lamentations.)

As the final piece, ch. v. may have suffered more in transmission than those which precede it--even to the extent of losing the acrostic form (like some of the Psalms and Nahum i.), besides half of its stanzas. If we divide the chapter into quatrains, like ch. iv., we notice several vestiges of an acrostic. The _Aleph_ stanza (verses 7, 8) still precedes the _Beth_ (verses 9, 10), and the _Ain_ is still quite clear (verses 17, 18; cf. i. 16). Transposing verses 5, 6, and correcting their text, we see that the _Jod_ stanza (verses 3, 4) precedes the _Lamed_ (verses 6, 5), _Caph_ having disappeared between them. With this clue, we may rearrange the other quatrains in alphabetical sequence, each according to its initial letter. We thus get a broken series of eleven stanzas, beginning with the letters [Hebrew: alef] (verses 7, 8), [Hebrew: beth] (9, 10), [Hebrew: hei] (21, 22), [Hebrew: vav] (19, cf. Psalm cii. 13; and 20), [Hebrew: nun] (1, 2), [Hebrew: het] (13, [Hebrew: horim]; 14), [Hebrew: iod] (3, 4), [Hebrew: lamed] (6, [Hebrew: latzadim]; 5, [Hebrew: hibkiru] ... [Hebrew: ol]), [Hebrew: nun] (11, 12), [Hebrew: ayin] (17, 18), and [Hebrew: shin] (15, 16), successively. An internal connexion will now be apparent in all the stanzas.

_General subject and outline of contents._--The theme of Lamentations is the final siege and fall of Jerusalem (586 B.C.), and the attendant and subsequent miseries of the Jewish people.

In ch. i. we have a vivid picture of the distress of Zion, after all is over. The poet does not describe the events of the siege, nor the horrors of the capture, but the painful experience of subjection and tyranny which followed. Neither this nor ch. ii. is strictly a "dirge." Zion is not dead. She is personified as a widowed princess, bereaved and desolate, sitting amid the ruins of her former joys, and brooding over her calamities. From verse 11c to the end (except verse 17) she herself is the speaker:--

"O come, ye travellers all! Behold and see If grief there be like mine!"

She images her sorrows under a variety of metaphors (cf. ch. iii. 1-18); ascribing all her woes to Yahweh's righteous wrath, provoked by her sins, and crying for vengeance on the malicious rivals who had rejoiced at her overthrow.

The text has suffered much. Verse 5c read: [Hebrew: bashevi] (v. 18), "into captivity," [Hebrew: zarim] (v. 7), "adversaries." For verse 7, see Budde, V. 14: [Hebrew: nishkod], read [Hebrew: nikshar], "was bound." Verse 19c read: [Hebrew: aval lhashiv nefesh velo matzu ki bikshu] "For they sought food to restore life, and found it not:" cf. Septuagint; and verses 11, 16. Verse 20: the incongruous [Hebrew: ki maro mariti], "For I grievously rebelled," should be [Hebrew: nihmeru rahamai], "My inwards burn"; Hos. xi. 8. Verses 21 f.: "All my foes heard, rejoiced That IT" (cf. Psalm ix. 13), "Thou didst. Bring Thou" ([Hebrew: havee et]), "the Day Thou hast proclaimed; Let them become like me! Let the time" ([Hebrew: et]; see Septuagint) "of their calamity come!"