which the objects of moral and material nature are susceptible, how largely, too, a creative and changing power is exercised in poetical imitation; and in how many different lights, independently of this process of imaginative change, the objects around us are placed by natural differences of associations in the person who contemplates them; it may be safely assumed that the materials of poetry are inexhaustible.

That poetry must have existed from the very earliest periods is undoubted. As the expression in language, of that feeling of excitement and elevation produced either by moral or material grandeur or beauty, it had its seat and origin in human nature itself, and in its simplest form must necessarily have existed as soon as man felt the desire of recording his impressions, or communicating them to others. In its first shape it may have been destitute either of rhythm or metre; although so close is the connection between that state of the imagination which gives birth to poetical conceptions, and a tendency to assist the effect of these by certain intonations of the voice approaching to musical sounds, that it is far more probable that even from the first something of measure was imparted to it, probably without effort or consciousness on the part of the reciter. At any rate, the power of measure as an assistant to memory, and as furnishing a species of gratification to the ear, apart from the mere effect of the ideas upon the mind, could not fail to be soon perceived and acted upon. At first, in fact, poetry and music seem to have been constantly associated; for the study of music, as something separate from the accompaniment of words, is one which arises only at a later period; and in all the poetical compositions which have descended to us, the elements of versification, or division of lines into certain measures, are discernible.

HEBREW POETRY.

THE poetry of the Hebrews is the oldest in the world. It stands apart from all the rest, in solitary grandeur, like a pillar of fire in the poetical wilderness. The poetry of Greece, for instance, only begins to exist centuries after the noblest efforts of the Hebrew muse had been produced and committed to writing. Even the oldest poetry of the Arabians, whose language is a kindred one to the Hebrew, is of far more recent date than the Jewish Scriptures, in fact not much older than the time of Mahommed. The Hebrew poetry, as it has come down to us, seems limited in its field, though within that field it has attained a mastery never excelled. Almost all its compositions are lyrical, and chiefly in the highest department of the lyric, resembling, though in a less regular and artful form, the ode of the classical poetry. Its characteristics appear to be unequalled majesty of thought and expression, a fervour and flow which, more than in any other poetry in existence, suggest the idea of an inspiration or divine afflatus, dictating, through the poet as a mere organ, the sublimest ideas in words of corresponding weight and grandeur; a profusion of imagery and illustration, which, though it at first appears excessive and overpowering to the critic of modern times, and colder climes, is seen upon further study to be in the

closest harmony with the Hebrew character, and that of all the oriental nations, and is remarkable for the absence of any thing farfetched or elaborate; a rapid desultory movement from one train of thought or illustration to another, without formally supplying the links in the chain of association which have led to the new topic,-as if the poet relied upon a corresponding excitement in his readers or hearers to supply that elevation and reach of poetical vision necessary for tracing the chain of ideas from first to last. It is certain, however, that to the Hebrews themselves there was much less of abruptness and want of connection in their lyrics than at first sight appears to us; and that slight hints were sufficient to awaken trains of associations to which, from our altered circumstances and character of mind, we have now no clue; and this observation, in fact, applies equally to the Hebrew and to great part of the classical poetry of Greece and Rome.

When we look to the Hebrew character and poetry, and to the local situation and manners of the country, we perceive a combination of circumstances highly favourable to the growth and development of that department of poetry in which alone they can be said to have attained distinguished eminence. All the elements out of which a great national lyric poetry is formed existed amongst the Hebrews, both as regarded the impulses of the mind and the external influences by which they were surrounded and daily acted on. They had been selected as God's peculiar people from among the nations; they held as it were a commission from heaven, giving them authority over the world; they looked upon themselves as the race from which its Saviour was to spring. They had triumphed, by the divine aid, over the kings, and princes, and Pharaohs of the earth; they

had the recollection of all their strange wanderings, their miraculous deliverances, their acquisition of the promised land, and their law given amidst audible thunders and visible smoke from Mount Sinai, in the presence of assembled myriads. They had a religion which, excluding the worship of the Deity under visible symbols, only made the image of the Deity more deeply and impressively worshipped within the temple of the heart and the imagination : while the connection of religion with all the affairs of life ; the constant rites and ceremonies and festivals of rejoicing or humiliation; the presence of the Deity, kept before their thoughts by the ark, which was supposed to be his peculiar seat, and the sacredness of which had been more than once guarded or avenged by prodigies; prevented that religion from becoming a mere abstraction, and gave to their conceptions of the Deity a warmth and life peculiarly suited to the poetry of devotion, as blending the ideas of the visible and the spiritual, without any admission of those palpable, material, and degrading conceptions which mingle with and deform, to our associations, the mythological or religious poetry of Grecian polytheism. No commercial pursuits tended to excite among the earlier Hebrews the prosaic love of gain. They were shepherds, husbandmen, or warriors, deriving subsistence from the soil, and attached to it by a train of recollections. Frequent public ceremonies, festivals, jubilees, gave occasion for the assemblage of the people in large masses, for a common purpose; the occasion of all others most likely to call forth, by a common sympathy, the enthusiasm which stimulates the imagination into poetical activity. Add to these a climate bright and cheerful, but admitting also of every variation and interchange of serenity or tempest; a country, the

external aspect of which presented the strongest contrasts of barrenness and luxuriance; fertile plains, with mountain ranges of the most bleak and desolate grandeur; gardens like those of Damascus, with dreary lakes like the Dead Sea, whose stagnant waters still spoke of the fall of the cities of the plain, or wildernesses haunted by the lion, the rhinoceros, and the serpent; and it would indeed be matter of surprise if the Hebrew sacred poetry were not characterized by a remarkable feeling of national pride, of sublimity, simplicity, and natural pathos in its sentiment, and by a peculiar freshness, truth, and boldness in its pictures of nature, or illustrations derived from external scenery. The parched plains of Judæa, the rocky top of Sinai, the towers of Damascus, and the gardens of Lebanon and Carmel, supply them with figures or allusions which have an unspeakable charm of picturesqueness and beauty. The climate is vividly brought before us in the allusions to the wellsprings that water the desert, and to the shadow of the great rock in a weary land. We see the simple character of their life in their pastoral images, so constantly derived from the tending of flocks and herds; imagery so congenial to their minds, that it is employed by the Author of our faith in some of the most touching passages of the New Testament. Such is the character of those books of the Hebrew Scriptures which are on all hands admitted to be poetical, though we know too little of the laws of Hebrew prosody to be able to say whether they are written in verse, though a species of rhythm, and apparent equality in the divisions of portions of the sentences, appear to indicate that they are. Such are the Book of Psalms; one of which (the ninetieth) is even ascribed to Moses, whilst several others were the production of predecessors or contempo