("The spirit mocketh the headlong soul.")]
[147] {297}[Matthew Arnold, Poetry of Byron, 1881, xiv., xv., quotes this line in proof of Byron's barbarian insensibility, "to the true artist's fine passion for the correct use and consummate management of words.">[
[148] {300} "[And] there were giants in the earth in those days; and ... after, ... mighty men, which were of old, men of renown."—Genesis [vi. 4].
[149] "The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."—Genesis [vii. II].
[150] {301}[Byron falls in with the popular theory as to the existence of fossil remains of marine animals at a height above the level of the sea. The "deluge" accounted for what was otherwise inexplicable.]
[151] {302} The book of Enoch, preserved by the Ethiopians, is said by them to be anterior to the flood.
[Some fragments of the Book of Enoch (vide ante, Introduction to Heaven and Earth, [p. 281]), which were included by Georgius Syncellus (a Byzantine writer of the eighth century A.D.) in his Chronographia, pp. ii, 26 (Corpus Script. Hist. Byzantintæ, 1829, i. 20), were printed by J. J. Scaliger in 1606. They were, afterwards, included (i. 347-354) in the Spicilegium SS. Patrum of Joannes Ernestus Grabius, which was published at Oxford in 1714. A year after (1715) one of the fragments was "made English," and published under the title of The History of the Angels and their Gallantry with the Daughters of Men, written by Enoch the Patriarch.
In 1785 James Bruce, the traveller, discovered three MSS. of the Book of Enoch. One he conveyed to the library at Paris: a second MS. he presented to the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Travels, ii. 422, 8vo ed. 1805). In 1801 an article entitled, "Notice du Libre d'Enoch," was contributed by Silvestre de Sacy to the Magasin Encyclopédique (An. vi. tom. i. p. 369); and in 1821 Richard Laurence, LL.D., published a translation "from the Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian Library." This was the first translation of the book as a whole.
The following extracts, which were evidently within Byron's recollection when he planned Heaven and Earth, are taken from The Book of Enoch, translated from Professor Dillman's Ethiopic Text, by R. H. Charles, Oxford, 1892:—
"Chap. vi. [1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied in those days that beautiful and comely daughters were born unto them. [2. And the angels, the sons of the Heavens, saw and lusted after them, and spake one to another, 'Come now, let us choose us wives from among the children of men, and beget children.' [3. And Semjâzâ, who was the leader, spake unto them: I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed.... [6. And they descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon....