PLUTO gave ORPHEUS his wife on certain conditions*, and took her back again. SAUL gave DAVID his wife on certain conditions, and took her back.

PLUTO is charactered fad, relentlefs, unmerciful, inexorable; and is defcribed holding a fceptre, with which he drives the dead to hell: his attendants, Cerberus and the Furies. Is this any more than a poetic description of a melancholy, furious, outrageous, and implacable prince, as Saul was? who had his minifters of vengeance always about him; and delighted to fit with a fpear (that is, his fceptre) in his hand, ready to destroy, and to dart it where his rage directed.

THE only difficulty now remaining is, that ORPHEUS was, as is commonly believed, of Thrace, and DAVID of Palestine; and yet even this will be removed, if we admit a conjecture of the learned Huetius. The people of Paleftine, fays he, are called in Hebrew. Now thefe are the fame radicals, which, by an eafy tranfpofition, become ; that is Thracians. Not to infift, that the wilds of Thrace were, indeed, a strange place from whence to bring the father and founder of the Grecian mufic: which Sir Ifaac Newton hath, with infinitely better reafon and judgment, derived from Paleftine, and from the age and actions of David.

* Photius fays fo, but names no conditions: nor the old Greek poet quoted by Athenæus; but that he gave her to him, being foftened with his mufic. So that the condition mentioned by Virgil, is, in all probability, an invention of his own.

And

And that Orpheus was not a Thracian, hath, I hope, been fufficiently proved.

BUT fuppofe the learned Huetius mistaken in his conjecture; it was easy to fhift the fcene, the better to disguise the truth, and vend the fable. Nor will it make much to our disadvantage, that they shifted it to a country, which, Pliny tells us, was the fountain of all the Grecian fabulofity *.

I SHALL not prefume to pronounce any thing upon the point; but barely to obferve, that it was eafy to build fuch a fable, as that of ORPHEUS, upon the foundation of fuch an history, as this of David. And, if that was not done, how, otherwise, every character, in both, should, fo furprisingly, and fome of them fo ftrictly, correfpond, king Saul, (the very letters that conftitute the words) his character and country, with Pluto and his; Achinoam with Proferpine, Michal with Eurydice, and David with Orpheus, is to me, I own, utterly unimaginable.

Pliny indeed fays, that the Grecians had their learning from Thrace: but the authorities to the contrary vaftly outweigh in this difpute; and particularly Herodotus confiders them as a most barbarous nation. And Diogenes Laertius, (in Poœm.) and Androtion, quoted by Ælian, (1. 8.) affirm the direct contrary.

CHAP.

CHA P. XVIII.

The Adventure of Nabal recounted at large. Mr. Bayle's Cenfure of David's Conduct on this Occafion confidered.

DAVID, as I obferved in the last chapter,

could do no good amongst those barbarians the Arabs; and, for this reason, it is probable, he took the firft opportunity he could, with fafety, to leave them.

As it was not the purpose of the facred hiftorian to give a minute description of David's wandrings in his exile, but to fhew the remarkable protection of the Divine Providence which attended him in that period of his life; we should not be surprised to find several breaks in the relation, ftudiously omitting minuteneffes, and hastening to extraordinary and interesting events, one which is related immediately after the account of David's going to Paran, and is as follows: Maon, in the fouth of Judea, was a city which gave its name to the neighbouring wilderness, which is thought to have been contiguous to that of Paran.

IN this city dwelt a rich man, but, as the text expreffes it, churlish and evil in his doings, whose name was Nabal. And as the riches of thofe times confifted in natural wealth, fuch as flocks and herds, Nabal, we are told, had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats: these VOL. I. M

.he

he fed in Carmel, which poffibly, was a part of the wilderness of Maon, at leaft was in its neighbourhood. Not that Carmel, fo famed for the refidence of Elisha; for that was in the north of Judea, and this in the fouth.

IN this Carmel, while David was in that neighbourhood, Nabal had a sheep-fhearing; and as that was antiently, and I believe is ftill, a feason of great rural feftivity, Nabal made a feaft for his hinds: which David hearing of, fent ten of his fervants with a very kind falutation, and a request, agreeable to the fimplicity and hospitality of that age, that he would, out of the plenty provided for the occafion, fend him and his men fome refreshment.

THE man, it feems, was an unworthy defcendant from the great Caleb; and, as I now obferved, morofe and churlish, one that knew no end of the abundance with which GOD had bleffed him, beyond fatiety and furfeit. He was, what Caligula ufed to call Syllanus, a golden brute *. And when David's fervants had delivered their meffage, he returned an answer agreeable to his character, rude and fullen, and very natural to that infolence which wealth is too apt to dictate to undisciplined spirits †.

THE message and the answer are both fingular in their kind, and not unworthy óur regard : the former, as it is a fine picture of the antient and the true politenefs; and the latter, a strong

• Xpurv TedCalov. This is properly a golden sheep. † Δεινόν γε τοῖς πλετᾶσι το το έμφυλον,

Σκαοῖσιν εἶναι

I

image of ungoverned brutality. Both of thefe are to be met with, in 1 Sam. xxv. s, &c. And David fent out ten young men ; and David faid unto the young men, Get you up to Carmel, "and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name. And thus fhall ye fay to him that liveth, Peace be both to thee, and peace be to thine house, and peace be unto all that thou haft. And now I have heard, that thou haft fhearers: now thy Shepherds which were with us, we hurt them not, neither was there aught missing unto them, all the while they were in Carmel. Ask thy young men, and they will shew thee: wherefore let the young men find favour in thine eyes (for we come in a good day): give, I pray thee, whatfoever cometh to thine hand, unto thy fervants, and to thy fon David. And, when David's young men came, they spake to Nabal according to all these words, in the name of David, and ceafed.

THREE things, in this meffage, are well worth our notice. First, the direction, to him that liveth; and, fecondly, the falutation, Peace to thee, and peace to thine house, &c. In the Scripture, living, and being happy, are fynonymous *. David's own benevolent fpirit fuggefted to him, that, being happy ourselves, we fhould delight to make others fhare in our happiness. God does fo; and the man after

* From them the Latin poets learnt this style:

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus.

Let us, my Lefbia, live and love.