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sumed fact, even were they without reasonable arguments to confirm it, which in truth they are not. That this widely mooted question cannot be reduced to plain and palpable demonstration, is no proof against its validity, however it may render the presumptive evidence in its favour unsatisfactory; for if we should credit nothing but what rests upon such substantive proof as at once sets at defiance all doubt or denial, we shall be reduced to a very limited sphere of belief. The presumptive evidence of a fact may be so strong as to produce conviction as direct and permanent as the most positive testimony, nor will our credulity be the less implicit because it has not been fortified by demonstrative evidence.

Among the ancients who have maintained the affirmative of the question now to be considered, are Josephus, Philo Judæus, who both assert that the Hebrews had recourse to metres resembling those of the classical authors of Greece. At a later period, we have Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and Isidore, who unite in the same views, under some trifling limitations. Among the moderns, we have Vatablus, Masius, Reatinus, Croius, Fabricius, Petræus, and Ebertus, who have attempted to investigate or to restore the Hebrew versification.* Gomar's work on this subject, entitled " Lyra Davidis: seu Nova Hebrææ S. Scripturæ ars poetica, canonibus suis descripta, et exemplis sacris, et Pindari ac Sophoclis parallelis demonstrata,"

* See Jebb's Sacred Literature, p. 10.

was approved by the celebrated Buxtorf, Heinsius, De Dieu, and others. Marcus Meibomius, Van der Hardt, and Bishop Hare, have each imagined that they had restored the primitive metres, but although their several systems, unquestionably ingenious and plausible, were supported by numerous adherents, they have undoubtedly failed in their praiseworthy attempts. Their failure is nevertheless no demonstration against the existence of that which they have failed to establish. If Newton had not discovered the law of gravitation, it would still have governed the world of matter, though mankind had been ever so ignorant of its influence upon that mysterious element.

Against the numerous authorities which maintain the presence of metre in Holy Writ, it must be admitted that many eminent scholars and divines of equal reputation might be named who have taken the opposite view in this difficult inquiry; still, as the greatest, or at least the most active and scrutinizing among modern Hebrew scholars, namely, Bishop Lowth, has maintained the affirmative of this question with that discrimination and eloquence for which he was so distinguished,-the sanction of so eminent a name gives me more confidence in resisting the views of the amiable and classical Bishop Jebb, notwithstanding the respectable authorities behind which he trenches himself.

"The grand characteristic of Hebrew poetry," says this elegant and accomplished writer,*

* Sacred Literature, pp. 3, 4.

"does not appear to belong peculiarly to the language of the OLD Testament, as contradistinguished from that of the NEW. It is not the acrostical or regularly alphabetical commencement of lines or stanzas; for this occurs but in twelve poems of the Old Testament: it is not the introduction of foreign words, and of, what grammarians call, the paragogic or redundant particles; for these licences, though frequent, are by no means universal in the poetical books of scripture; and they are occasionally admitted into passages merely historical and prosaic: it is not the rhyming termination of lines, for no traces of this artifice are discoverable in the alphabetical poems, the lines or stanzas of which are defined with infallible precision, and every attempt to force it on the text has been accompanied by the most licentious mutilation of scripture: and finally, this grand characteristic is not the adoption of metre, properly so called, and analogous to the metre of the heathen classics; for the efforts of the learned to discover such metre in any one poem of the Hebrews, have universally failed; and while we are morally certain, that, even though it were known and employed by the Jews, while their language was a living one, it is quite beyond recovery in the dead and unpronouncable state of that language, there are also strong reasons for believing that even in the most flourishing state of their literature, the Hebrew poets never used this decoration."

Now let us examine carefully the force of these objections, and see to what they amount.

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The grand characteristic of Hebrew poetry does not appear to belong peculiarly to the original language of the Old Testament, as contradistinguished from that of the New." To this it may be replied, it is not necessary that the grand characteristic of Hebrew poetry should belong peculiarly to the original language of the Old Testament as contradistinguished from the New; if it belong to it generally, that is, in those portions assumed to be poetical, it is sufficient for the argument in favour of the positive existence of poetry in those portions, which must presuppose the existence of metre, the vehicle by which poetry has been communicated in all languages, both ancient and modern. I contend that poetry, properly so called, cannot be disassociated from metre, that being the elementary law by which it is governed and distinguished, and without which, in fact, it cannot exist; for it is no longer poetry than while it is indebted for its organization to those laws, which for upwards of two thousand years have directed its production, and apart from which its real presence becomes a mere undemonstrable problem.-Else, why should the great masters of antiquity have fettered themselves with the stubborn, and often untractable trammels of metre, if they did not think them absolutely essential to poetry-nay, inseparable from its very character and existence? If the same results could be secured by an easier mode of production, why did the great geniuses of ancient Greece adopt the more difficult, when they gained nothing by such an additional

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expence of time and labour? The truth is, that poetry and prose have nothing in common but the employment of the parts of speech. The former is the result of a distinct and separate art with which the other has no conceivable sympathy or relationship, and disassociated from this art, to which it owes its constitution, it is no longer poetry. Elevated sentiments, sublime thoughts, gorgeous figures, lively images, and choice selections of phrase, will not alone constitute poetry; these are, doubtless, the elements out of which it is formed, but those elements are subjected to the operation of certain rules, before they can be realized into that specific identity which brings them out of the process of formation into the peculiarity of frame and contexture, which we designate poetry. It is the manner in which these elements are combined, harmonized, and amalgamated in the structure, which will substantiate their claim to this distinction. As a proof of this, let us take the first few lines of Satan's address to the sun, from Milton's Paradise Lost, and cast them into prose, and we shall immediately see, that all their poetic beauty is at once banished; --for example,

O thou, that with surpassing glory crowned
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell; how glorious once!-above thy sphere;
Till pride and, worse-ambition, threw me down,
Warring in heaven 'gainst heaven's matchless king.

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