of space, pass through the gates into the city, enter amid the rising, welcoming, and wondering first-born of heaven, and at last merge in the engulfing glory of the great white throne.

Such honor have not all God's saints, nor have had all his prophets. But surely here the dignity of the prophetic office came to its height, when, in the fullness of its discharge, it swelled up into heaven, and when he, who, in the native grandeur of his commission, had walked among men as a being of another race, was lifted up before his time, like a pearl from the dust, and added to an immortal and sinless company.

We mention as the last general characteristic of Hebrew poetry, its high moral tone and constant religious reference. Without occupying the full position of Dr. Johnson, in his celebrated ex cathedra and à priori sentence against sacred poetry, we are forced to admit that, of sacred poetry, in its higher acceptation, we have had little, and that our sacred poets are few. There are, we think, but three poets-Dante, Milton, and Cowper -entitled at once to the terms sacred and great. Giles and Phineas Fletcher, James and Robert Montgomery, Milman, Pollok, Trench, and Keble, are sacred poets, and much of their poetry is true and beautiful; but the shy epithet "great" will hardly alight on any one of their heads. Spenser, Cowley, Pope, Addison, Scott, Wordsworth, Wilson, Coleridge, and Southey, have all written sacred poems (Coleridge's Hymn to Mont Blanc, and Scott's Hymn of Rebecca, in Ivanhoe, are surpassed only by the Hebrew bards); but none of them is properly a sacred poet. For some of the best of our sacred verses, we are indebted to such men as Christopher Smart, John Logan, and William Knox. Of the tribe of ordinary hymn writers, whose drawl and lisping drivel-whose sickening sentimentalism-whose unintentional blasphemies of familiarity with divine things and persons-whose profusion of such fulsome epithets as "sweet Jesus," "dear Lord," "dear Christ," &c., render them so undeservedly popular, what need we say, unless it be to express our surprise that a stern Scottish taste, accustomed to admire the "Dies Irae," our own rough but

manly version of the Psalms, and our own simple and unpretending Paraphrases, should dream of introducing into our sanctuaries the trash commonly known as hymns! The writer of sacred poetry should be himself a sacred poet, for none else can continuously, or at large, write what both the critic and the Christian will value, though for different reasons— -the Christian for its spirit and tendency, the critic for its thorough artistic adaptation to the theme.

The Hebrew poet was nothing, if not sacred. To him, the poetical and the religious were almost the same. Song was the form instinctively assumed by all the higher moods of his worship. He was not surprised into religious emotion and poetry by the influence of circumstances, nor stung into it by the pressure of remorse. He was not religious only when the organ was playing, nor most so- -like Burns and Byron-on a sunshiny day. Religion was with him a habitual feeling, and from the joy or the agony of that feeling poetry broke out irrepressibly. To him, the question "Are you in a religious mood today?" had been as absurd as "Are you alive to-day?" for all his moods—whether high as heaven or low as hell-whether wretched as the penitence of David, or triumphant as the rapture of Isaiah-were tinged with the religious element. From God he sank, or up to him he soared. The grand theocracy around ruled all the soul and all the song of the bard. Wherever he stood-under the silent starry canopy, or in the gation of the faithful-musing in solitary spots, or smiting, with high, hot, rebounding hand, the loud cymbal-his feeling was, "How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." In him, surrounded by sacred influences, haunted by sacred recollections, moving through a holy land, and overhung by a heavenly presence, religion became a passion, a patriotism, and a poetry. Hence, the sacred song of the Hebrews stands alone; and hence we may draw the deduction, that its equal we shall never see again, till again religion enshrine the earth with an atmosphere as it then enshrined Palestine-till poets are the organs, not only of their

congre

personal belief, but of the general sentiment around them, and have become but the high-priests in a vast sanctuary, where all shall be worshipers, because all is felt to be divine. How this high and solemn reference to the Supreme Intelligence and Great Whole comes forth in all the varied forms of Hebrew poetry! Is it the pastoral ?--The Lord is the shepherd. Is it elegy? -It bewails his absence. Is it ode?-It cries aloud for his return, or shouts his praise. counts his deeds. Is it the penitential psalm ?-Its climax is, "Against thee only have I sinned." Is it the didactic poem ? -Running down through the world, like a sythed chariot, and hewing down before it all things as vanity, it clears the way to the final conclusion, "Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Is it a "burden," tossed, as from a midnight mountain, by the hand of lonely seer, toward the lands of Egypt and Babylon ?-It is the burden of the Lord; his the handful of devouring fire flung by the fierce prophet. Is it apologue, or emblem?-God's meaning lies in the hollow of the parable; God's eye glares the "terrible crystal" over the rushing wheels. Even the love-canticle seems to rise above itself, and behold a greater than Solomon, and a fairer than his Egyptian spouse, are here. Thus, from their poetry, as from a thousand mirrors, flashes back the one awful face of their God.

Is it the historical ballad?-It re

C*

Ir is common for a new writer on any subject to commence his work with open, or with gently insinuated, depreciation of those who have preceded him, or, at least, in the course of it, to "damn them with faint praise," or to hint and hesitate out strong but suppressed dislike. Not in conformity with this custom, we propose to commence this chapter by candidly characterizing the principal writers on Hebrew poetry, with whom we are acquainted.

By far the most generally known of those writers is Bishop Lowth, the fourth edition of whose "Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews," translated from the Latin by G. Gregory, F.R.S., with notes by Michaelis and others, now lies before us. To use a term which this author himself employs ad nauseam, Lowth's book is a very " elegant" production. It is written in a round, fluent, and perspicuous style; abounds in learning and ingenious criticism; is full to overflowing of specimens selected, and in general re-translated, from the Hebrew bards; shows a warm love for their more prominent excellencies, and an intimate knowledge of their mechanical struc ture; and did good service for their fame when first published To say, however, that it is ever more than " elegant," or ever rises to the "height of its great argument," were to compliment it too highly. It contains, indeed, much judicious criticism, some good writing, and a few touches of highly felicitous panegyric; but, as a whole, it is tame almost to mediocrity-squares the Hebrew poetry too much by the standard of the Greek and

Latin classics-displays little or no kindred genius-dilutes and deadens the portions of the Bible it professes to render into English verse-bears too decidedly the stamp of the eighteenth century—and does not at all fulfill its own expressed ideal, “He who would feel the peculiar and interior elegances of the Hebrew poetry, must imagine himself exactly situated as the persons for whom it was written, or even as the writers themselves-he is to feel as a Hebrew, to read Hebrew as the Hebrews would have read it." Lowth is very little of a Hebrew, and the point of view he occupies is far below the level of the "hills of holiness." His criticism bears not even the proportion to the subject which Pope's "Messiah" does to its original; it wants subtilty, power, and abandonment. Much of his general preliminary matter is now obsolete, and the account which he gives of the individual writers is meager. He supplies a series of anatomical sketches, not of living portraits. He is to David and Isaiah what Warton was to Shakspeare, or Blair to Homer and Virgil. His translator has not been able altogether to overcome the air of stiffness which adheres to all English versions from the Latin. Nor do the notes by Michaelis add much to the book's value. They have, indeed, much learning, but their literary criticism is alike despicable and profane. "Ezekiel," says our learned Theban, "does not strike with admiration, nor exhibit any trait of sublimity." Truly, over such a critic all the wheels of Chebar would roll in vain, for what impression can be made on insensate and infidel dust? Even a mule would be awe-struck in the gorge of Glencoe, but a mule is only a relation to Michaelis. His translator sounds a deeper deep, and actually accuses Ezekiel of the bathos!

Such was the criticism of the past age. Rarely did it reach, in any of its altitudes of praise, a term higher than the aforesaid "elegant"-a term which, while accurately measuring Pope and Addison, looks, when connected with Moses and Isaiah, ludicrously inadequate. The age, of which this was the superlative, could scarcely measure the poetry of that which