The remarkable fall of this powerful monarch is thus beautifully illustrated:

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!*

Art cut down from earth, thou that didst subdue the nations!" He himself is at length brought upon the stage, boasting in the most pompous terms of his own power, which furnishes the poet with an excellent opportunity of displaying the unparalleled misery of his downfall. Some persons are introduced, who find the dead carcass of the king of Babylon cast out and exposed: they attentively contemplate it, and at last scarcely know it to be his :

"Is this the man, that made the earth to tremble; that shook the kingdoms?

That made the world like a desert; that destroyed the cities?"

They reproach him with being denied the common rites of sepulture, on account of the cruelty and atrocity of his conduct; they execrate his name, his offspring, and their posterity. A solemn address, as of the Deity himself, closes the scene; and he denounces against the king of Babylon, his posterity, and even against the city which was the seat of their cruelty, perpetual destruction; and confirms the immutability of his own counsels by the solemnity of an oath.

How forcible is this imagery, how diversified, how sublime! how elevated the diction, the figures, the sentiments! The Jewish nation, the cedars of Lebanon, the ghosts of departed kings, the Babylonish monarch, the travellers who find his corpse, and last of all JEHOVAH himself, are the characters which support this beautiful lyric drama. One

first king of Babylon, to prefigure the excision of his successor and representative. See Dissertation on the controverted Passages in St Peter and St Jude concerning the Angels that sinned.-S. H.

*O Lucifer! &c.] This is, I think, the most sublime image I have ever seen conveyed in so few words. The aptness of the allegory to express the ruin of a powerful monarch by the fall of a bright star from heaven, strikes the mind in the most forcible manner; and the poetical beauty of the passage is greatly heightened by the personification, "Son of the morning." Whoever does not relish such painting as this, is not only destitute of poetical taste, but of the common feelings of humanity.-T.

Xenophon gives an instance of this king's wanton cruelty in killing the son of Gobrias, on no other provocation than that, in hunting, he struck a boar and a lion, which the king had missed.-Cyrop. iv. p. 309. quoted by Bishop Lowth, Notes on Isaiah, p. 225.-T.

K

continued action is kept up, or rather a series of interesting actions are connected together in an incomparable whole. This, indeed, is the principal and distinguished excellence of the sublimer ode, and is displayed in its utmost perfection in this poem of Isaiah, which may be considered as one of the most ancient, and certainly the most finished specimen of that species of composition which has been transmitted to us. The personifications here are frequent, yet not confused; bold, yet not improbable: a free, elevated, and truly divine spirit pervades the whole; nor is there any thing wanting in this ode to defeat its claim to the character of perfect beauty and sublimity. If, indeed, I may be indulged in the free declaration of my own sentiments on this occasion, I do not know a single instance in the whole compass of Greek and Roman poetry, which, in every excellence of composition, can be said to equal, or even to approach it.

=

LECTURE XIV.

*

OF THE SUBLIME IN GENERAL, AND OF SUBLIMITY OF EXPRESSION IN PARTICULAR.

3. In what manner the word Mashal implies the idea of Sublimity Sublimity of language and sentiment-On what account the poetic diction of the Hebrews, either considered in itself, or compared with prose composition, merits an appellation expressive of sublimity—The sublimity of the poetic diction arises from the passions-How far the poetic diction differs from prose among the Hebrews-Certain forms of poetic diction and construction exemplified from Job, chap. iii.

HAVING, in the preceding Lectures, given my sentiments at large on the nature of the figurative style, on its use and application in poetry, and particularly in the poetry of the Hebrews, I proceed to treat of the sublimity of the sacred

* An author, whose taste and imagination will be respected as long as the English language exists, has written a most elegant treatise on the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. But after all that has been said, our feelings must be the only criterion. The pleasure which is afforded by the contemplation of beauty, appears to be a pure and unmixed pleasure, arising from the gentler agitation, and is less vivid than that which is produced by the sublime. For, as the latter often borders upon terror, it requires a greater exertion, and produces a stronger, though I think less durable sensation, than the beautiful. We may read an elegant author, and continue for a long time to be pleased with his beauties; a sublime author we shall soon be induced to lay down.

The sublime also differs from the beautiful in being only conversant with great objects. It differs from the pathetic in affording a more tranquil pleasure, if I may so express myself. But though the sublime and beautiful be thus distinguishable, yet they are frequently mixed in the same passage, and seem to run into each other, as is the case in that enchanting simile of Homer, into which Mr Pope has transfused more of the beautiful than is in the original,

"As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night," &c.

Some descriptions also it is not easy to determine whether to assign to the sublime or the pathetic: such is that admirable but brief delineation of the feelings of the multitude on the crucifixion of our Lord, Luke xxiii. 48. "And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned.' This may in some measure account for the error of Longinus, who confounds these three different sensations together.-T.

poets; a subject which has been already illustrated by many examples quoted upon other occasions, but which, since we have admitted it as a third characteristic of the poetic style, now requires to be distinctly explained. We have already seen, that this is implied in one of the senses of the word Mashal, it being expressive of power, or supreme authority; and when applied to style, seems particularly to intimate something eminent or energetic, excellent or important. This is certainly understood in the phrase "to take (or lift) up his parable;" that is, to express a great or lofty sentiment. The very first instance in which the phrase occurs will serve as an example in point. For in this manner Balaam "took up," as our translation renders it, "his parable, and said:" "From Aram I am brought by Balak,

By the king of Moab from the mountains of the East:
Come, curse me Jacob;

And come, execrate Israel.

How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed?

And how shall I execrate whom God hath not execrated?

For from the tops of the rocks I see him,

And from the hills I behold him;

Lo! the people, who shall dwell alone,

Nor shall number themselves among the nations!

Who shall count the dust of Jacob?

Or the number of the fourth of Israel?

Let my soul die the death of the righteous,

And let my end be as his."*

Let us now consider, on what account this address of the prophet is entitled Mashal. The sentences are indeed accurately distributed in parallelisms, as may be discovered even in the translation, which has not entirely obscured the elegance of the arrangement: and compositions in this form, we have already remarked, are commonly classed among the proverbs and adages which are properly called Mashalim, though perhaps they contain nothing of a proverbial or didactic nature. But if we attentively consider this very passage, or others introduced by the same form of expression,

Numb. xxiii. 7-10., here rendered end, and in the common version latter end, properly signifies posterity; as in Psal. cix. 13. Amos iv. 2. Dan. xi. 4.-The Seventy translate it by riqua. It should be remembered that Balaam is here speaking of the righteous not in their individual but in their aggregate capacity, and therefore had either a retrospect, in his wish, to the promise which had been made to Abraham concerning his posterity, or else to an immediate communication on the occasion then present.-S. H.

we shall find, in all of them, either an extraordinary variety of figure and imagery; or an elevation of style and sentiment; or perhaps an union of all these excellencies; which will induce us to conclude, that something more is meant by the term to which I am alluding than the bare merit of a sententious neatness. If again we examine the same passage in another point of view, we shall discover in it little or nothing of the figurative kind, at least according to our ideas, or according to that acceptation of the word Mashal which denotes figurative language; there is evidently nothing in it of the mystical kind, nothing allegorical, no pomp of imagery, no comparison, and in fourteen verses but a single metaphor: as far, therefore, as figurative language is a characteristic of the parabolic style, this is no instance of it. We must then admit the word Parable, when applied to this passage, to be expressive of those exalted sentiments, that spirit of sublimity, that energy and enthusiasm, with which the answer of the prophet is animated. By this example I wished to explain on what reasons I was induced to suppose that the term Mashal, as well from its proper power or meaning, as from its usual acceptation, involves an idea of sublimity; and that the Hebrew poetry expresses, in its very name and title, the particular quality in which it so greatly excels the poetry of all other nations.

The word sublimity I wish, in this place, to be understood in its most extensive sense: I speak not merely of that sublimity which exhibits great objects with a magnificent display of imagery and diction; but that force of composition, whatever it be, which strikes and overpowers the mind, which excites the passions, and which expresses ideas at once with perspicuity and elevation; not solicitous whether the language be plain or ornamented, refined or familiar. In this use of the word I copy Longinus, the most accomplished author on this subject, whether we consider his precepts or his example.*

The sublime consists either in language or sentiment, or more frequently in an union of both, since they reciprocally assist each other, and since there is a necessary and indissoluble connexion between them: this, however, will not prevent our considering them apart with convenience and advantage. The first object, therefore, which presents itself "Whose own example strengthens all his laws,

And is himself the great sublime he draws."-Pope,