W. A. Larned.

ART. III. -THE BARDS OF THE BIBLE.

The Bards of the Bible. By GEORGE GILFILLAN. New York : D. Appleton & Co., 200 Broadway. Philadelphia: Geo. S. Appleton, 164 Chesnut Street. New Haven: T. H. Pease, 83 Chapel Street. 1851, pp. 325.

MR. GILFILLAN is well known as one of the popular authors of the day. He has written principally about genius, and men of genius-not without a perceptible strain of his own powers. Having finished the uninspired writers of the present age and the past, he now attempts the sacred writers. In one respect he was qualified for the task; the Bible, as he informs us, had been his daily companion from childhood, and he had devoted to its proclamation" the most valued of his years." In another respect he was positively disqualified; he has a puerile admiration of genius, of the spiritual, the genial, the spontaneous, the unconscious; as a consequence, his writings are mainly "puffs" of the demigods whom he worships. Unfortunately, he regards the writers of the Bible as all of them men of genius even beyond any that ever lived, and accordingly he has written about them with all that splendid rhetoric with which he deems it a duty to adorn everything pertaining to the object of his idolatry.

A work on Hebrew poetry, written from genuine poetic impulses and founded on accurate and comprehensive scholarship, thus uniting the excellencies of both Lowth and Herder, would perhaps supply a deficiency in English literature. But Mr. Gilfillan has attempted nothing of this kind. "The main ambition of this book," he tells us in the preface, "is, to be a prose poem,' -a very poor ambition even for a book to entertain. Literature has nothing quite so offensive to taste as that mongrel called a prose poem. We are further told that the author "has not conformed to the common practice of printing his poetical quotations from the Scriptures as poetry in the form of parallelism." He gives as a reason that, "he never could bring himself to relish the practice;" and then adds, "He may say this the more fearlessly, as translations of the great masterpieces of foreign literature into plain English prose are becoming the order of the day." But what has that to do with the question, whether poetry shall be printed in the form of poetry, or in the form of prose? The Psalms in the common version and the Psalms printed in the form of parallelism do not stand in the same relation to each other as a prose translation-of Homer, for instance-to a poetical one. The author might as well cause

Pope's Homer to be printed as prose is printed, and then call it a prose translation. We hope such logic is not becoming "the order of the day."

The author discusses, in an Introduction, the question why so much of the Scriptures is written in the language of poetry? We propose to follow him in this discussion. But we must first apologize for the mode of our criticism, which will be to take up sentence after sentence and inquire what each one means. Mr. Gilfillan writes almost solely in metaphor. His thoughts, to use his own expression, in speaking of figurative language, "like the swan on still St. Mary's lake, float double;"" or, if at any time he condescends to express himself in literal language, it is with a certain poetical license which makes it very difficult to determine precisely what he means. But the sentences upon which we shall remark, follow each other as in the book, and form an entire paragraph.

The first reason which Mr. Gilfillan alleges, why Scripture is written in the language of poetry, is thus expressed: "As the language of poetry is that into which all earnest natures are insensibly betrayed, so it is the only speech which has in it the power of permanent impression." If the meaning be that all true poets are men of an earnest nature, and that this earnestness gives to poetry its power of permanent impression, the assertion may be true but explains nothing, since it does not exclude the supposition that prose writers may also be men of an earnest nature, and therefore that they may so express themselves as to make a permanent impression. But if the meaning be that all men of such a nature are poets, the assertion is false, though if it were true, it would be to the point. Bishop Butler writes "with simplicity and in earnest," but the Bishop is not a poet, and yet his writings have made a permanent impression. Swift, Paley, De Foe, and others write in earnest, but it is their prose writings which have made a permanent impression. But we will look at the assertion apart from the reason given for it. If it be true that "poetry is the only speech which has in it the power of permanent impression," it is time for men of letters to revise their vocabularies, and give to Herodotus and Thucydides and Xenophon and Plato and others who have made some tolerably "permanent impressions" on mankind, the name which has been so long denied them; not to say that in this view of the matter, the greater part of the Bible must be of very transient value, or else the Bible is all poetry. The author next proceeds to render a reason why poetry makes its permanent impression. "As it gives two ideas in the space of one, so it writes these before the view, as with the luminousness of fire." It is the

metaphor, we suppose, which is concealed under the enigmatical expression of " two ideas in the space of one;" and with this explanation, we doubt if there is a true assertion in the sentence. Poetry and metaphor are not identical. The metaphor is not preeminently a perspicuous mode of communicating truth. Perspicuity is distinct from that property of style which preeminently impresses thought. But to proceed to another argument: "The language of the imagination is the native language of man. It is the language of his excited intellect, of his aroused passions, of his devotion, of all the higher modes and temperaments of his mind. It was meet, therefore, that it should be the language of his revelation from God." If the revelation were addressed to man only in his higher modes and temperaments, or were for his use only while in these states, or if the language of the imagination were the only native language of man, there might be some ground for the inference. Besides, according to this view, the greater part of the Bible must fail of its intended end, or there has been a very strange misconception among men as to what is the real language of excited passion. The author explains still farther: "It was meet that when man was called into the presence of his Maker, he should not be addressed with cold formality, nor in the words of lead, nor yet in the harsh thunder of peremptory command and warning, but that he should hear the same figured and glowing speech to which he was accustomed, flowing in mellower and more majestic accents from the lips of God." As to the etiquette which the author exacts of the Deity in addressing man, whether it shall be in "cold formality" or otherwise, we do not profess to have any knowledge, but sure we are that the author has an idea of " remptory command and warning" very different from most persons, if he finds none in the Bible, accompanied in the utterance even by "harsh thunder."

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Such are Mr. Gilfillan's explanations of the fact which he alleges, that "the language of poetry is the language of the inspired volume." And this assertion is much broader than the reader at first sight will suppose. Mr. Gilfillan actually holds that the whole of the Bible is poetry, or at least with very few exceptions. It is a "mass of figures." The Old Testament is a poem; the New Testament is a poem; the entire Bible is-not two poems-but a poem. The Bards of the Bible are not David and Isaiah and Jeremiah only, but Mark, and Paul, and James.

The author having made out the Bible to be a poem, goes on to accumulate in one splendid outburst its most striking figures, and winds up his rhapsody as follows: "Thus the quick spirit of the Book has ransacked creation to lay its treasures on Jeho

vah's Altars-united the innumerable rays of a far-streaming glory on the little hill, Calvary,-and woven a garland for the bleeding brow of Immanuel, the flowers of which have.been culled from the garden of the universe." One would think there were associations with that bleeding brow which would have repressed the vanity of idle rhetoric. The author as if apologiz ing for the splendor of his eulogy, adds, "this praise may seem lofty, but it is due to the Bible." No, no, Mr. Gilfillan, such praise is not due to the Bible;-the Bible asks not the patronage of the popular writer who seeks in its pages a theme for fine writing. But the reason why such praise is due to the Bible, is not a little remarkable. "It, of all poems, has uttered in broken fullness, in finished fragments, that shape of universal truth which instantly incarnates itself in living nature, fills it as a hand a glove, impregnates it as a thought a word, peoples it as a form a mirror." We leave this as a study to our readers, musing within ourselves meanwhile whether the author has ever read that essay of a distinguished countryman of his which seeks to explain why it is that nonsense so often escapes the notice of the writer.

Leaving the Introduction, we pass to the body of the work. But here we can touch upon only a few points. The first chapter treats of the circumstances creating and modifying Old Testament Poetry-which we leave without remark. In the second chapter, which enumerates and describes the general characteristics of Hebrew poetry, we thought we had made a discovery which would be of great value to the reading community. In speaking of the first characteristic of the Hebrew poets, "their figurative language," the author says: "it is so of all high thoughts, except, perhaps, those of geometrical abstraction. The proof of great thoughts is, will they translate into figured and sensuous expression?" We knew that Mr. Gilfillan had labored much in gauging the genius of great men, and we thought it probable he might have at last made a discovery which would relieve critics and readers of a great deal of trouble. So many great thoughts, or what seemed such, have been uttered of late by a certain class of writers both in England and in this country, that we hailed with delight the announcement of a test by which they could be tried. We forbore to raise a question which we otherwise should have done as to those words, "translate" and "figured." But in applying the test, as we read along, we found that small thoughts would undergo the operation of "translating" as readily as great thoughts or high thoughts. Besides, we were touched with the forlorn condition of those that will not "translate," as the author says: "Will nature recognize, own, and

clothe them as if they were her own? or, must they stand "— great thoughts-"small, shivering, and naked before her unopened door?" No wonder Mr. Gilfillan is so eager to clothe his own thoughts in "figured" dress rather than leave them shivering in their nakedness.

The third chapter treats of the varieties of Hebrew poetry. The author has occasion here to speak of some of the divisions which have been proposed: and this leads him to discuss the merits of the several writers on the subject. Bishop Lowth, with his fine scholarship, with his precision of thought, with his perspicuous and classical style, meets of course with little favor at the hands of Mr. Gilfillan; and Michaelis, still less. The criticism of the Bishop, we are told, wants subtlety, power, and abandonment. Herder fares better, and we are not disposed to dissent from the judgment which is passed upon him. Omitting the divisions of Hebrew poetry proposed by other writers, we proceed to Mr. Gilfillan's. He divides Hebrew poetry into Song and poetic Statement." But our readers will need some little explanation of what is meant by "poetic statement." Under this head, then, we have "Poetical Statement, first, of poetic facts (Creation, &c.); secondly, of poetic doctrines (God's Spirituality, &c.); thirdly, of poetic sentiments with or without figurative language (Golden rule, &c.); fourthly, of poetic Symbols (in Zechariah, Revelations, &c.)." Here the author stops his subdivisions, but he might as well have made a fifthly, of poetic rites, and a sixthly, of poetic genealogical tables, which we believe would exhaust the subject. The author defends this division. "We maintain," he says, "first, that it is comprehensive, including every real species of poetry in Scripture, including especially the Prophetic writings, the New Testament, and that mass of seed poetry in which the Book abounds, apart from its professedly rhythmical and figured portions. Song and Statement appear to include the Bible between them, and the statement is sometimes more poetical than the song. If aught evade this generalization, it is the argument, which is charily sprinkled throughout the Epistles of Paul. Even that is logic defining the boundaries of the loftiest prose." Certainly the division is comprehensive enough. But the expression 'Hebrew poetry' seems to imply Hebrew prose, and where such a thing as Hebrew prose is to be found under this division, we do not see. We would remind Mr. Gilfillan that a logical division excludes as well as includes. It is proper, however, to say, that the author does not follow his own division, but treats of each Book of the Bible in the order in which they stand in the common version,-for which he gives this reason, that it "will prevent any of its prominent