The circumcision and the naming of Christ have many times been painted to express the first of the sorrows of the Virgin, being the first of the pangs which her Son was to suffer on earth.  But the Presentation in the Temple has been selected with better taste for the same purpose; and the prophecy of Simeon, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,” becomes the first of the Seven Sorrows.  It is an undecided point whether the Adoration of the Magi took place thirteen days, or one year and thirteen days after the birth of Christ.  In a series of subjects artistically arranged, the Epiphany always precedes, in order of time, that scene in the temple which is sometimes styled the Purification, sometimes the Presentation and sometimes the Nunc Dimitis.  They are three distinct incidents; but, as far as I can judge, neither the painters themselves, nor those who have named pictures, have been careful to discriminate between them.  On a careful examination of various compositions, some of special celebrity, which are styled, in a general way, the Presentation in the Temple, it will appear, I think, that the idea uppermost in the painter’s mind has been to represent the prophecy of Simeon.

No doubt, in later times, the whole scene, as a subject of art, was considered in reference chiefly to the Virgin, and the intention was to express the first of her Seven Sorrows.  But in ancient art, and especially in Greek art, the character of Simeon assumed a singular significance and importance, which so long as modern art was influenced by the traditional Byzantine types, modified, in some degree, the arrangement and sentiment of this favourite subject.

It is related that when Ptolemy Philadelphus about 260 years before Christ, resolved to have the Hebrew Scriptures translated into Greek, for the purpose of placing them in his far-famed library, he despatched messengers to Eleazar, the High Priest of the Jews, requiring him to send scribes and interpreters learned in the Jewish law to his court at Alexandria.  Thereupon Eleazar selected six of the most learned Rabbis from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, seventy-two persons in all, and sent them to Egypt, in obedience to the commands of King Ptolemy, and among these was Simeon, a priest, and a man full of learning.  And it fell to the lot of Simeon to translate the book of the prophet Isaiah.  And when he came to that verse where it is written, “Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son,” he began to misdoubt, in his own mind, how this could be possible; and, after long meditation, fearing to give scandal and offence to the Greeks, he rendered the Hebrew word Virgin by a Greek word which signifies merely a young woman; but when he had written it down, behold an angel effaced it, and substituted the right word.  Thereupon he wrote it again and again; and the same thing happened three times; and he remained astonished and confounded.  And while