PARALLELISM: A RESTATEMENT 51
sometimes the scheme of the parallelism is very
subtile and obscure” (Lectures, ii. 52); he very
fairly adds in illustration a really test couplet, viz.
I also have anointed my king on Sion,
The mountain of my sanctity (Psa. ii. 6).^1
He perceives, though he does not dwell on the
point, that this couplet marks zero among " the
degrees of resemblance almost infinite"; for
when he says, "the general form and nature of
the Psalm requires that it should be divided into
two parts or versicles; as if it were,
‘I also have anointed my king ;
I have anointed him in Sion, the mountain of my sanctity,'”
he supplies, by repeating the words, "I have
anointed," the one and only point of resemblance
that exists between the two lines in his own
reconstruction of a couplet which, in its true
original form, is really distinguished by the entire
absence of parallelism between its lines. As in
this instance, so often, the use of the term syn-
thetic parallelism has served to conceal the fact
that couplets of lines entirely non-parallel may
occur in poems in which most of the couplets are
parallels, and in which the "general form and
nature " of the poem suggest a division of the
synthetic but non-parallel elements" into two
parts or versicles."
1 The verse is so divided by Lowth; for reasons which will appear
Iater it should rather be divided:
I also have anointed my king,
On Sion, the mountain of my holiness.