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); Œuvres 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 איכה 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 Θρῆνοι, “Funeral-songs” or “Dirges,” the usual rendering of Heb. קינות (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 Iśraël! 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 kuṭáni | Nímru sha çéri “Eabani, my friend, my little brother! | Leopard of the Wild!” |
and again:—
| Kíki lúskut | Kíki luqúl-ma Íbri shá arámmu | Itémi ṭiṭṭish “How shall I be dumb? | How shall I bewail? The friend whom I love | Is turned to clay!” |