Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/74

 they take of Nature, and it is such a glance as, from its vividness and breadth, is so much the more intelligible in all lands.

The Hebrew Poetry—artificial in structure—is not artistic in its purpose or intention. A work may be designated as artistic which, as the production of genius, manifestly has no higher aim than that of giving pleasure, and of exhibiting the artist's power to achieve this one purpose. But the Poets of the Bible not only have in view always another, and a far higher object than that of the delectation of their hearers, or the display of their personal ability; for, in every instance, they are intent upon acquitting themselves of a weighty responsibility;—they are charged with a message:—they are bearing a testimony:—they are promising blessings:—they are threatening and predicting woes. Therefore it is that those several species of composition to which the taste and genius of the Persians, or of the Greeks, have given a definite form, do not make their appearance within the compass of the Inspired writings.

It is not to win admiration by the opulence of his imagination—it is not to charm a listening multitude by the soft graces of song, or by its sublimities, that the Hebrew bard ever utters himself. We ought not to say that a scorn of popular favour betrays itself—as if subaudite—in these deliverances of a message from the Almighty; yet it is almost so. We should here keep in view the distinction