Direct, but not always accurate, quotations from Scripture and allusions to Biblical characters and events are very numerous in English literature. They are found in all sorts of books. Professor Albert T. Cook has recently counted sixty-three in a volume of descriptive sketches of Italy, twelve in a book on wild animals, and eighteen in a novel by Thomas Hardy. A special study of the Biblical references in Tennyson has been made,[2] and more than five hundred of them have been found.
Bishop Charles Wordsworth has written a book on Shakespeare’s Knowledge and Use of the Bible,[3] and shown “how fully and how accurately the general tenor of the facts recorded in the sacred narrative was present to his mind,” and “how Scriptural are the conceptions which Shakespeare had of the being and attributes of God, of His general and particular Providence, of His revelation to man, of
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 our duty toward Him and toward each other, of human life and of human death, of time and of eternity.” It is possible that the bishop benevolently credits the dramatist with a more invariable and complete orthodoxy than he possessed. But certainly Shakespeare knew the Bible well, and felt the dramatic value of allusions and illustrations which were sure to be instantly understood by the plain people. It is his Antonio, in The Merchant of Venice, who remarks that “the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” evidently referring to the Gospel story of the evil one who tried to tempt Jesus with a verse from the Psalms.
The references to the Bible in the poetry of Robert Browning have been very carefully examined by Mrs. Machen in an admirable little book.[4] It is not too much to say that his work is crowded with Scriptural quotations, allusions, and imagery. He follows Antonio’s maxim, and makes his bad characters, like Bishop Blougram and Sludge the Medium, cite from Holy Writ to cloak their hypocrisy or excuse their ............