THE PURITAN. No. 33. I love to breathe where Gilead sheds her balm; And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's deathless rose. Pierpont's Airs of Palestine. HEBREW POETRY. In the earliest ages of the world, poetry was a very serious employment. It was the first form in which the contemplative powers of man manifested themselves; and to it may be traced, as a germ, our history, our fiction, our philosophy, and our laws. Even the solemn attributes of the Deity, and the tremendous truths of religion, are supposed to have been first delivered to mankind, by the inspiration of the poet, through the melody of song. The reason for this peculiarity in the history of nations, must be sought for in the counsels by which God instructs his creatures. Men are slow in their movements; they are immersed in a material body, and distracted by its wants. In the earlier stages of society, life is but a struggle for subsistence; and it must be some glaring object, some powerful motive, which allures men over the bridge which separates action from thought. Matter will attract any one's attention, even a child's, when it is first shown. But when we disrobe it of its form and color, and attempt, without its impressions, to lead the unpractised mind into the intellectual world, it must be done by new arts, to excite interest. The speaker must have deep feeling; and clothe that feeling in measured language. This is the universal history of the literary dawn; when the object ceases to arrest the eye, it must take a new embodiment, and charm the ear. The people, who can no longer look, must make a new use of their eyes-they must be forced to weep. But though mind is sluggish in its movements, and it takes all the art of the poet to rouse it to its first attention, it must not be supposed that, when the attention is once up, it acts with any feeble interest. It takes much, to make a savage pass the bounds from the world of matter to the world of intellectual forms; but when he is once there, the very indefiniteness of the objects, together with the newness of the scene, absorbs his whole soul; he feels an interest which he never felt before; he rises as to a new 3 VOL. II. creation, and surrenders himself to the guidance of the genius, under whose manuduction he was first led. It has often been inquired, why poetry and orations have lost so much of their interest; and why the best exertions of modern skill, never rise to that powerful despotism over the will, which, in ancient times, no man resisted or wished to resist. Surely the moderns have some advantages. Arts have been improved; knowledge has been increased; the passions have been analyzed; the fountains of the mind have been explored. Why should not equal genius with more materials, produce better success? The reason, however, is obvious. The power of a poet over his admirers, or of an orator over his audience, is to be estimated by a ratio between his genius and their sensibility. The percussion, and the object struck, must both be considered. In older times, the lack of knowledge, and the consequent want of refinement, was eminently favorable to increase the sensibility of the audience; every impression was fresh and new; every passion was incited by novelty, and prolonged, because the feelings of nature were unworn; every invention produced wonder; the rapture of the audience increased the inspiration of the speaker; there was a reciprocal influence; genius was warmed by its own effects; and the same powerful impulse which first forced the mind into the paradise which thought had made, gave sweetness to its flowers, and magnitude and beauty to its shades. Ingenuity, and invention, melody, and voice, and action, may still exist; but the sensibility which increased them is lost forever. our race. These remarks might be suggested by speculation, but they are abundantly supported by the history of Let us suppose the wandering story-teller and singer, whom, for the want of a more personal name, we call Homer, to be surrounded by a ring of barbarians, who, having no war on their hands, and their bellies full, require him to amuse them for an idle hour. He knows his audience; with all his superiority, he but just emerges above them; and indeed his very superiority consists in knowing how to act on such materials. He knows well that he must stir their passions, and draw their tears, or they will hear him with stupid indifference; indeed, the choice in such an audience, is between rapture and sleep. He begins with a prelude on the lyre ; Ητοι ὅ φορμίζων ἀνεβάλλετο καλὸν ἀέιδειν. The He And thus fills their ears with unideal sounds. wisdom of God seems to have made music as a kind of passage between sensuality and thinking. then plunges into narrative; sings of wars; addresses the strongest propensities of the age; brings out (or rather, it breaks upon him) his moral instructions, as an accompaniment of the story; and thus forces his hearers to feel and think in the only way in which feeling and thinking in such an age can be excited. There is no great art in all this; or, at least, it is an art forced upon him by the nature of his office, and the circumstances in which he is thrown. He teaches, to be sure, war, politics, navigation, the theology of heaven, and the sciences of earth; not because he designed to combine these various things, but because they naturally mingled in the only intellectual stream that was then running. His language is simple, because no other language could be understood; his figures are bold and striking, because he must strike the minds he addresses; his poetry is forcible, because no other would excite interest; and it has all the freshness of nature, because the book of nature is the only volume he has ever read. Thus the poet becomes excellent; and thus the earliest rhapsodies of all nations, reflect not so much the genius of the individual, as a picture of the age. The Jews were a peculiar people; and their poetry is as peculiar. It was made the vehicle of teaching them the most awful truths; because, when God speaks to men, he uses the language of men. Truth itself may bear a majesty suitable to the mind from which it originated; but its garb must be as humble as the minds to which it is addressed. In speaking, however, of the poetry of the Hebrews, we shall say nothing of that Supreme Mind, from which it is believed to have originated; we shall not assume, as the ground of our remarks, the inspiration |