possibly be indebted to them for the accurately admeasured verses and feet, to the end that the modulation of the language might accord with the music of the voice and the motion of the body.

Poetry, in this its rude origin and commencement, being derived from nature, was in time improved by art, and applied to the purposes of utility and delight. For, as it owed its birth to the affections of the mind, and had availed itself of the assistance of harmony, it was found, on account of the exact and vivid delineation of the objects which it described, to be excellently adapted to the exciting of every internal emotion, and making a more forcible impression upon the mind than abstract reasoning could possibly effect: it was found capable of interesting and affecting the senses and passions, of captivating the ear, of directing the perception to the minutest circumstances, and of assisting the memory in the retention of them. Whatever, therefore, deserved to be generally known and accurately remembered, was (by those men who on this very account were denominated wise)* adorned with a jocund and captivating style, illuminated with the varied and splendid colouring of language, and moulded into sentences comprehensive, pointed, and harmonious. It became the peculiar province of poetry to depict the great, the beautiful, the becoming, the virtuous; to

The bards or poets are enumerated by the Son of Sirach among the wise and illustrious men of former times:

"Wise and eloquent in their instructions,

Such as found out musical tunes,

And recited written verses."-Ecclus. xliv. 4.

Observe also, whether those four, whose wisdom is so much celebrated, I Kings iv. 31. Beni Machol, be not Sons of the Choir; that is, musicians or poets: for they were (not Sons of Mahol, as our translators render it, taking an appellative for a proper name, but) sons of Zerach, as appears from 1 Chron. ii. 6. "Whence the eldest of them, Ethan, was also called Ha-Ezrachí, 1 Kings iv. 31. where the Targum expressly has it Bar Zerach, son of Zerach."-H. Among the Greeks also the poets were anciently called wise men or sophists:

"Rosy Venus, Queen of all !

So the Wise bright Venus call."-Anacreon.

That is, the poets.-So also Pindar :

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Sung by the Wise,

And honoured by the will of Jove."-Ist. v. 36.

Upon which passage the Scholiast: "The poets are commonly called wise men and sophists." "The poets preceded these (the philosophers) by some ages; and, before the name of philosopher was known, were called wise men." Lactantius, lib. v. 5.-Author's Note.

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embellish and recommend the precepts of religion and virtue; to transmit to posterity excellent and sublime actions and sayings; to celebrate the works of the Deity, his beneficence, his wisdom; to record the memorials of the past, and the predictions of the future. In each of these departments poetry was of singular utility, since, before any characters expressive of sounds were invented, at least before they were commonly received and applied to general use, it seems to have afforded the only means of preserving the rude science of the early times, and, in this respect, to have rendered the want of letters more tolerable: it seems also to have acted the part of a public herald, by whose voice each memorable transaction of antiquity was proclaimed and transmitted through different ages and nations.

*

Such appears by the testimony of authors to have been the undoubted origin of poetry among heathen nations. It is evident that Greece for several successive ages was possessed of no records but the poetic; for the first who published a prose oration was Pherecydes, a man of the Isle of Syrus, and contemporary with King Cyrus, who lived some ages posterior to that of Homer and Hesiod: somewhat after that time Cadmus the Milesian began to compose history. The laws themselves were metrical, and adapted to certain musical notes: such were the laws of Charondas, which were sung at the banquets of the Athenians; such were those which were delivered by the Cretans‡ to the ingenuous youth to be learned by rote, with accompaniments of musical melody, in order that, by the enchantment of harmony, the sentiments might be more forcibly impressed upon their memories. Hence certain poems were denominated voor (nomoi), which implied convivial or banquetting

*Strabo, Geog. lib. i. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. vii. 56. and v. 29. This matter is well explained by Isidorus, however rashly some learned men may have taken it. "It is well known," says he, "that among the Greeks, as well as among the Latins, metrical composition was much more ancient than prose. Every species of knowledge was at first contained in poetry; it was long before prose composition flourished. The first man among the Greeks who composed in prose was Pherecydes Syrius; among the Romans, Appius Cæcus first published a work in prose against Pyrrhus." Isidor. Hispal. Orig. lib. i. 27.-Author's Note.

"The laws of Charondas were sung at banquets among the Athenians, as Hermippus relates." Athen. lib. xiv. 3. See Bentley's Dissertation on Phalaris, p. 373.-Author's Note. Elian. Var. Hist. 1. ii. 39.

songs, as is remarked by Aristotle ;* who adds, that the same custom of chanting the laws to music existed even in his own time among the Agathyrsi. If we may credit Strabo, the Turdetani, a people of Spain, had laws in verse. But the Germans, § as Tacitus positively asserts, had no records or annals but the traditional poems in which they celebrated the heroic exploits of their ancestors. In the same manner, and on the same account, the

"Why are laws called canticles? but that before alphabetical writing was invented, the laws used to be sung, that they might be preserved in remembrance, as is the custom still among the Agathyrsi." Prob. S. 19. Q. 28.— Author's Note.

Possibly laws, which are in the sententious style, were originally precepts of equity and morals, and in course of time acquired authority in the courts of justice. There is much of this proverbial style in the ancient German laws; and, I am assured by good authority, in those of Sweden also. Moses himself is so sententious and compact, and pays so much attention to brevity in many of his laws, that he seems to have adopted into his code some wellknown proverbs, containing the general principles of equity: Of this I think there is an instance in Exod. xxiii. 5. in which there is a point and antithesis, more resembling the familiarity of a proverb than the dignity of a statute. To the example of the Lusitanians, we may add one more recent of the Swedes, who in the year 1748 published laws in verse.-M.

Geog. lib. iii.

$ After the extraordinary revolutions of Germany, and the dispersion of that people into different colonies, it is not surprising that no monuments of the poetical records of our ancestors should remain. Scandinavia and Iceland have been more fortunate in this respect; there the records of their most ancient transactions are traditionally preserved to this day. These instances of a practice so agreeable to that of the Hebrews existing among a people so remote, serve to prove the great similarity in the human mind throughout all the countries of the globe, and show that the most natural and early mode of preserving facts has been by verses committed to memory, rather than by written documents. What Pocock relates of the Arabs, applies perhaps more directly to the present subject. "It seems," he says, "to be entirely owing to their poetry, that so copious a language is preserved in a perfect state. Among other commendations of their poetry, they enumerate this, that both the purity of the Arabic language, and the propriety and elegance of their pronunciation, have owed their preservation entirely to it. Ebn Phares observes, that the Arabic poems serve in the place of commentaries, or annals, in which are recorded the series of their genealogies, and all the facts of history deserving of remembrance, and from which a knowledge of the language is to be collected."-M.

However the antiquity of Ossian's poems, as exhibited to the public, may be doubted, it is certain that there exist in the Highlands of Scotland many remains of the ancient historical ballads, which, though in all probability of a much later date than the age of Ossian is pretended to be, contain many marks of wild genius, and, I am informed from good authority, furnished Mr Macpherson with the bulk of his materials.-T.

To these testimonies concerning the early use of poetry, I will add a remarkable passage of Plutarch, which states summarily many facts relating to this circumstance. "The use of reason seems to resemble the exchange of

Persians, the Arabs, and many of the most ancient of the eastern nations, preserved in verse their history and politics, as well as the principles of religion and morals: Thus all science, human and divine, was deposited in the treasury of the Muses, and thither it was necessary on every occasion to resort.* The only mode of instruction, indeed, adapted to human nature in an uncivilized state, when the knowledge of letters was very little if at all diffused, must be that which is calculated to captivate the ear and the passions, which assists the memory, which is not to be delivered into the hand, but infused into the mind and heart.†

That the case was the same among the Hebrews; that poetry was both anciently and generally known and practised by them, appears highly probable, as well from the analogy of things, as from some vestiges of poetic language extant in the writings of Moses. The first instance occurs in one of the most remote periods of the Mosaic history-I mean the address of Lamech to his wives, which is indeed but ill understood in general, because the occasion of it is very obscurely intimated; nevertheless, if we consider the apt construction of the words, the exact distribution of the period into three distichs, and the two parallel, and as it

money that which is good and lawful is generally current and well known, and passes sometimes at a higher and sometimes at a lower value. Thus there was a time when the stamp and coin of all reasoning or composition was verse and song. Even history, philosophy, every action and passion which required grave or serious discussion, was written in poetry, and adapted to music. For what at present few will attend to, was then by all men thought an object of importance; by ploughmen and by bird-catchers, according to Pindar. For, such was the inclination for poetry at that period, that they adapted their very precepts and instructions to vocal and instrumental music, and exhorted, reproved, and persuaded by fables or allegories. The praises also of their gods, their prayers and thanksgivings after victory, were all composed in verse; some through the love of harmony, and some through custom. It is not therefore that Apollo envies the science of divination this ornament, nor did he design to banish from the Tripos his beloved Muse; he rather wished to introduce her as one who loved harmony and excited to it; as one who was ready to assist the fancy and conception, and to help to produce what was noble and sublime, as most becoming and most to be admired." Plut. Inquiry, why the Pythia now ceases to deliver her oracles in verse.— Author's Note.

See this subject treated at large, Essays historical and moral, by G. Gregory, Essay I. On the progress of Manners, p. 31. 37. 39, 40. 43.-T.

See Chardin's Travels, vol. ii. c. 14. Pocock, Spec. Hist. Arab. p. 158. We may add, that poetry is much less liable to be corrupted than prose. So faithful a preserver of truth is metre, that what is liable to be changed, augmented, or violated, almost daily in prose, may continue for ages in verse, without variation, without even a change in the obsolete phraseology.-M.

were corresponding sentiments in each distich, I apprehend it will easily be acknowledged an indubitable specimen of the poetry of the first ages:

"Hadah and Sillah, hear my voice;

Ye wives of Lamech, hearken to my speech:

For I have slain a man, because of my wounding;
A young man, because of my hurt.

*

If Cain shall be avenged seven times,

Certainly Lamech seventy and seven."†

"If the murder of Cain shall be avenged."-That is, "If vengeance sevenfold shall fall upon the head of him that murders Cain, then vengeance seventy times seven shall fall on him that murders Lamech." Agreeably to what is pronounced by God in the 15th verse of the same chapter, "Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold."-T.

† Gen. iv. 23, 24. The Jews have indulged great liberty of fiction and conjecture concerning this passage, which has answered no other purpose than to render it more perplexed to others also, who were unable to digest their whimsical and absurd explications. To me there is very little obscurity in the original; for though we are necessarily ignorant of the name of the person who was murdered, I think it is sufficiently plain that some person was murdered by Lamech. I say person; for what the Jews have feigned concerning the death of two persons, the one a youth and the other a man, proceeds entirely from their ignorance of the nature of the Hebrew poetry, and particularly of the parallelism or repetition of certain members of the sentences, which our Author has explained in a very masterly manner in the 19th Lecture. Nor is there any more reason to distinguish between the youth and the man, than to suppose Hadah and Sillah other than the wives of Lamech who are mentioned in the next line :

"Hadah and Sillah, hear my voice;

Ye wives of Lamech, attend,” &c.

The truth is, Lamech had committed a murder; he repents of the fact, but hopes, after the example of Cain, to escape with impunity, and with that hope he cheers his wives, who are anxious for his fate. It is not to be supposed that he addressed them in verse; the substance of what he said has been reduced to numbers for the sake of preserving it easily in the memory. This poem therefore constitutes a part of history known to the Israelites; and Moses intimates to what Lamech it relates, namely, not to the son of Seth, the father of Noah, but to this Lamech of the seed of Cain: What he adds is to this effect: "This Lamech, who was of the seed of Cain, is the same who complained to his wives in those well-known traditional verses," &c.

That Moses has preserved many relics of this kind, is evident from the fragments of verse which are scattered throughout his writings, and which are very distinguishable from his usual language. Such is that which he relates, Gen. iii. 24. of the Cherubs placed at the east of the garden of Eden; under which appellation I understand to be meant, not angels, but the Equi tonantes of the Greek and Latin poets; the reasons for which opinion I have more fully explained in the Commentaries of the Royal Society at Gottingen, T. i. p. 175. The passage is without doubt poetical: "He placed before the garden Cherubim (thundering horses) and a flaming sword, to keep the way of the tree of life;" in plain terms, the dread of the frequent tempests and daily thunders deterred men from that track in which Paradise was situated, lest they should eat of the tree of life.-M.