No. LVII. Tuesday May 22. 1753.

Nec vox hominem fonat

O more than human voice!

SIR,

To the ADVENTURER.

VIRG.

LONGINUS proceeds to addrefs his friend Terentianus in the following manner :

It is the peculiar privilege of poetry, not only to place material objects in the most amiable attitudes, and to clothe them in the most graceful dress, but also to give life and motion to immaterial beings; and form, and colour, and action, even to abstract ideas; to embody the virtues, the vices, and the paffions; and to bring before our eyes, as on a ftage, every faculty of the human mind.

Profopopoeia, therefore, or perfonification, conducted with dignity and propriety, may be justly esteemed one of the greatest efforts of the creative power of a warm and lively imagination. Of this figure many illuftrious examples may be produced from the Jewish writers I have been fo earneftly recommending to your perufal among whom, every part and object of nature is ani<mated, and endowed with sense, with paffion, and with language.

To

To fay that the lightning obeyed the commands of God, would of itself be sufficiently fublime; but a Hebrew bard expreffes this idea with far greater energy and life: "Canft thou fend lightnings, that they may

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go, and fay unto thee, Here we are!" And again, "God fendeth forth light, and it goeth; he calleth it 66 again, and it obeyeth him with fear." How animated, how emphatical, is this unexpected answer, "Here we are!"

Plato, with a divine boldness, introduces in his Crito, the Laws of Athens, pleading with Socrates, and diffuading him from an attempt to escape from the prifon in which he was confined; and the Roman rival of Demofthenes has made his country tenderly expoftulate with Cataline, on the dreadful miferies which his rebellion would devolve on her head. But will a candid critic prefer either of thefe admired perfonifications, to those paffages, in the Jewish poets, where Babylon, or Jerusalem, or Tyre, are reprefented as fitting on the duft, covered with fackcloth, stretching out their hands in vain, and loudly lamenting their defolation? Nay, farther, will he reckon them even equal to the following fictions? Wisdom is introduced, faying of herself; "When God prepared the heavens, I was there; "when he fet a circle upon the face of the deep, when "he gave to the fea his decree that the waters should

not pass his commandments, when he appointed the "foundations of the earth, then was I by him as one "brought up with him; and I was daily his delight, "playing always before him," Where, Terentianus, fhall we find our Minerva, fpeaking with fuch dignity and elevation? The goddefs of the Hebrew bard, is not only the patronefs and inventrefs of arts and learn

ing, the parent of felicity and fame, the guardian and conductress of human life; but he is painted as immortal and eternal, the conftant companion of the great Creator himself, and the partaker of his counfels and defigns. Still bolder is the other Profopopœia: "Destruction and Death fay (of Wifdom) we have "heard the fame thereof with our ears." If pretenders to taste and judgment cenfure such a fiction as extravagant and wild, I despise their frigidity and grofs infenfibility.

When Jehovah is represented as defcending to punish the earth in his just anger, it is added, " Before him "went the peftilence." When the Babylonian tyand

rant is destroyed, "the fir-trees rejoice at his fall, "the cedars of Lebanon, faying, Since thou art laid "down, no feller is come up against us." And at the captivity of Jerufalem the very ramparts and the walls Jament," they languish together." Read likewife the following address, and tell me what emotion you feel at the time of perufal: "O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be e'er thou be quiet? Put up thyself into thy fcabbard, reft and be filent." Art thou not amazed and delighted, my friend, to behold joy and anguish, and revenge, afcribed to the trees of the foreft, to walls and warlike instruments.

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Before I conclude these observations, I cannot forbear taking notice of two remarkable paffages in the Hebrew writers, because they bear a close resemblance with two in our own tragedians.

Sophocles, by a noble Profopopoeia, thus aggravates the mifery of the Thebans, vifited by a dreadful plague- "Hell is enriched with groans and la"mentations." This image is heightened by a Jewish VOL. II. G

author,

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author, who defcribes Hell or Hades, as, an enormous "monster, who hath extended and enlarged himself, "and opened his infatiable mouth without measure."

Caffandra, in Eschylus, ftruck with the treachery and barbarity of Clytemnestra, who is murdering her huf band Agamemnon, fuddenly exclaims in a prophetic fury, "Shall I call her the direful mother of Hell!" to represent the most terrible species of deftruction, the Jewish poet fays, "the first born of Death shall devour "his ftrength."

Befides the attribution of perfon and ́action to objects immaterial or inanimate, there is ftill another fpecies of the Profopopoeia no lefs lively and beautiful than the former, when a real person is introduced speaking with propriety and decorum. The speeches which the Jewish poets have put into the mouth of their Jehovah, are worthy the greatnefs and incomprehenfible Majesty of the All-Perfect Being. Hear him afking one of his creatures, with a lofty kind of irony, "Where waft thou, when I laid the foundations ofthe "earth? declare, if thou haft understanding, Who "hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest ? or "who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereon are "the foundations thereof faftened, or who laid "the corner-ftone? When the morning ftars fang together, and all the fons of God fhouted for joy? Or "who fhut up the fea with doors, when it brake forth if it had iffued out of the womb? When I brake up for it my decreed place, and fet bars, and doors, and faid, Hitherto fhalt thou come, but no farther, and here fhall the pride of thy waves be stayed." How can we reply to these fublime inquiries, but in the words that follow?" Behold, I am vile, what shall

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"I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my "mouth."

I have in a former treatise observed to you, that Homer has degraded his Gods into men: these writers alone have not violated the Divine Majesty by inadequate and indecent reprefentations, but have made the great Creator act and speak in a manner fuitable to the fupreme dignity of his nature, as far as the groffness of mortal conceptions will permit. From the fublimity and fpirituality of their notions, fo different in degree and kind from thofe of the moft exalted philofophers; one may, perhaps, be inclined to think their claim to a divine infpiration reasonable and juft, fince God alone can defcribe himself to man.

I had written thus far, when I received difpatches from the emprefs Zenobia, with orders to attend her instantly at Palmyra; but am refolved, before I set out, to add to this letter a few remarks on the beautiful comparisons of the Hebrew poets.

The ufe of fimilies in general confifts in the illuftration or amplification of any subject, or in presenting pleafing pictures to the mind by the suggestion of new images. Homer and the Hebrew bards difdain minute resemblances, and feel, not an exact correfpondence with every feature of the object they introduce. Provided a general likeness appear, they think it fufficient. Not folicitous for exactness, which in every work is the fure criterion of a cold and creeping genius, they introduce many circumftances that perhaps have no direct affinity to the subject, but taken all together contribute to the variety and beauty of the piece.

The pleasures of friendship and benevolence are compared to the perfumes that flow from the ointments