Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/73

 in our literature possesses most of simple majesty and force; whatever is the most fully fraught with feeling; whatever is the most true to nature, when nature is truest to virtue, and to wisdom. Whatever it is that enters, as by right, the moral consciousness;—whatever it is that the most effectively draws the soul away from its cleaving to the dust, and lifts the thoughts towards a brighter sphere—all such elements of our English literature, whether avowedly so or not, must trace their rise, directly or indirectly, to the Hebrew Scriptures, and especially to those portions of them that are, in spirit and in form, poetic.

If we were to affirm that certain portions of this Poetry are descriptive, or moral, or pastoral, this would be to misunderstand the purport of the samples we might adduce of these kinds. Vividly conscious as these writers, or most of them, are to what is sublime and beautiful in the visible world, they are thus conscious toward the things around them in one sense only—namely, as parts of God's creation. The Hebrew poet attempts no local description:—he does not dwell upon the picturesque;—albeit our modern sense of the picturesque has sprung from tastes and habits that have had their rise in the Hebrew Scriptures; nor do they at any time stop on their way to bring before us the scenic characteristics of their country. None of them has leisure to paint particular scenes, as do our Thomson, or Burns, or Cowper. It is a glance only that