ings and organs, and under the same outward circumstances, there would have been nothing to object against the uniform standard of taste, of which so much has been said. But since nothing is more susceptibie and multifarious than the human heart, since nothing is more subtle and evanescent, than the connecting ties, on which its feelings and passions depend, since it even belongs to the perfection of human nature, that it organize and form itself anew under every climate, in every age, and every peculiar mode of existence, since finally that modicum of articulated air, which we call language, and which yet bears upon its light and butterfly wings all the treasures of poetical imagery and sentimentsince this breath of the mouth, in its manifold variations exhibiting the diversities of every people and every age, is a real Proteus, it seems to indicate either a stupid or a proud presumption to require, that every nation, even of the most ancient times, should think, discourse, feel, and fashion its poetical conceptions in a manner to suit our habits and wants. It has been long remarked, that the human race in its successive ages and revolutions seems to follow the vicisitudes of our individual human life, (at least men imagine it to be so), and as the child does not feel, speak, and contemplate the world around him in the same manner as a man of mature age, who would require of nations in the infancy of the world, the facility and rapidity in poetical representation, which with us is the result of experience, the squeamishness and over refinement of our exhausted and worn out hearts. We must learn to dwell long upon plain and simple imagery, to revolve them over in our contemplations, to excite the sense of wonder, and picture them in gigantick forms. Such are the views, the language, and the feelings of children. They look with child-like wonder and astonishment, before they learn to perceive with discrimination. Every thing appears to them in the dazzling splendour of novelty. Objects that are unknown, or of larger magnitude, produce an effect

upon their unpractised and yet sensitive organs. They know not as yet how to compare, and by comparison to belittle the objects of their admiration. The tongue strives to express itself, and falls upon strong expressions, because its language is not become weak and facile from a multiplicity of empty sounds and stale metaphorical expressions. They often speak too, as the Orientals, and as uncultivated savages speak, till at length with the progress of nature and art they learn to express themselves like polished or like fashionable men. Let them enjoy their years of childhood, and let those Orientals also in the infancy of the world form their poetical conceptions, speak, and rejoice with a child-like spirit.

Still more incongruous would it be to take a single image or representation out of the connexion, in which it belongs, and compare its style and colouring with those of another, taken from a poet of a different age, of a different nation and language, and of diverse poetical powers. No two things in the world are wholly alike. No one thing is made for the purpose of being compared with another, and the most fresh and delicate growth, when torn from its place, is the first to wither. A poetical image exists only in its connexion with the emotion that prompted it. In losing that it loses every thing, and is only a senseless medley of colours, which only a child values according to the brightness of their tints. Perhaps too no poets lose so much by a comparison of extracted passages and images as the poets of the East. For they are the farthest removed from us, they sung in another world, in part three, four thousand years, before we discoursed about them. Should one compare for example, the picture of a horse in Job with Virgil's description of it, and neglect to remark, who it is that speaks in Job, and for what end, what was the character and estimation of the horse in Virgil's time at Rome, and in the days of Job in Idumæa, and for what purpose it was introduced in these different authors, (to say nothing of language, metre, the genius of the people, and the form of their po

etry) would he form a good comparative estimate of them? would they be fairly balanced and compared?* But we proceed.

2. The form or image of sense accompanied with emotion readily becomes in the view of the mind excited by its influence a thing of life, and thus personification is the second higher step in the origin of the poetick art.

It is the nature of the human soul to refer every thing to itself, to think it like itself, and thus to find itself reflected in every thing. That which is agreeable to us we regard as loving us; what is adverse to us, hates us, as we hate it; that, with which we would delight to hold converse, speaks to us also, and its slightest sound, its most trifling utterance, is converted by the power of the imagination into language and intelligent expression. In this respect all ancient nations are alike. Their dictionaries could be formed and collected, and their grammatical forms established only on the principle, that names should be constructed with distinction of gender, and events which took place regarded as workings and agencies of living beings, according to the analogies of our human being. The Hebrew language is full of personifications, and

* Aikin, in his Essay on the application of natural history to poetry, has instituted such a comparison, and has passed judgment somewhat strangely respecting Job's behemoth and leviathan. No poet will or should, by his descriptions, furnish details for a work on Zoology, since poetry aims not to give particular traits with distinctiveness, but to give power and effect to the combined whole. This must be looked for as the aim of the writer in Job, as in the same passages, the gigantick, the mysterious, and the marvellous, in these pictures, belong to the general purpose of the composition. The distance of Idumæa from Egypt, and the fact that in the former the horse was yet probably a foreign and rare animal, and an object of wonder, rendered this description of it suitable to the aim of the book, and indeed made it necessary. But so soon as we suppose the author to have been an Egyptian, all these relations fail, and are out of place, because in that country every one must have been familiar with the horse, the crocodile, the ostrich, and the hippopotamus.

it is undeniable, that this sympathy, this transfer of one's self into the objects around us, and ascription, as it were, of our own feelings to those objects with which we hold converse, has formed not only the inspiring principle of language, of speech, but to a certain extent also the first development and existence of moral principle. Relations of feeling and moral duties cease, where I conceive nothing in a living being analogous to my own being. The more deeply and inwardly I feel this resemblance, and implicitly believe in it, so much the more delightful will be my sympathy, and the exercise of it, in accordance with my own sensibilities. The most ancient poetry, which exerted such a forming influence upon men in their savage state, made use of this fountain of overflowing sensibility to form and cherish in them the feelings of compassion and benevolence. In the blood of Abel his soul cries from the ground. So to Adam, surrounded by the brute creation, all seemed to be animated by his own feelings, and he sought among them all for a help-meat and companion. The sun and moon were kings of heaven, servants of God, rulers of the world. The waving atmosphere was a brooding dove, and God himself, the creator of all, a workmaster, after the manner of men, who looked upon his work, rejoiced in and blessed it. Nay, what is still more bold than this, he was the father of man, and man was appointed to be his vicar and substitute on earth.-Extravagant as this representation may seem to a heartless deist, it was yet natural and necessary for the unbiassed feelings of the human heart. Without God the creation is for us a chaos, and without a God, whose being is analogous to that of man, who thinks and feels as we do, no friendship or filial affection towards him is possible, nor can we feel a child-like confidence in communing with a being, so beyond our knowledge, and yet so intimately near to us. The infinite God, therefore, vouchsafed to render the primary ideas of himself as accessible, to man, as was possible, and as well in the first pictures of

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creation, as in the history of the patriarchs; this friendly confidence and trust is the ground of all the relations of man to God, and of God to man. In the shepherd's tent God also is a shepherd, in the family circle he is the father of all. He visits them as a friend, and permits himself to be invited to the domestick festival. He was more pleased with his son Abel, than with Cain, and in vouchsafing his presence to Noah after the flood he smelled a sweet savour from the renewed earth. On the contrary, he was angry with tyrannical oppressors, and took the field, as it were, against Nimrod, the oppressor of the earth, as if he were also about to scale the heavens. Of Abraham, as if jealous of his paternal love, he required that he should offer up to him his son, the dearest object of his heart, and wrestled with Jacob to secure for him the name of a hero.

In the book of Job we have unfolded and explained some personifications, on which depends the power of the most affecting discourses, and so it is with the excitement of sympathy in all kinds of emotion. If the poetry of the most ancient times has produced any effect upon the human heart, (and it has undoubtedly produced much), it has the power of doing so by this means alone. Hence, where this flexibility of the heart is wanting, even in our own times, and the man contemplates such personifications and measures them by pure reason, and according to geometrical rules, he will find in the Hebrew and Greek poets only irrational extravagances. In Hebrew the whole language is formed upon the principle of personification; nouns, verbs, and even connecting words are constructed and arranged under its influence. Every thing with them has voice, mouth, hand, countenance, and those relations, which render their representation as son and daughter, one, become necessary for them as for other Orientals a significant and beautiful idiom.* An idiom, however,

* Examples are found in Jones' commentar, poes. Asiaticæ in suffi