Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/111

 and the life of the people. The single words of the language, and its congested phrases, are tokens, or they are checks with which some corresponding reality duly tallied, whether or not any extant history has given it a place on its pages. Exceptive instances might here be adduced; but they are not such as would interfere with our argument in this case. Races that have fallen, in the course of ages, from a higher to a lower stage of intellectual and social advancement, may, to some extent, have retained, as an inheritance which they do not occupy, the copious glossary of their remote ancestors.

As to the extent and the richness of the Hebrew tongue at the time when it was the language of common life, or during the twelve centuries from the Exodus to the Captivity, there must be some uncertainty; not merely because the extant remains of the Hebrew literature is of limited extent, but because these remains are of two or three kinds only, and—whatever may be their kind—they have one and the same intention. The writers, whether historians, moralists, poets, prophets, are none of them discursive on the fields of thought: not one of them allows himself the liberty to wander at leisure over the regions of fancy, or of speculation. Each of them has received his instructions, and is the bearer of a message; and he hastens onward to acquit himself of his task. Inasmuch as the message should command all attention from those to whom it is de-