in his outer chambers;" and the offices of the seasons ;-" Autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us;. winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases ; spring brings flowers to strew our hearse; summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves." All the rest is rhetorical, the result of hard thinking and strong memory, with little of quick fancy or deep feeling. There are seven pages of the same kind in the context, which rather resemble an inventory of ideas and metaphors, than a select and well-harmonized array of such as would best impress the mind and affect the heart, on the most solemn of all subjects-man's mortality. And such is the general character of composition in the multitudinous works of this "old man eloquent." He is never carried away by the fervency of passion; he always preserves presence of mind and self-possession; he can draw upon the treasures of his imagination to any amount, and can multiply examples and ilustrations at leisure, to enforce his arguments with what may be called "cumulative evidence." His crowded sentences are like piles of magnificent furniture in the upholsterer's show-rooms-not tastefully displayed in the halls and saloons of a royal palace. They resemble instruments of war curiously displayed in a national armory-not glittering from afar, like those of well-appointed legions marching to battle. The sight of a single weapon, worn by a known hero, would impress the imagination more than the holyday spectacle of all the artillery in the Tower, especially if the possessor had achieved some great feat with it. The sword of Goliath was glorious and terrible in the giant's own grasp; but was it not a thousand times more awful to look upon in the hand of David, the stripling, when he had cut off with it the head of him who alone seemed strong enough to wield it? It is not things themselves, but the associations which they awaken, that constitute the spirit and essence of poetry.

Hence, with all his genius, learning, and industry, Jeremy Taylor never could be a poet, because he never went beyond himself-beside himself, if you will. He has put the question beyond doubt: he tried verse; but his lines are like petrifactions, glittering, and hard, and cold; formed by a slow but certain process in the laboratory of abstract thought; not like flowers, springing spontaneously from a kindly soil, fresh, and fragrant, and blooming in open day. The erudite divine is always in his study. He never goes out to meditate in the field at eventide, as Isaac did; of whom it is recorded, that " when he lifted up his eyes, behold, the camels were coming. And Rebekah, when she saw Isaac, lighted off her camel, and took a veil and covered herself." Thus Beauty comes to meet the poet in his solitary walk; reveals herself for a moment, then hides her countenance, conscious of worth

"That would be woo'd, and not unsought be won."

I have not disparaged this great man; I have only contended, that, full of poetic materials as his prose is, those materials are seldom poetically disposed. His productions, however, show, that even without metrical arrangement, the English language can sustain its dignity under the most gorgeous array of diction, prodigality of thought, and heraldic blazonry of illustration. Our writers, therefore, who love a florid style, have no pretext for betaking themselves to "prose run mad," and dressing out their thoughts as fantastically as Lear in his phrensy. If they could make them rave as sublimely as the poor crazed king-why, then they might be forgiven.

Hebrew Poetry.

We conclude that poetry, in its technical form, must be verse. Verse is of various kinds, according to the language, the taste, and degree of civilization among the people who employ it. The most ancient and simple (apparently) is the Hebrew; presuming, as we must, that the Psalms, Prophecies, and certain other portions of the Sacred Scriptures are not poetical in substance only, but that they are metrical in the original. The secret, however, wherein their rhythm consisted, is irrecoverably lost; the language itself being only preserved in the skeleton form of consonants, with a very inadequate supply of vowels; and the words (independent of the masoretic points) resembling, if the figure may be allowed, those decayed leaves which we find in the forest in winter, of which nothing but fibres remain, like curious and delicate net-work. But in the artful structure of the sentences, in their melodious movement at times, and more especially in their corresponding members (as though every clause had its tally, every sound its echo, every image its reflection, and every thought its double), we may discover that the poetical portions of the Old Testament are in verse, of which the precise laws are no longer remembered.

Bishop Lowth, the greatest authority on this subject, says, "The harmony and true modulation depend upon a perfect pronunciation of the language, and a knowledge of the principles and rules of versification; and metre supposes an exact knowledge of the number and quantity of syllables, and, in some languages, of accent. But the true pronunciation of Hebrew is lost-lost to a degree far beyond what can be the case of any European language preserved only in writing; for the Hebrew, like most oriental languages, expressing only the consonants, and being destitute of the vowels, has lain now for two thousand years mute and incapable of utterance. The number of syllables in a great many words is uncertain; the quantity and accent are wholly unknown." "The masoretical punctuation," which professes to

supply the vowels, was formed a thousand years after the language had ceased to be spoken; and is "discordant in many instances, from the imperfect remains of a pronunciation of much earlier date, and better authority, -that of the Seventy, of Origen, and other writers;" "and it must be allowed that no one, according to this, has been able to reduce the Hebrew poems to any kind of harmony."

It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme; the terminations of the lines, when they are most distinct, never manifesting any thing of the kind. Acrostic or alphabetical arrangement, as in the 119th Psalm, is found in several instances; and was adopted, no doubt, for the purpose of aiding the memory of the learner, or the reciter..

Parallelism is a principal feature in Hebrew

verse:

"He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." -Psalm xxxiii. 9.

"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."Isa. lv. 7.

Every phrase, indeed almost every word, has its response in these quotations. I have chosen the common version, in preference to that of the learned prelate, because it is more simple (in the foregoing and following cases), and, from being familiar, is more easily intelligible when addressed to the ear. That organ, though marvellously quick in apprehending sounds and their collocation, to which it has been accustomed, finds it exceedingly difficult to follow (in verse especially) new phrases and strange thoughts. On the other hand, in reading, the eye can dwell more intensely on the distinct verbiage; having, in this respect, the advantage of the ear, because in moving along the little horizon of the page, it catches glimpses of words to come, while it retains

H

the receding traces of those that are passed; and thus is enabled to gather up the meaning, as it unfolds, from the scope both of the text and the context: for sight, like

"The spider's touch, so exquisitely fine,

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line;"

Essay on Man.

whereas the ear can only connect the successive sounds as they are pronounced, with those that are gone by, which are often imperfectly caught, and more faintly remembered, as the discourse proceeds. I make the remark here, but apply it generally to the passages of verse which I may quote in these papers: having (for the most part) deliberately chosen those which may be deemed commonplace, because such will be best understood by the hearers, from my ineffective recitation.

Bishop Lowth exhibits various forms of Hebrew stanzas (manifestly such to the eye, and not altogether imperceptible by the ear), consisting of two, three, four, and even five lines, admirably implicated and symmetrical, from the disposition of the parallelisms, and other poetic symbols.

Antithesis is the second characteristic of Hebrew verse. The Book of Proverbs abounds with this figure.

"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life."-Prov. xiii. 12.

"The mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed."-Isa. liv. 10.

Amplification is the third prevailing feature.

"As the cloud is consumed, and vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house,