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The learned Vitringa says," that Isaiah's composition has a sort of numbers, or measure; 66 esse orationem suis ad strictam numeris:" he means, that it has a kind of oratorial number, or measure, as he. afterwards explains it; and he quotes Scaliger, as being of the same opinion, and as adding, that "how"ever upon this account it could not rightly be called poetry." About the beginning of the eighteenth century, Herman Von der Hardt, the Hardouin of Germany, attempted to reduce Joel's elegies, as he called them, to Iambic verse; and, consistently with his hypothesis, he affirmed, that the prophets wrote in verse. This is the only exception I meet with to the universality of the contrary opinion. It was looked upon as one of his paradoxes, and little attention was paid to it. But what was his success in making out Joel's Iambics, and in helping his readers to form in consequence a more just idea of the character of the prophetic style, I cannot say; having never seen his treatise on that subject.

The Jews of early times were of the same opinion, that the books of the prophets are written in prose; as far as we have any evidence of their judgment on this subject, Jerome certainly speaks the sense of his Jewish preceptors as to this matter. Having written his translation of Isaiah from the Hebrew

a Prolegom. in Iesaiam, p. 8. Eusebii. p. 6.

Scaliger, Animadvers. in Chron. See Wolfii Biblioth. Hebr. Tom. II. p. 169. d Præf. in Transl. Esaiæ ex Heb. Veritate.

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verity in Stichi, or lines divided according to the cola and commata, after the manner of verse; which was often done in the prophetic writings, for the sake of perspicuity; he cautions his reader, "not to mistake it for metre; as if it were any thing like the Psalms, or the writings of Solomon; for it was nothing more than what was usual in the copies of the prose work of Demosthenes and Cicero." The later Jews have been uniformly of the same opinion: and the rest of the learned world seem to have taken it up on their authority, and have generally maintained it.

But if there should appear a manifest conformity between the prophetical style, and that of the books, supposed to be metrical; a conformity in every known part of the poetical character, which equally discriminates the prophetical and the metrical books, from those acknowledged to be prose: it will be of use to trace out and to mark this conformity with all possible accuracy; to observe, how far the peculiar characteristics of each style coincide; and to see, whether the agreement between them be such, as to induce us to conclude, that the poetical and the prophetical character of style and composition, though generally supposed to be different, yet are really one and the same.

This I purpose to do in the following dissertation;

* See Grabe, Proleg. in LXX. Intt. Tom. I. cap. i. sect. 6.

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and I the more readily embrace the present opportunity of resuming this subject, as what I have formerly written upon it seems to have met with the approbation of the learned. And here I shall endeavour to treat it more at large; to pursue it further, and to a greater degree of minuteness; and to present it to the English reader in the easiest and most intelligible form, that I am able to give it. The examples, with which I shall illustrate it, shall be more numerous, and all (a very few excepted) different from those already given; that they may serve by way of supplement to that part of the former work, as well as of themselves to place the subject in the fullest and clearest light.

Now, in order to make this comparison between the prophetical and the poetical books, it will be necessary in the first place to state the true character of the poetical or metrical style, to trace out carefully whatever plain signs or indications yet remain of metre, or rhythm, or whatever else it was, that constituted Hebrew verse; to separate the true, or at least the probable, from the manifestly false; and to give as clear and satisfactory an explanation of the matter as can now reasonably be expected, in the present imperfect state of the Hebrew language, and in a subject, which for near two thousand years has been involved in great obscurity, and only rendered still more obscure by the discordant opinions of the

De Sacra Poësi Hebræorum Prælect. xviii. xix.

learned, and the various hypotheses, which they have formed concerning it.

The first and most manifest indication of verse in the Hebrew poetical books presents itself in the acrostic or alphabetical poems: of which there happily remain many examples, and those of various kinds; so that we could not have hoped, or even wished, for more light of this sort to lead us on in the very entrance of our inquiry. The nature, or rather the form, of these is this: the poem poems consists of twenty-two lines, or of twenty-two systems of lines, or periods, or stanzas, according to the number of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; and every line, or every stanza, begins with each letter in its order, as it stands in the alphabet; that is, the first line, or first stanza, begins with N, the second with 2, and so on. This was certainly intended for the assistance of the memory; and was chiefly employed in subjects of common use, as maxims of morality, and forms of devotion; which being expressed in detached sentences or aphorisms, (the form in which the sages of the most ancient times delivered their instructions,) the inconvenience arising from the subject, the want of connection in the parts, and of a regular train of thought carried through the whole, was remedied by this artificial contrivance in the form. There are still extant in the books of the Old Testament, twelve of

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a Psal. xxv. xxxiv. xxxvii. cxi. cxii. cxix. cxlv. Prov. xxxi. 10-31. Lam. i. ii. iii. iv.

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these poems; (for I reckon the four first chapters of the Lamentations of Jeremiah as so many distinct poems ;) three of them perfectly alphabetical; in which every line is marked by its initial letter; the other nine less perfectly alphabetical, in which every stanza only is so distinguished. Of the three former it is to be remarked, that not only every single line is distinguished by its initial letter, but that the whole poem is laid out into stanzas; two of these poems each into ten stanzas, all of two lines, except the two last stanzas in each, which are of three lines: in these the sense and the construction manifestly point out the division into stanzas, and mark the limit of every stanza. The third of these perfectly alphabetical poems consists of twenty-two stanzas, of three lines: but in this the initial letter of every stanza is also the initial letter of every line of that stanza; so that both the lines, and the stanzas, are infallibly limited. And in all the three poems the pauses of the sentences coincide with the pauses of the lines and stanzas.

It is also further to be observed of these three poems, that the lines, so determined by the initial letters, in the same poem, are remarkably equal to one another in length, in the number of words nearly, and probably in the number of syllables; and that the lines of the same stanza have a remarkable

b Psal. cxi. cxii. Lam. iii.

Psal. cxi. cxii.

d Lam. iii.