battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire." We solicit a careful comparison between the common version of this passage, and the following by Dr. Noyes.

"But the darkness shall not remain where now is distress;

Of old he brought the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali into contempt;

In future times shall he bring the land of the sea, beyond Jordan, the circle of the Gentiles, into honor.

The people, that walk in darkness, behold a great light;
They, who dwell in the land of death-like shade,

Upon them a light shineth.

Thou enlargest the nation;

Thou increasest their joy;

They rejoice before thee with the joy of harvest,
With the joy of those who divide the spoil.

For thou breakest their heavy yoke,

And the rod, that smote their backs,

And the scourge of the taskmaster,

As in the day of Midian.

For the greaves of the warrior armed for the conquest,
And the war-garments, rolled in blood,

Shall be burned; yea, they shall be food for the fire."

Then, too, in many passages, of which the main thought is clearly presented, our translators have inserted some irrelevant and unmeaning word or phrase, which the mind of the reader unconsciously omits and ignores, but which might be exchanged for one which would add new light and beauty to the sentiment. For instance, few probably have ever confessed to themselves that they do not fully understand the following verses from the nineteenth Psalm. "There is no speech nor language where their voice [that of the heavens, or the celestial luminaries] is not heard; their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." And yet we have asked more than a score of intelligent and cultivated people, whether they had ever attached any meaning to the word line; and they have all confessed, both that they knew not what it meant, and that they had never discovered, till we made the inquiry, that it was void of meaning. Now the Hebrew word, thus rendered, does indeed denote a measuring line, but it also signifies a musical chord; and through the neglect of this latter sense, the Psalm has been

stripped of one of the rarest gems of poetical fancy to be found in any language. By omitting the word where, which has been interpolated in Italics by the translators, to the perversion of the sense, which was complete without it, we may render the passage as follows:

They [the heavens] have no speech nor language,

No voice is heard from them;

Yet the chord of their harmony vibrates through the earth,
Their notes reach the bounds of the universe.

Besides accurate translation of these ancient writings, English readers need a division and arrangement of them more consonant both with the genius of Hebrew poetry, and the scope of the respective writers, than our present chapters and verses, in which the measuring-line plays as impertinent and obtrusive a part as in the version of the psalm just quoted. Apart from the rhythm of the Hebrews, which it is idle to think of restoring, the essence of their poetry consists in a parallelism of sentiment, which unites two, three, or four versicles of nearly the same length into a stichos, or stanza. Sometimes one, two, or three versicles repeat the same sentiment in different words; or, of four, the first corresponds to the third, and the second to the fourth. Sometimes the second member of the stichos, parallel in form, presents in thought a pointed antithesis to the first, or the third and fourth to the first and second. And then again, kindred, but not identical, sentiments are often thrown into couplets or triplets by a similarity of grammatical construction, and, so far as we have the means of judging, by an identity of rhythm. Now, all this parallelism is merged in our common system of verses, which groups together from two to five versicles, in the form of continuous prose, and with nothing, even in the pointing, to indicate the metrical divisions. The chapters, too, seldom coincide with the natural divisions of the respective books, while the brief summaries of contents prefixed to each chapter in our English Bibles generally display great carelessness, and are formed from the most superficial view of each chapter by itself, and not with reference to what precedes and follows. Now a great deal may be done for the satisfaction of the English reader by an arrangement which will represent the poetical structure of the original, and by NO. 132.

VOL. LXIII.

18

divisions corresponding with the actual sequence of subjects, together with a simple caption at the head of each section, to designate, in as few words as may be, not the possible or theoretical, but the actual and undoubted, purport of the

section.

We have made these remarks to show how large a field of labor King James's translators left open to those who should succeed them. Their deficiencies, as we have said, belonged to their times and opportunities, rather than to the men. They did what they could, and more than there were a priori grounds for anticipating. And in one respect they have distanced all rivalry. They have clothed the Hebrew poets in a diction so full of euphony, majesty, and strength, as to make more accurate versions often seem tame and mean, and to constrain subsequent translators of taste to adhere to their phraseology, whenever there are not cogent reasons for departing from it. The author of a new translation must, then, be not only an acute and accomplished Hebrew scholar, but must also have at his command the richest materials of his own tongue, that his corrections of the established version may not seem insufferably harsh and flat by the side of those portions of its phraseology which he cannot help employing.

In this work, demanding at once so high attainments and so pure a taste, and on which many eminent men have entered with various degrees of success, we believe that the most careful critical comparison will award to Dr. Noyes the first honors. His versions of Job, the Psalms, and the Prophets, have been long before the public, and have already rendered edifying to hundreds of readers portions of the sacred volume which they had regarded as for ever sealed. No person of common intelligence will find it more difficult, by his aid, to follow a Hebrew prophet through his entire book, without dropping the thread of his discourse or encountering an utterly obscure sentence, than he will to trace the plot and to understand the successive portions of the Paradise Lost. Dr. Noyes's translation is always perspicuous and exact. He seldom deviates unnecessarily from the language of the common version; and his own words, both in their choice and their arrangement, display the most intimate conversance with the resources of the English tongue, a sound and discriminating taste, and a moderately good rhythmical ear. If we qualify our praise in any particular, it must be in this last. We some

times find him employing words and phrases entirely in accordance with the best usage, which yet fail to ring upon the ear with the leaping, stirring melody of the established version. He sometimes uses words of Latin derivation, when he had better Saxon words at hand. In some instances, also, he translates into our English idiom Hebraisms, which are sufficiently well understood, and have incomparably more of euphony when literally rendered. These instances are, however, but few; and because few, they are the more striking when they occur, from contrast with the generally elevated diction and spirited and melodious movement of the translation. In all of these works, the metrical arrangement of the original is strictly observed, and the text is broken into paragraphs and sections in accordance with the natural divisions, while the chapters and verses of the common system are marked in the margin for purposes of reference. Then there is prefixed to each of the books a brief introduction, exhibiting the results, without any of the parade, of learning, and presenting a synopsis of the facts, with reference to the external history of the work, with which the general reader needs to be acquainted. The notes are very few and short, adapted, with hardly an exception, to the comprehension and taste of the merely English reader, and for the most part either indicating the grounds of preference for the rendering given in the text, or explaining idiomatic or elliptical expressions, which could not have been unfolded in the text without an inadmissible periphrasis.

on.

The volume now before us corresponds in its style of execution, and in its claims upon the public regard and gratitude, with those that preceded it. It makes with them a complete version of the poetical portion of the Hebrew canIt hardly admits of criticism apart from the rest; nor has the diligent perusal of all of them enabled us to pronounce either of them superior to the others in the traces of care, or skill, or learning. The series was not commenced till the author had made himself second to none in his qualifications for his task; nor is it in his nature, or consonant with his rigid conscientiousness, so to lean on an established reputation as to remit in the last of the series any thing of that diligent elaboration which commended the first to universal favor.

In one point of view, indeed, the volume just issued might

seem of inferior importance, as less needed than the others. Undoubtedly, the book of Proverbs is better understood in the common version than any of the other poetical books. Yet still, there are many pearls there dropped, which Dr. Noyes has strung again, many maxims, to which he has restored their native brilliancy and point, and converted them from homely truisms back to apophthegms equally original and striking, both in their artistical form and their ethical significance. This book deserves the most diligent attention and study, as a compend of the practical morality and piety which sprang from the Mosaic revelation. It exhibits both the preeminent ethical value of the Jewish theology beyond all other ancient religions, and, at the same time, its inadequacy to conduct the nation to that lofty spiritual stand-point which we owe to Him through whom immortality was at once revealed and made manifest. The collection is the more valuable, in this regard, from the fact, that it is not the work of one hand, but of at least five different authors or compilers, between the reigns of Solomon and Hezekiah, inclusive; and that, therefore, it may be assumed as representing the moral tone and standard of the wisest and best men that flourished under the kings of Judah. It certainly adds abundant confirmation to the divine origin of the Jewish faith, while in its frequently superficial and external character, and in its many lacunæ, it indicates the need of the more comprehensive and profound ethics of the New Testament.

Ecclesiastes is supposed, from the Aramæan complexion of its language, to have been written after the Babylonish captivity, and probably at a later date than any other book of the Jewish canon. It could not have been the author's design to pass it off as the work of Solomon; but, in giving the mature results of an extended experience of the wonders, pleasures, and vanities of life, he assumed the name and person of Solomon, as of an eminent historical character, within the range of whose powerful, prosperous, guilty, afflicted, penitent reign, every phasis of human experience might be naturally portrayed. This book is of kindred value with the Proverbs, as presenting views of human life which indicate far more breadth and justness of conception as to the aims and ends of life than could have been attained without the guidance of revelation, and yet illustrating man's intense need of full faith in immortality to cast light upon the dark passages,