Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/76

  tion; but then, in the course of things this archaic directness, this primitive seriousness, gives place, in the following age, to the elaborate or artistic style—to those modes of composition that find their beginning and their end in the Poet's personal ambition. This process goes on until a national literature (of the imaginative class) which was wholly genuine in its earliest era, has become wholly factitious towards its close. Yet it is not so in the instance with which now we are concerned:—the Hebrew Poetry, in the course of a thousand years, passed through no stages of artistic sophistication. Take the instance of those of the Psalms which, on probable grounds of criticism, are of a date as early as the exodus of Israel from Egypt—compare them with those which, by their allusion to the events of a much later time, must be dated toward the years of the sealing of the prophetic dispensation: the same avoidance of whatever the Poet's own ambition might have dictated is observable throughout this lapse of ages.

Do we find an exceptive instance in that one composition which stands by itself in the canonical collection—the Canticle of Solomon? This instance may yield a confirmation of our doctrine, rather than a contradiction of it; but the anomalous character of this matchless poem, as well as its singular beauty, demands a distinct consideration of it—or, we might say, a criticism—apart.

Then, again, the Hebrew literature has no Drama;