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transition, while in the derivation of words, and the application of metaphors we come more fully to understand the logick of ancient figurative language. I anticipate with joy the time, and the first lexicon, in which this shall be well accomplished. For the present I use the best we have, Castell, Simon, Cocceius, and their rich contributors Schultens, Schroeder, Storr, Scheid, and any other, who has individually, or in associations contributed to the same object.

A. It will be long yet, before we shall repose ourselves in your palm-grove of Oriental lexicography. Pray in the mean time illustrate your ideas of derivation by an example.

E. You may find examples every where, even as the lexicons now are. Strike at the first radical form that occurs, as the primitive "he is gone," and observe the easy gradation of its derivatives. A series of expressions signifying loss, disappearance and death, vain purposes, and fruitless toil nad trouble succeed by slight transitions; and if you place yourself in the circumstances of the ancient herdsmen, in their wandering unsettled mode of life, the most distant derivative will still give back something of the original sound of the words, and of the original feeling. It is from this cause, that the language addresses itself so much to our senses, and the creations of its poetry become present to us with such stirring effect. The language abounds in roots of this character, and our commentators, who rather go too deep, than too superficially, have shown enough of them. They never know when to quit, and if possible would lay bare all the roots and fibres of every tree, even where one would wish to see only the flowers and fruits.

A.

These are the slaves I suppose upon your plantation of palms.

E. A very necessary and useful race. We must treat them with mildness, for even, when they do too much, they do it with a good intention. Have you any further objections against the Hebrew verbs?

A. A good many more. What kind of an action is it, which has no distinctions of time. For the two tenses of the Hebrew are after all essentially aorists, that is, undefined tenses, that fluctuate between the past, the present, and the future, and thus it has in fact but one tense.

E. Does poetry employ more. To this all is present time. It exhibits actions and events as present, whether they be past, or passing, or future. For history, the defect, which you remark, may be an essential one. In fact, the languages, which incline to nice distinctions of time, have exhibited them most in the style of history. Among the Hebrews, history itself is properly poetry, that is the transmission of narratives, which are related in the present tense, and here too we may discover an advantage derived from the indefiniteness or fluctuation, of the tenses, especially in producing conviction, and rendering what is described, related or announced, more clearly and vividly present to the senses. Is not this in a high degree poetical? Have you never observed in the style of the poets or the prophets, what beauty results from the change of tenses? How that, which one hemistick declares in the past tense, the other expresses in the future? As if the last rendered the presence of the object continuous and eternal, while the first has given to the discourse the certainty of the past, where every thing is already finished and unchangeable. By one tense the word is increased at the end, by the other at the beginning, and thus the ear is provided with an agreeable variety, and the representation made a more present object of sense. The Hebrews besides, like children aim to say the whole at once, and to express by a single sound, the person, number, tense, action and still more. How vastly must this contribute to the sudden and simultaneous exhibition of an entire picture! They express by a single word, what we can express often only by five or more words. With us too these have a hobbling movement from the small and frequently unaccented syllables at the beginning or end; with

them the whole is joined by way of prefix, or as a sonorous termination to the leading idea. This stands in the centre like a king with his ministers and menials close around him. Rather they may be said to be one with him, coming in his train with measured steps and harmonious voice. Is this, think you, of no importance to a poetical language? Sonorous verbs, which convey at once so many ideas, are the finest material for rhythm and imagery. When I can utter, for example, all that is expressed by the words "as he has given ,"* in a single well sounding word, is it not more poetical and beautiful, than if I express the same idea in so many separate fragments?

me,'

A. For the eye I have sometimes considered this language as a collection of elementary paintings, which are to be decyphered, as it were, in a similar manner with the writing of the Chinese, and have often lamented, that children or youth, who are to learn it, are not early accustomed to this habit of decyphering or analyzing with the eye, which would aid them more than many dull and unmeaning rules. I have read of examples, where young persons, especially those whose senses were acute, have made great progress in this way in a short time. We neither of us enjoyed this advantage.

E. We may gradually acquire it however by employing the eye and the ear in conjunction. You will in this way too, remark the harmonious arrangement of vowels and consonants, and the correspondence of many particles and predominant sounds to the things signified. These are of great use too, especially in marking the metrical divisions, and denoting their mutual relation. The two hemisticks have a kind of symmetry, in which both words and ideas correspond in an alternation of parts, which are at the same time parallel, and give a free indeed, but very simple and sonorous rhythm.

* As the German and English correspond in this case, in the number of words, which express the idea, I have translated the illustration. TR.

A. You are describing, I suppose, the celebrated parallelisms, in regard to which I shall hardly agree with you. Whoever has any thing to say, let him say it at once, or carry his discourse regularly forward, but not repeat forever. When one is under the necessity of saying every thing twice, he shows, that he had but half or imperfectly expressed it the first time.

E. Have you ever witnessed a dance? Nor heard any thing of the choral odes of the Greeks, their strophe and antistrophe? Suppose we compare the poetry of the Hebrews to the movements of the dance, or consider it as a shorter and simpler form of the choral ode.

A. Add the systrum, the kettle-drums, and the symbals, and your dance of savages will be complete.

E. Be it so. We are not to be frightened with names, while the thing itself is good. Answer me candidly. Does not all rhythm, and the metrical harmony both of motion and of sound, I might say all, that delights the senses in forms and sounds, depend on symmetry? and that too a symmetry easily apprehended, upon simplicity and equality in the proportion of its parts?

A. That I will not deny.

E. And has not the Hebrew parallelism the most simple proportion and symmetry in the members of its verse, in the structure of its figures and sounds? The syllables were not indeed yet accurately scanned and measured, or even numbered at all, but the dullest ear can perceive a symmetry in them. A. But must all this necessarily be at the expense of the understanding.

E. Let us dwell a little longer upon its gratefulness to the ear. The metrical system, of the Greeks, constructed with more art and refinement, than that of any other language, depends entirely on proportion and harmony. The hexameter verse, in which their ancient poems were sung, is in regard to its sounds a continued, though ever changing par

allelism. To give it greater precision the pentameter was adopted and especially in the elegy. This again in the structure of its two hemisticks exhibits the parallelism. The finest and most natural species of the ode depend so much on the parallelism, as nearly to justify the remark, that the more a less artificial parallelism is heard in a strophe in conjunction with the musical attenuations of sound, the more pleasing it becomes. I need only to adduce as examples the Sapphic or Choriambic verse. All these metrical forms are artificial circlets, finely woven garlands of words and sounds. In the East the two strings of pearl are not twisted into a garland, but simply hang one over against the other. We could not expect from a chorus of herdsmen a dance as intricate, as the labyrinth of Dædalus or of Theseus. In their language, their shouts of joy, and the movements of the dance we find them answering one to another in regular alternations and the most simple proportions. Even this simplicity seems to me to have its beauties.

A. Very great undoubtedly to an admirer of the parallelism.

E. The two divisions of their chorus confirm, elevate and strengthen each other in their convictions or their rejoicings. In the song of Jubilee this is obvious, and in those of lamentation it results from the very nature of the feelings, that occasion them. The drawing of the breath confirms, as it were, and comforts the soul, while the other division of the chorus takes part in our afflictions, and its response is the echo, or, as the Hebrews would say, "the daughter of the voice" of our sorrow. In didactic poetry one precept confirms the other, as if the father were giving instruction to his son, and the mother repeated it. The discourse by this means acquires the semblance of truth, cordiality and confidence. In alternate songs of love the subject itself determines the form. Love demands endearing intercourse, the interchange of feelings and thoughts. The connexion between these different