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Lastly. The last law of literature which we shall notice is the frame-work of language, which I think was early

be thought a connoisseur, was of the party. He had read the lives of the painters, and had the Voyage Pittoresque de Paris by heart. From the moment we entered the rooms, he began to display all the refinements of his taste; he instructed us what to admire, and drew us away with every sign of disgust when we stopped a moment at an uncelebrated picture. We were afraid of appearing pleased with anything we saw, till he informed us whether or not it was worth looking at. He shook his head at some, tossed up his nose at others; commended a few, and pronounced sentence on every picture as he passed along, with the most imposing tone of sagacity. Bad, that Caravaggio is too bad, indeed, devoid of all grace; but here is a Caracci that makes amends; how charming the grief of that Magdalen! The virgin, you'll observe, gentlemen, is only fainting, but the Christ is quite dead. Look at the arm, did you ever see anything so dead? — Aye, here's a Madonna which they tell you is an original, by Guido; but anybody may see it is only a tolerable copy. - Pray, gentlemen, observe this St. Sebastian, how delightfully he expires! Don't you feel the arrow in your hearts? I'm sure I feel it in mine. Do let us move on; I should die with agony, if I looked any longer.'

"We at length came to St. John, by Raphael; and here this man of taste stopped short in an ecstasy of admiration. One of the company had already passed it without minding it, and was looking at another picture; on which the connoisseur bawled out: 'Good heavens, sir, what are you about?' The honest gentleman started and stared around to know what crime he had been guilty of.

"Have you eyes in your head, sir?' continued the connoisseur; 'don't you know St. John when you see him?' St. John!' replied the other, in amazement. Aye, sir! St. John the Baptist, in propria persona.'

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“I don't know what you mean, sir,' said the gentleman, peevishly.' —‘Don't you?' rejoined the connoisseur; 'then I'll endeavor to explain myself. I mean St. John in the wilderness, by the divine Raffaelle Sanzio da Urbino, and there he stands by your side; - Pray, my dear sir, will you be so obliging as to bestow a little attention on that foot? Does it not start from the wall? Is it not perfectly out of the frame? Did you ever see such coloring? They talk of Titian. Can Titian's coloring excel that? What truth, what nature in the head! To the elegance of the antique, here is joined the simplicity of nature.'”

"We stood listening in silent admiration, and began to imagine we perceived all the perfections he enumerated; when a person in the Duke of Orlean's service came and informed us that the original, which he presumed was the picture we wished to see, was in another room; the Duke having allowed a painter to copy it. That which we had been looking at was a very wretched daubing, done from the original by some obscure painter, and had been thrown with other rubbish into a corner, where the Swiss had accidentally discovered it, and had hung it up merely by way of covering the vacant space till the other should be replaced. "How the connoisseur looked on this trying occasion I cannot say. It would have been barbarous to have turned an eye on him. I stepped into the next room, fully determined to be cautious in dealing on the merit of painting, perceiving it was not safe in this science to speak even from the book." - A View of Society and Manners in Italy, by John Moor, Vol. I.

formed and has been preserved amidst all the improvements and innovations arising from all the wanderings of the people and the accretions of time. The grand peculiarity in the Hebrew language by which it has only two tenses, is preserved in the under-structure of the English; and the affinity is striking and complete. It is true we have a more artificial table in our grammars; but the additional tenses are made by our auxiliary verbs. Strictly speaking, the old fundamental English comports with the Hebrew, and our common people show the impediments and the devices to conquer them, which are found in the Hebrew. I have heard plain people (particularly from Middlesex county in this state) use a language which reminds one of the Hebrew. Thus they throw a general proposition into the future: "You shall go down to the sea; you shall see the flats all covered at high water," etc. Just as the Hebrew says: "A wise son shall make a glad father," etc.1 Language becomes complex by artificial accretions, but its old elements remain. A plain, colloquial speaker would not be surprised at the limited number of tenses in the Hebrew. Other affinities may be found; and by a knowledge of them a nice perception of these antiquated forms is facilitated and becomes a far easier task. We can explain the grammar by the current language of common life. All this and more has been verified by the late splendid discoveries of the linguistic affinities in all the languages of the civilized world. In Conant's translation of Gesenius's Hebrew grammar, page 3d, is the following sentence: "The Semitic stock, in its grammatical structure, compared with that of other languages, particularly the Indo-Germanic, exhibits many peculiarities which collectively constitute its distinctive character, although many of them are found singly in other tongues." The last qualification is well put in.

Such are some of the laws of literature which underlie its caprices. The subject has some important applications : First, we find in the Old Testament frequent allusion to

1 I am aware that this instance is not an exact exemplification of the two original tenses.

books which have perished: THE BOOK OF THE WARS OF the Lord; thE BOOK OF JASHER; THE CHRONICLES OF THE KINGS OF JUDAH; THE THREE THOUSAND PROVERBS OF SOLOMON; THE ONE THOUSAND AND FIVE SONGS; and his works on natural history. We have reason to think that much of Hebrew literature has perished; and it would be sad to think that it had perished through chance or the capricious conduct of a people who often perversely chose idolatry rather than the worship of Jehovah. Why did these books die, and why did other books live? Was there a law, and what was it? It is delightful to find, that God has intrusted this important discrimination to a law as certain as that which makes a bullet sink when dropped into the sea, and a piece of cork swim. The old song of the Children in the Wood, so simple, so very affecting, such cruelty in the uncle, such a piteous fate in the children, the dark woods, the lonely night, the dreadful death, and then the robin-red-breast covering them with leaves, and all this sung to an unworn and unpreoccupied mind — virginibus puerisque canto - how could such a song perish? It was steeped in a thousand tears; it was graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever.

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But all these laws of discrimination and preservation were increased among the Hebrews. Religion always exercises a powerful influence over taste. The Hebrew government was a theocracy. Their religion was a book-religion; it depended on the divine authority of certain pages. Therein was their duty, their distinction, their pride, and their glory. Now, of course, their attention must be deeply fastened on the books which stood at such an awful distance from all others. The very absorbing interest of the divine books must draw away their regard for the other class. If, then, the committing of an English lay, about a robber, to an English taste, was sure to preserve it, if it had any human inspiration, how much more a Hebrew strain or narrative, committed to a sacred nation, when the inspiration was claimed to be divine! If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

This law is so general and so efficacious that one can

hardly agree with Prideaux when he argues that in the reign of Josiah there was no copy left except that found in the rubbish of the temple. "If the king and the high-priest," says he, "who were both men of eminent piety, were with out this part of holy Scripture, it can scarce be thought that any one else had it." But surely it must have been otherwise. It is hard to blot out the memory of a most popular book. Was there no pious Jew that had survived the ruin of Manasseh and Ammon; no concealed copy; no memory strong enough to preserve its most important parts? We have, too, the special providence of God; his interest in preserving what his goodness had given. At any rate, we know the power of religious principle, how it fires the genius and quickens the memory; and it was impossible that the narratives of Moses or the strains of Isaiah should be blotted out from the recollections of such a people. The indifference of the court and the temple would powerfully tend to produce a reaction in popular life.

The conclusion then is, that the books lost sunk because they had less authority than the books preserved. They died because they were mortal.

Wisdom is not always wise; learning is not always common sense. Some of the German critics, who have lost their brains over their books, have introduced some astonishing rules of judging. Thus Doderlein says: "Sed cum nemo conjector ausit per breves et obscuros indices efficere ac finire singulorum titulos numerumque universum, et vulgaris opinionis de canone Judeorum, confirmato et probato per Jesum, cui tamen censoris critici provincia vix erat demandata, futilia sint argumenta," etc. It is very true that Christ did not come into the world to be a critic, but for a purpose infinitely higher and nobler, a purpose that swallows up all criticism and supersedes its petty power by hasting to its important end. The sun does not rise to reflect its own light. Because Christ was not a critic, was he therefore incompetent to sanction the books of the Old Testament by

1 Prideaux's Connections, Vol. II. p. 103. 2 Inst. Theolog. Vol. I. p. 159.

his own infallible word? Such reasoning, on this side the Atlantic, must be beneath contempt; it must derive all its respectability by coming across the water. Rosenmüller, in his preface to the 2d Psalm, has an equally wise law : " Peter, Paul the apostle, he who wrote the epistle to the Hebrews, apply this psalm to Christ. But, says the sublime critic, pluming his wings for one of his highest flights: "A nobis vero hanc, quæ in laude tum esset, docendi et disputandi rationem sine impretatis et arrogantiæ culpa deseri nunc posse, persuasum mihi est; neque enim ab istis disciplinæ christianæ doctoribus expectari interpretationes locorum difficilium grammaticæ debent." How much of this nonsense have we had! and how solemnly has it been repeated! Is criticism a means or an end? and is the man who makes it an end, a philosopher, or fool?

The great object of criticism is to find the popular law, and the great wish of piety is to obey it.

A knowledge of some of these laws of literature might lead us to look behind some superficial canons which are misleading from the very circumstance of their being true; for a deceptive truth is worse than a manifest error. Several of the German critics have laid down this rule: that after the restoration of the Jews by Cyrus, it became common among them to refer whatever was great and magnificent in the lays of the prophets to the Messiah, and hence grew up the latent or double sense. It was the triumph of hope over experience; it was the agonies of a mind in which a present dungeon creates the most extravagant visions of future liberty. Now the fact to which they allude (for it is a fact), had a cause, and in that cause we find the true solution of the double sense. They believed their prophets to be inspired; of course, an authorship behind the visible and human author. It is very impressive and instructive to see. how the same condition impresses men with the same law. Thus the oracle at Delphi had a recondite or double meaning: the god saw further than the priestess or the consulter;, the prophecy was ofttimes revealed only in the event. Men in similar situations will always come to a similar result. It

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