that commentators are not always agreed as to what character in the drama is to be held responsible for certain lines; but for our purpose this difficulty makes no difference.  Taking the lines just as they stand, I find that the following:—­1:  2-4, 13 (in one version), 17; 2:  6; 4:  16; 5:  1; 8:  2, 3—­are indelicate in language or suggestion, as every student of Oriental amorous poetry knows, and no amount of specious argumentation can alter this.  The descriptions of the beauty and charms of the beloved or the lover, are, moreover, invariably sensuous and often sensual.  Again and again are their bodily charms dwelt on rapturously, as is customary in the poems of all Orientals with all sorts of quaint hyperbolic comparisons, some of which are poetic, others grotesque.  No fewer than five times are the external charms thus enumerated, but not once in the whole poem is any allusion made to the spiritual attractions, the mental and moral charms of femininity which are the food of romantic love.  Mr. Griffis, who cannot help commenting (223) on this frequent description of the human body, makes a desperate effort to come to the rescue.  Referring to 4:  12-14, he says (212) that the lover now “adds a more delicate compliment to her modesty, her instinctive refinement, her chaste life, her purity amid court temptations.  He praises her inward ornaments, her soul’s charms.”  What are these ornaments?  The possible reference to her chastity in the lines:  “A garden shut up is my sister, my bride.  A spring shut up, a fountain sealed”—­a reference which, if so intended, would be regarded by a Christian maiden not as a compliment, but an insult; while every student of Eastern manners knows that an Oriental makes of his wife “a garden shut up,” and “a fountain sealed” not by way of complimenting her chastity, but because he has no faith in it whatever, knowing that so far as it exists it is founded on fear, not on affection.  Mr. Griffis knows this himself when he does not happen to be idealizing an impossible shepherd girl, for he says (161): 

“To one familiar with the literature, customs, speech, and ideas of the women who live where idolatry prevails, and the rulers and chief men of the country keep harems, the amazing purity and modesty of maidens reared in Christian homes is like a revelation from heaven."[294]

Supersensual charms are not alluded to in the Song of Songs, for the simple reason that Orientals never did, and do not now, care for such charms in women or cultivate them.  They know love only as an appetite, and in accordance with Oriental taste and custom the Song of Songs compares it always to things that are good to eat or drink or smell.  Hence such ecstatic expressions as “How much better is thy love than wine!  And the smell of thine ointments than all manner of spices!” Hence her declaration that her beloved is