228 ST. MARK’S REST

having now their own street in the holy city,¹ and their covenant with the Prior of Mount Syon, and of the Temple of the Lord; they themselves having struck down Tyre with their own swords, taken to themselves her power, and now reading, as of themselves, the encompassing benediction of the prophecy for all Gentile nations, “Ecce alienigenæ-et Tyrus.”² A notable piece of Scripture for them, to be dwelt on, in every word of it, with all humility of faith.

What then is the meaning of the two verses just preceding these?-

“Glorious things are spoken of thee, thou City of God. I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon, with them that know me.”

26. If you like to see a curious mistake at least of one Protestant’s “private judgment” of this verse, you must look at my reference to it in Fors Clavigera of April, 1876, p. 110, with its correction by Mr. Gordon, in Fors for June, 1876, pp. 178, 202,³ all containing variously useful notes on these verses; of which the gist is, however, that the “Rahab” of the Latin text is the Egyptian “Dragon,” the crocodile, signifying in myth, which has now been three thousand years continuous in human mind, the total power of the crocodile god of Egypt,⁴ couchant on his slime, born of it, mistakable for it,-his grey length of unintelligible scales, fissured and wrinkled like dry clay, itself but, as it were, a shelf or shoal of coagulated, malignant earth. He and his company, the deities born of the earth-beastheaded,-with only animal cries for voices;-

“Omnigenumque Deûm monstra, et latrator Anubis

Contra Neptunum et Venerem, contraque Minervam.”⁵

This is St. Theodore’s Dragon-enemy-Egypt and her captivity; bondage of the earth, literally to the Israelite, in making bricks of it,⁶ the first condition of form for the

¹ [See above, § 7, p. 212.]

² [Psalm lxxxvi. 4 (Vulgate).]

³ [The references are to the first octavo edition; Letters 64 and 66.]

⁴ [See again, Fors Clavigera, Letter 75.]

⁵ [Virgil: Æneid, viii. 698, 699. Anubis, the dog-headed deity, called Latrator (“the barker”).]

⁶ [See Exodus i. 14, v. 7.]

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