A Gospel relate.”
And it is further said, “Each (leaf) will subdue devils.” In a profounder vein Solomon says: “All Evil is from Fate; yet a wise-minded man may moderate every fate with self-help, help of friends, and the divine spirit.”
In Prospero burying his Book, Shakespeare seems to have followed the rabbinical legend that after Solomon by his written formulas had made the devils serve him, in building the temple and other works, he resolved to practice magic no more, and buried his book. But the devils said to the people, “he only ruled you by his book,” and pointed out where it was hidden; so they left the prophets and followed magic.
At what time the notion arose that Solomon had demonic familiars does not appear, but the story in 1 Kings iii. of the gift of wisdom has some appearance of a reclamation for the deity of a credit that was popularly ascribed to a rival power. However this may be, there is a popular habit of tracing unusual human performances to Satan. As I write this paragraph (in Paris) I note a theatrical placard announcing “les sataniques devins” of Williany de Torre, a man who cries out the name and address you secretly select in the Paris Directory. Why not advertise the divinations as “angelic” instead of satanic? The heavenly beings have somehow no great reputation for cleverness. Probably this is due to the long association of intellectuality and science with heresy.
The late Lord Lytton (“Owen Meredith”) wrote a brief poem on a version given him by Robert Browning of the story in my Preface, of Solomon leaning on his staff long after he was dead: a worm gnaws the end of the staff and Solomon falls, crumbled to dust, and nothing left visible but his crown. A poem by Leigh Hunt, “The Inevitable” (in some editions, “The Angel of Death”), tells of a man who, in terror of Death, entreats Solomon to transport him to the remotest mountain of Cathay. Solomon does so.
“Solomon wished and the man vanished straight;
Up comes the Terror, with his orbs of fate:
‘Solomon,’ with a lofty voice said he,