therefore better calculated to represent objects brought dimly before the mental perceptions, at which the eye of reason" looked through a glass darkly," than those terms of ordinary language which must either at once have rendered the thing definitively clear, or have confounded it altogether. In addition to all this, the mind, when labouring under the elevating excitement of inspiration, would unconsciously clothe those divine communications with which it was then teeming, in the sublimest diction; and this has always been considered by the greatest geniuses of all countries, an especial attribute of poetry. metre. CHAPTER III. Poetry originally employed to commemorate great events. Its effects upon the mind and heart. Its peculiar adaptation to sacred subjects. The existence of Hebrew The acrostic poetry of the Hebrews. Its purpose. The Masorites throw no light upon the question of Hebrew prosody. The marked distinction between the prose and poetry of the Bible. In all ages, and among all nations of the world, in which the feeblest ray of civilization has shone, poetry has been employed, not only to perpetuate great events and heroic deeds, but likewise those dispensations, in which the direct power of providence has been displayed. It supplies, moreover, the language of all picturesque sentiment, of all intense and exalted feeling, of all deep and fervid emotion. It is the essence of all that is refined and elevated both in thought and expression. It raises the soul out of the grossest elements of mere material enjoyment, into a new sphere of existence, where it seems to have a foretaste of that spiritual bliss akin to its own nature. Thus, poetry being especially calculated to carry to the mind vivid impressions of things, which would obtain only an evanescent influence there by the aid of more simple prose, the former is often resorted to, in scripture more particu larly, to express every thing connected with the agency and attributes of the Deity, which can only be feebly represented by the common forms of speech. It is more than probable that without some subsidiary impulse, our reason would soon subside into inactivity, and its forces stagnate from non-excitement. The imagina tion must be kept alive, or the mind would run great hazard of lapsing into somnolency. Once exclude it from the resources of poetry, and from the influence of those prismatic hues which the fancy displays so brightly before it, and you banish it to a worse than Siberian exile. Reason, without her retinue of intellectual graces, though she might be in the main a true, would never be the same delightful guide which we now find her. She is not only beautified, but vastly enhanced, by those extraneous attributes with which the bright creations of mind have invested her. Her own light would be extremely feeble if none other were communicated Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars Is reason to the soul: and as on high } We shall think of poetry," observes the eloquent Lowth, "much more humbly than it deserves, unless we direct our attention to that quarter, where its importance is most eminently conspicuous, unless we contemplate it as em ployed on sacred subjects, and in subservience to religion. This, indeed, appears to have been the original office and destination of poetry, and this it still so happily performs, that in all other cases it seems out of character, as if intended for this purpose alone. In other instances, poetry appears to want the assistance of art, but in this, to shine forth with all its natural splendor, or rather to be animated by that inspiration which, on other occasions, is spoken of without being felt. These observations are remarkably exemplified in the Hebrew poetry, than which the human mind can conceive nothing more elevated, more beautiful, or more elegant; in which the almost ineffable sublimity of the subject is fully equalled by the energy of the language and the dignity of the style. And it is worthy of observation, that as some of these writings exceed in antiquity the fabulous ages of Greece, in sublimity they are superior to the most finished productions of that polished people. Thus if the actual origin of poetry be inquired after, it must of necessity be referred to religion; and since it appears to be an art derived from nature alone, peculiar to no age or nation, and only at an advanced period of society conformed to rule and method, it must be wholly attributed to the more violent affections of the heart, the nature of which is to express themselves in an animated and lofty tone, with a vehemence of expression far remote from vulgar use."* * See Bishop Lowth's First Prælection. Although many attempts have been made, without success, to restore the Hebrew metre, which is denied by some learned men to exist in the sacred scriptures, there can be little doubt that the writers of those scriptures possessed a prosody, and were well acquainted with the canons of versification. The peculiar artifices which they employed to impart beauty, and add force to their compositions, were so consonant to the laws of verse, that we cannot disassociate them, without immediately destroying the symmetry of the passages in which they are found. The acrostic, or alphabetical form, of some of the Psalms, and of the chapters of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, except the last, show, beyond a doubt, that the Hebrew poets possessed a system of versification. These poems, among which I may mention the twentyfifth, the thirty-fourth, the hundred and eleventh, the hundred and twelfth, the hundred and nineteenth, and the hundred and forty-fifth Psalms, clearly, to my apprehension, establish the fact, that the Hebrews were acquainted with the laws of metre. This, I think, will be admitted, if we consider the peculiarly artificial form of these poems, and of some others less perfectly acrostic, but nevertheless of the same character, in which only every stanza is distinguished by its initial letter; whereas, in the first two psalms above named, every line is so distinguished. The structure of the alphabetical poems is as follows. They consist of the same number of periods as the Hebrew alphabet, namely, twenty-two, every period forming a |
