The judicious, if they compare this
piece with the original, will, I flatter myself, find the reasons
for the great liberties I have indulged myself in through the whole.
Longinus has a chapter on interrogations, which shows that they
contribute much to the sublime. This speech of the Almighty is made
up of them. Interrogation seems indeed the proper style of majesty
incensed. It differs from other manner of reproof, as bidding a
person execute himself does from a common execution; for he that
asks the guilty a proper question, makes him, in effect, pass
sentence on himself.
27 The book of Job is well known to be dramatic, and, like the
tragedies of old Greece, is fiction built on truth. Probably this
most noble part of it, the Almighty speaking out of the whirlwind,
(so suitable to the after-practice of the Greek stage, when there
happened _dignus vindice nodus_,) is fictitious; but is a fiction
more agreeable to the time in which Job lived, than to any since.
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