cumstance, or employ a great many words to describe it; which always makes the impression faint and languid; but placing it in one strong point of view, full and clear before the reader, he there leaves it.

From his shield and his helmet,' says Homer, describing one of his heroes in battle, From his shield and his helmet, there sparkled an incessant blaze; like the autumnal star, when it appears in its brightness from the waters of the ocean.' This is short and lively; but when it comes into Mr. Pope's hand, it evaporates in three pompous lines, each of which repeats the same image in different words:

High on his helm celestial lightnings play,

His beamy shield emits a living ray;

Th' unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies,

Like the red star that fires th' autumnal skies.

It is to be observed, in general, that, in describing solemn or great objects, the concise manner is, almost always, proper. Descriptions of gay and smiling scenes can bear to be more amplified and prolonged; as strength is not the predominant quality expected in these. But where a sublime, or a pathetic impression is intended to be made, energy is above all things required. The imagination ought then to be seized at once; and it is far more deeply impressed by one strong and ardent image, than by the anxious minuteness of laboured illustration. 'His face was without form, and dark,' says Ossian, describing a ghost, the stars dim twinkling through his form; thrice he sighed over the hero; and thrice the winds of the night roared around.'

It deserves attention too, that in describing inanimate natural objects, the poet, in order to enliven his description, ought always to mix living beings with them. The scenes of dead and still life are apt to pall upon us, if the poet do not suggest sentiments and introduce life and action into his description. This is well known to every painter who is a master of his art. Seldom has any beautiful landscape been drawn, without some human being represented on the canvas, as beholding it, or on some account concerned in it:

Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata Lycori,
Hic nemus, hic ipso tecum cosumerer ævo.*

The touching part of these fine lines of Virgil's is the last, which sets before us the interest of two lovers in this rural scene. A long description of the 'fontes,' the 'nemus,' and the prata,' in the most poetical modern manner, would have been insipid without this stroke, which, in a few words, brings home to the heart all the beauties of the place: 'hic ipso tecum consumerer ævo.' It is a great beauty in Milton's Allegro, that it is all alive, and full of persons.

Every thing, as I before said, in description, should be as marked and particular as possible, in order to imprint on the mind a distinct and complete image. A hill, a river, or a lake, rises up more conspicuous to the fancy, when some particular lake, or river, or hill, is specified, than when the terms are left general. Most of the ancient writers have been sensible of the advantage which this gives to description. Thus, in that beautiful pastoral composition, the Song of Solomon, the images

*Here cooling fountains roll through flow'ry meads,

Here woods, Lycoris, lift their verdant heads,
Here could I wear my careless life away,
And in thy arms insensibly decay.

VIRG. ECL. X. WARTON.

are commonly particularised by the objects to which they allude. It is the rose of Sharon; the lily of the vallies; the flock which feeds on Mount Gilead; the stream which comes from Mount Lebanon. Come with me, from Lebanon, my spouse; look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.' Chap. iv. 8. So Horace :

Quid dedicatum poscit Apollinem
Vates? quid orat de patera novum
Fundens liquorem? non opimas
Sardina segetes feracis;

Non æstuosæ grata Calabria

Armenta; non aurum aut ebur Indicum,

Non rura, quæ Liris quietâ

Mordet aquâ, taciturnus omnis.*

Lib. I. Ode 31.

Both Homer and Virgil are remarkable for the talent of poetical description. In Virgil's second Eneid, where he describes the burning and sacking of Troy, the particulars are so well selected and represented, that the reader finds himself in the midst of that scene of horror. The death of Priam, especially, may be singled out as a master-piece of description. All the circumstances of the aged monarch arraying himself in armour, when he finds the enemy making themselves masters of the city; his meeting with his family, who are taking shelter at an altar in the court of the palace, and their placing him in the midst of them; his indignation when he beholds Pyrrhus slaughtering one of his sons; the feeble dart which he throws; with Pyrrhus's brutal behaviour, and his manner of putting the old man to death, are painted in the most affecting manner, and with a masterly hand. All Homer's battles, and Milton's account, both of paradise and of the infernal regions, furnish many beautiful instances of poetical description. Ossian, too, paints in strong and lively colours, though he employs few circumstances; and his chief excellency lies in painting to the heart. One of his fullest descriptions is the following of the ruins of Balclutha ; 'I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded within the halls; and the voice of the people is now heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place, by the fall of the walls; the thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out at the window; the rank grass wayed round his head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina. Silence is in the house of her fathers.' Shakspeare cannot be omitted on this occasion, as singularly eminent for painting with the pencil of nature. Though it be in manners and characters, that his chief excellency lies, yet his scenery also is often exquisite, and happily described by a single stroke; as in that fine line of the Merchant of Venice,' which con

* When at Apollo's hallowed shrine
The poet hails the power divine,
And here his first libation pours,
What is the blessing he implores?
He nor desires the swelling grain,
That yellows o'er Sardinia's plain,
Nor the fair herds that lowing feed
On warm Calabria's flowery mead;
Nor ivory of spotless shine,

Nor gold forth flaming from the mine;
Nor the rich fields that Liris laves,
And eats away with silent waves.

FRANCIS.

veys to the fancy as natural and beautiful an image, as can possibly be exhibited in so few words:

How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, &c.

Much of the beauty of descriptive poetry depends upon a right choice of epithets. Many poets, it must be confessed, are too careless in this particular. Epithets are frequently brought in merely to complete the verse, or make the rhyme answer; and hence they are so unmeaning and redundant; expletive words only, which in place of adding any thing to the description, clog and enervate it. Virgil's 'Liquidi fontes,' and Horace's 'Prata canis albicant pruinis,' must, I am afraid, be assigned to this class for, to denote by an epithet that water is liquid, or that snow is white, is no better than mere tautology. Every epithet should either add a new idea to the word which it qualifies, or at least serve to raise and heighten its known signification. So in Milion,

Who shall tempt with wand'ring feet

The dark, unbottom'd, infinite abyss,
And through the palpable obscure, find out
His uncouth way? or spread his airy flight,
Upborn with indefatigable wings,

Over the vast abrupt ?

B. II.

The epithets employed here plainly add strength to the description, and assist the fancy in conceiving it ;--the wandering feet-the unbottomed abyss-the palpable obscure-the uncouth way-the indefatigable wing --serve to render the images more complete and distinct. But there are many general epithets, which, though they appear to raise the signification of the word to which they are joined, yet leave it so undetermined, and are now become so trite and beaten in poetical language, as to be perfectly insipid. Of this kind are 'barbarous discord-hateful envymighty chiefs-bloody war-gloomy shades-direful scenes,' and a thousand more of the same kind which we meet with occasionally in good poets; but with which poets of inferior genius abound every where, as the great props of their affected sublimity. They give a sort of swell to the language, and raise it above the tone of prose; but they serve not in the least to illustrate the object described; on the contrary, they load the style with a languid verbosity.

Sometimes it is in the power of a poet of genius, by one well chosen epithet, to accomplish a description, and by means of a single word, to paint a whole scene to the fancy. We may remark this effect of an epithet in the following fine lines of Milton's Lycidas:

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep

Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas?

For neither were ye playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.

Among these wild scenes, Deva's wizard stream' is admirably imaged; by this one word, presenting to the fancy all the romantic ideas, of a river flowing through a desolate country, with banks haunted by wizards and enchanters. Akin to this is an epithet which Horace gives to the river Hydaspes. A good man, says he, stands in need of no arms.

Caucasum ; vel quæ loca fabulosus

Lambit Hydaspes.*

This epithet fabulosus,' one of the commentators on Horace has changed into sabulosus,' or sandy; substituting, by a strange want of taste, the common and trivial epithet of the sandy river, in place of that beau tiful picture which the poet gives us, by calling Hydaspes the romantic river, or the scene of adventures and poetic tales.

Virgil has employed an epithet with great beauty and propriety, when accounting for Dædalus not having engraved the fortune of his son Icarus :

Bis conatus erat casus effingere in auro,
Bis patriæ cecidere manus.t

Æs. VL

These instances and observations may give some just idea of true poetical description. We have reason always to distrust an author's de scriptive talents, when we find him laborious and turgid, amassing common-place epithets and general expressions, to work up a higher conception of some object, of which, after all, we can form but an indistinct idea. The best describers are simple and concise. They set before us such features of an object, as, on the first view, strike and warm the fancy; they give us ideas which a statuary or a painter could lay hold of, and work after them; which is one of the strongest and most decisive trials of the real merit of description.

LECTURE XLI.

THE POETRY OF THE HEBREWS.

AMONG the various kinds of poetry, which we are at present employed in examining, the ancient Hebrew poetry, or that of the scriptures, justly deserves a place. Viewing these sacred books in no higher light than as they present to us the most ancient monuments of poetry extant, at this day, in the world, they afford a curious object of criticism. They display the taste of a remote age and country. They exhibit a species of composition, very different from any other with which we are acquainted, and, at the same time, beautiful. Considered as inspired writings, they give rise to discussions of another kind. But it is our busi ness, at present, to consider them not in a theological but in a critical view and it must needs give pleasure, if we shall find the beauty and dignity of the composition, adequate to the weight and importance of the matter. Dr. Lowth's learned treatise,' De Sacra Poesi Hebræo

* Whether through Lybia's burning sands
Our journey leads, or Scythia's lands,
Amidst th' unhospitable waste of snows,
Or where the fabulous Hydaspes flows.
Here hapless Icarus had found his part,
Had not the father's grief restrain'd his art:

FRANCIS.

He twice essayed to cast his son in gold,

Twice from his hand he dropp'd the forming mould.

DRYDEN.

In this translation the thought is justly given; but the beauty of the expression pa

triæ manus,' which in the original conveys the thought with so much tenderness, is lost.

rum,' ought to be perused by all who desire to become thoroughly acquainted with this subject. It is a work exceedingly valuable, both for the elegance of its composition and for the justness of the criticism which it contains. In this lecture, as I cannot illustrate the subject with more benefit to the reader, than by following the tract of that ingenious author, I shall make much use of his observations.

I need not spend many words in shewing, that among the books of the Old Testament there is such an apparent diversity in style, as sufficiently discovers, which of them are to be considered as poetical, and which, as prose compositions. While the historical books, and legislative wri tings of Moses, are evidently prosaic in the composition, the book of Job, the psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, a great part of the prophetical writings, and several passages scattered occasionly through the historical books, carry the most plain and distinguishing marks of poetical writing.

There is not the least reason for doubting, that originally these were written in verse, or some kind of measured numbers; though, as the ancient pronunciation of the Hebrew language is now lost, we are not able to ascertain the nature of the Hebrew verse, or at most can ascertain it but imperfectly. Concerning this point there have been great controversies among learned men, which it is immaterial to our present purpose to discuss. Taking the Old Testament in our own translation, which is extremely literal, we find plain marks of many parts of the original being written in a measured style; and the disjecta membra poëtæ,' often shew themselves. Let any person read the historical introduction to the book of Job, contained in the first and second chapters, and then go on to Job's speech in the beginning of the third chapter, and he cannot avoid being sensible, that he passes all at once from the region of prose to that of poetry. Not only the poetical sentiments and the figured style, warn him of the change; but the cadence of the sentence, and the arrangement of the words are sensibly altered; the change is as great as when he passes from reading Cesar's Commentaries, to read Virgil's Æneid. This is sufficient to shew that the sacred Scriptures contain, what must be called poetry in the strictest sense of that word; and I shall afterwards shew that they contain instances of most of the different forms of poetical writing. It may be proper to remark in passing, that hence arises a most invincible argument in honour of poetry. No person can imagine that to be a frivolous and contemptible art, which has been employed by writers under divine inspiration; and has been chosen as a proper channel, for conveying to the world the knowledge of divine truth.

From the earliest times, music and poetry were cultivated among the Hebrews. In the days of the Judges, mention is made of the schools or colleges of the prophets; where one part of the employment of the persons trained in such schools was, to sing the praises of God, accompanied with various instruments. In the first book of Samuel, (chap. x. 7.) we find, on a public occasion, a company of these prophets coming down from the hill where their school was, prophesying,' it is said, with the psaltery, tabret and harp before them.' But in the days of king David, music and poetry were carried to their greatest height. For the service of the tabernacle, he appointed four thousand Levites, divided into twenty-four courses, and marshalled under several leaders, whose sole business it was to sing hymns, and to perform the instrumen