Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/112

 livered, so it must seem to command the whole mind of the messenger, and to rule, and to overrule, his delivery of it. Thus it is that copiousness and variety should not be looked for within the compass of books which not only have all of them a religious purpose, but which speak also in the prescribed terms of an authority. Such writings are likely to take up much less of the colloquial medium than would be found in the miscellaneous and unconstrained productions of writers whose purpose it was to entertain the idle hours of their contemporaries.

Unless the botanies of Solomon were an exception, it might be that the Hebrew people had no literature beside their religious annalists, and their prophets. Yet we may believe that the talk of common life, throughout the ancient Palestine, contained a large amount of words and phrases which have found no place in the extant Hebrew books:—these books have immortalized for our Lexicons perhaps not more than a third part of the spoken tongue. If, therefore, it were affirmed that the Hebrew language is not copious, or rich in synonyms, what might be understood is this (if, indeed, this be true, which it is not) that its extant sacred literature is not rich in words. But even if this were allowed, then the question would return upon us—whether the popular mind was not vividly conscious toward the two worlds—the material, and the immaterial—toward the outer and the inner