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raries of David. It is certain, however, that those ascribed to him are the finest and the most affecting of the whole, though perhaps not the most magnificent in point of stateliness of diction and imagery. "Nor is it in tragic so much as in joyous expression," says Mr Campbell," that I conceive the power of his genius to consist. Its most inspired aspect appears to present itself when he looks abroad on the universe with the eye of a poet and with the breast of a glad and grateful worshipper. When he looks up to the starry firmament, his soul assimilates to the splendour and serenity which he contemplates. His lofty but bland spirit of devotion peculiarly reigns in the eighth and in the nineteenth psalms. But, above all, it expands itself in the 114th into a minute and richly diversified picture of the creation.. Verse after verse in that psalm leads on the mind through the various objects of nature, as through a mighty landscape; and the atmosphere of the scene is coloured, not with a dim or mystic, but with a warm and clear light of religious feeling. He spreads his sympathies over the face of the world, and rejoices in the power and goodness of its protecting Deity. The impressions of that exquisite ode dilate the heart with a pleasure too instinctive and simple to be described.” 1 Such also are the Song of Solomon, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Lamentations, and the Book of Job, with large portions of the prophetic books, and occasional passages even in the narrative books, such as the Song of Moses and Miriam, Jacob's dying prophecies to his sons, the triumphal chant of Deborah, Balak's involuntary blessing on the people whom he came to curse, and, above all, the ex

' Campbell's Lectures on Poetry, i.

quisitely pathetic and beautiful lamentation of David over Saul and Jonathan. Amongst the Hebrew prophets, viewing their writings apart from their divine inspiration, and merely in the light of poetical compositions, the highest rank is universally ascribed to Isaiah; and that on account of the union of excellencies which his sacred poetry exhibits. Deeply pathetic in some portions, as in those where he paints the destruction which is about to fall upon Judah ; awfully sublime in others, as where he describes the descent of the Assyrian king into the regions of hell, while all the dead monarchs of the earth rise up to greet him with reproaches; he rises with equal ease to themes of rapturous exultation, or spreads out in minute portraiture all the tranquil and soothing images of a coming millennium. "Joel," says Mr Campbell, "may be deemed to surpass him in continuity, and both Joel and Habakkuk are at moments more sublime. But their compositions are much shorter than his, and give us not the same conception of copious and unwearied inspiration. Isaiah's genius goes farther on an even wing, and burns longer with an unwavering fire. When he has merely to relate, his language has the utmost plainness; and his expositions are remarkably clear, considering the nature of oracular poetry. He unites the same simplicity with his rich and high visionary scenes, which are neither meagre like Jeremiah's, nor ambitiously overwrought and complex like Ezekiel's. A deliberate air, a divine selfpossession, turns the very scorn and wrath of his spirit into movements of grace and beauty."

Jeremiah and Ezekiel belong to the declining period of Hebrew literature. They had fallen upon the evil days of their country, and the influence which its misfortunes and degradation produced on the mind, is peculiarly visible in

the melancholy strains of Jeremiah. "His genius seems to bend, his voice to falter, under the burden of prophecy; and though sometimes pleasingly affecting, he generally prolongs the accents of grief to monotony, and seldom avoids tautology except where he abridges the works of other prophets." Ezekiel is the last great prophetic poet of the Hebrew line; and opinions have been divided as to the poetical rank to which he is entitled. Dr Lowth thinks that he is not excelled in sublimity even by Isaiah himself; Michaelis, on the contrary, that he displays more luxuriance in amplifying and decorating his subject than, is consistent with true poetical fervour. Mr Campbell adopts the view of Michaelis, but adds, that the fancy of Ezekiel is daring and ingenious. Ingenious hardly appears to be the term applicable to the imagination of Ezekiel, which revels with peculiar pleasure in visions of a mystical, and, it must be admitted, somewhat confused sublimity. Some passages, however, are most powerfully impressive, such as the vision of the four cherubims in the first chapter, and the resurrection of the dry bones in the thirty-seventh, when there was a noise and a shaking, and the bones came together, bone unto his bone;" and the prophet calls unto the wind, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live; and they stood up on their feet, an exceeding great army."

But whilst the Hebrew poetry equals, and indeed far excels, that of any other nation in the sacred lyric, it is singularly defective in the other departments. The Song of Solomon, laying aside its spiritual meaning, may be admitted to be a fine specimen of the pastoral: but of dramatic and narrative poetry the Hebrews have left no specimens; for, though the book of Job has to a certain extent a dramatic form, it

has clearly nothing of the essential qualities of the drama. This has been ascribed mainly to the theocratic nature of the Jewish constitution, in which the Levites or priesthood formed the sole and literary aristocracy; thus devoting poetry exclusively to religious themes. But, considering the ample field which the Jewish national religious history afforded, it is not easy to see why, if the genius of the people had inclined toward narrative or dramatic poetry, the Exodus, the wanderings in the desert, the wars carried on under the judges, and the many other striking events which gave interest to their annals, should not have been embodied in verse, as they were in prose, in the narrative books of the Old Testament.

But, though the poetry of the Hebrews is the first in the order of time, it cannot properly be regarded as the fountain-head of that literature, the course and connection of which we trace in an unbroken series of great works down to the present time.

The sacred poetry of the Hebrews, no doubt, impressed upon the literature of Christianity some strong and remarkable features; but it was from the fountain of classical literature that the genius of modern Europe first drew its inspiration. It is therefore to Greece that we must turn, as the head of that great family of literature with which we feel ourselves connected by relationship of thought and association.

GREEK POETRY.

ON turning from the poetry of the Hebrews to that of Greece, we are immediately struck with one distinctive feature, which, as applicable to the whole of its poetry, we may notice before adverting to the different departments into which it is subdivided, viz. the more palpable, material, and distinct character of all its conceptions and imagery. This immaterial, vague, and spiritual character of the Hebrew poetry, dwelling more on emotions of the mind than on actions, and on the invisible rather than the outward and visible, is unquestionably to be ascribed in a great measure to the predominance, in the national mind, of a pure and elevating religious creed. On the other hand, the Grecian mind, formed under the influence of a mythology which was in fact a mere deification of the material world, and which certainly exercised no strong influence save on the fancy, banished those themes and trains of thought which led beyond the visible diurnal sphere, and, concentrating its attention upon the present, gave to all its imagery a distinctness of outline, a simplicity and pellucid clearness in the thought, which, if less suited than the Hebrew to the excitement of the evidences of the sublime, was certainly in a corresponding degree favourable to the creation of beauty. The Hebrew poetry, therefore, is contemplative and subjective; the Grecian plastic and objective.

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