CARLYLE'S ESTIMATE OF THE BOOK OF JOB, IN HIS OWN WORDS.
Reading edition
"I call the book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest books ever written with a pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew—such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble book! All men's book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem of man's destiny and God's ways with him here on this earth, and all in such free, flowing outlines, grand in its simplicity and its epic melody and repose of reconcilement! There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way; true eye-sight and vision for all things—material things no less than spiritual; the horse—'thou hast clothed his neck with thunder;' 'he laughs at the shaking of the spear!' Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow! Sublime reconciliation! Oldest choral melody, as of the heart of mankind! So soft and great, as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit." (Dr. Cotton's Scrap-Book.)