"of the fact, that the general run of verses throughout the Old Testament, are what the learned bishop Lowth distinguishes by the appellation of Tetrameters, I conceived a wish to see how the first of the prophets, Isaiah, would appear in his proper dress, as a poet, his lines being reduced to metrical arrangement. Accordingly, I prescribed to myself the laborious task of transcribing the original; purposing at the same time to accompany the text with the justly celebrated version of bishop Lowth, corrected where it should appear necessary, either by the late discoveries of the excellent German critic and translator, Rosenmuller, or by my own observation." Strictly adhering to his system, Dr. Stock has thrown into a metrical form, not only those parts of Isaiah which are confessedly historical, and taken with very little variation from the book of Kings, but even the titles of the different prophecies which are introduced into this oracular fasciculus: with what effect let the reader judge. The cry of destruction they shall raise up." Ch. xxi. 8. "And he cried, A caravan! Have been set for nights together." The division in the Hebrew exactly corresponds with that which is preserved in the translation; and a small portion of taste only is necessary to convince the reader, that such an arrangement is not deserving of the name of verse. Such instances as these are indeed few: but in many passages, we think, the bishop's ear has deceived him, and in duced him to make some lines too long, others too short; injudiciously to mix hexameters, tetrameters, trimeters, and dimeters; and occasionally to destroy the parallelism, which appears to us to constitute the surest guide in the mazes of Hebrew poetry. The bishop has trusted too much to the Masoretes, with whose cumbersome punctuation he has loaded and disfigured his page. It is time to advert to the translation. Here the bishop has been more fortunate. His first object, as we have already seen, was to produce a metrical arrangement of the Hebrew text, accompanied with the version of Lowth, corrected where necessary. As he proceeded, corrections of this nature became more numerous than he expected, till, at length, almost a new translation arose. To judge, therefore, of the real advantage which the labours of Dr. Stock have produced to sacred literature, (for all relating to I metrical arrangement, we think of little or no importance,) we must examine how far he has improved the version of the bishop of London. To select every passage in which an important alteration is made, would needlessly occupy our pages; all that is necessary, and all that will be required, is the quotation of a few of the more striking examples. Ch. i. 17. Lowth, following Bochart, and not to his own satisfaction, translated DIDIT TEN "cursed that which is corrupted." Stock, justified at least by all the versions, renders these words, "Help forward the aggrieved." iv. 5. "Yea, over all shall the glory be a covering," Lowth.-"A burning that shall overshadow all glory," Stock. i. e. a conflagration, whose splendour shall eclipse all glory. The great objection to Lowth's rendering is the violation of grammar, a masculine noun being made the nominative to a femi nine verb. ועודבה עשיריה .13 .vi ושבה והיתה לבער "And though there be a tenth remaining in it, Even this shall undergo a repeated destruction." Lowth. "But vet in it shall be left a tenth, And it shall recover and serve for pasture." Two versions cannot more widely dif. fer than these. Dr. Stock ably and successfully defends that which he has adopted. x. 13. "And I have brought down those that Lowth. were strongly seated." "And I have let fall the curtain of the inhabitants." Stock. "The metaphor," he observes in a note, "here employed, appears to me to have escaped the commentators, by their not knowing the meaning of the word which is well explained by Parkhurst to denote a mosquito net or curtain, used in hot countries by people of the better sort, to guard them at night from the noise and stings of those very troublesome insects, the gnats. It is a thin curtain of gauze or goat's hair, let down from the tester of the bed, enclosing it on every side, and thereby completely concealing the person in bed from view. To let fall the curtain of the inhabitants, therefore, is to hide them from view, to put them out of sight, by destroying them." Ch. xxxvii. 13. "Of Honah and of Ivah." Upon this passage, Dr. Stock has added at the end of his work a note, which we recommend to the attention of our readers, "In thus translating the words I have been misled by the crowd of former interpreters, who concur in represeating them as proper names. On reflection I am persuaded, they are not so, but should be rendered, removed and overturned; that is, each of those several princes, who opposed the Assyrian monarch, is now a vagabond and reduced to ruin; a forcible conclusion of the argument addressed to Hezekiah. If I am right in this interpretation, I owe the discovery to a perusal of Dr. Hutter's excellent translation of the New Testament into Hebrew, a work which I cannot sufficiently commend, as a great help to scholars desirous of becoming well versed in Hebrew phraseology," &c. This translation has been republished in England, to the conclusion of the Acts, by the Rev. R. Caddick, of Christ Church, Oxford. -belongs here to both the pre אישים ceding words, despised and abject, and is used in Hebrew and Arabic as a mark of Ch. xi. 14. What in Lowth's version the superlative degree: abjectus virorum, i. e. is rendered, homo abjectissimus." Stock. These few specimens may enable our readers to judge in some measure of the work of the right rev. translator. Our limits will not allow us to quote many other improvements upon the version of Lowth. There are larger portions in which his critical skill is more apparent, and his success of greater importance: among these we mention particularly the concluding verses of the third chapter, and the prayer of Hezekiah, ch. xxxviii. in the rendering of which, however, he acknowledges his obligation to Scheidnis, a German critic. In departing from the version of Lowth, he has not always displayed the same judgment or taste. Thus in ch. xxx. 17, Dr. Stock omitted the term ten thousand, which Lowth has shewn to be necessary. "One thousand at the rebuke of one; At the rebuke of five, ten thousand of you shall flee: is certainly to be preferred to "One thousand at the rebuking of one, At the rebuking of five shall ye flee." “The crown of the cup of reeling Thou hast drunken, thou hast swooped off" is, we conceive, no improvement upon bishop Lowth's rendering of ch. li. 17. "The dregs of the cup of trembling, thou hast drunken, thou hast wrung them out:" swooped means to fall like a hawk upon of shewing the accomplishment of his predictions." The conjectural emendations, which are suggested or defended in these, are frequently judicious, and some of them admitted very properly into the text. Ch. i. 8. for pressed with siege; Dr. Stock would read pillaged. Ch. xvii. 11. for possession, he proposes hurry. Ch. xxi. 8. for a lion, he reads, "which denotes a company of persons on a road, and was a natural exclama tion for the watchman who descried. them." Ch. xxix. 2. for which Lowth interprets, as the hearth of the great altar; Doederlein and Rosenmuller, as a strong lion; Dr. Stock proposes to read tanquam a Deo decerptus, the torn of God. This ingenious reading receives no little support from the ver sion of the lxx and the Arab.-These may serve as specimens. Amidst these we wish the bishop of Killala had admitted the conjectural emendation of Ch. xiv. 12. or which חולש for שליח or rather שולח Mr. Wakefield long since proposed in his edition of Virgil's Georgics, of which the learned translator could not be ignorant; and which, without the support of the lxx, would recommend itself to every person of taste and judg ment. Before we conclude this article, we must be allowed to express our surprize that, in this valuable edition of the proits prey. phecy of Isaiah, no notice whatever is "I will give them the reward of their work taken of any of the Varia Lectiones, pubwith faithfulness:" lished by De Rossi. Though all the copies he has collected may not have equal authority, there are some readings which present a just claim to notice, and from which every editor and translator of the sacred text may derive considerable assistance. We could point out passages, in which Dr. Stock might have applied to this useful work with much effect. Nor do we think that Dodson's version should have been altogether unnoticed; which, although the work of a layman, and undertaken upon a principle which can never be fully established, is not below the respectful regard of a scholar and a prelate. ART. II. Song of Songs: or Sacred Idyls. Translated from the Original Hebrew, with Notes Critical and Explanatory. By IN his notes upon bishop Lowth's prelections, the learned professor Michaelis has observed, "that no interpreter of this exquisite poem has yet appeared, properly prepared for the task: all who have hitherto attempted it, having been more solicitous to explain the mystical sense, than to exhibit its first and obvious meaning as a song of love." The task, indeed, he acknowledges to "He who unbe by no means easy. dertakes it, must be deeply skilled in the Oriental languages; well versed in the knowledge of ancient manners; acquainted with natural history; accustomed to the frequent reading of Arabian poetry, especially of the amorous kind; and lastly, must be himself a votary and a favourite of the muses." In none of these qualifications does Mr. Good appear deficient. His know. ledge of the Oriental languages, both ancient and modern, is extensive; with the love-songs of the Arabians he seems to be intimately acquainted; and to a true taste for poetry, he unites the character of no mean poet. They who may differ from him in respect to the propriety of every part of the arrangement which he has adopted, or not admit the justice of all his renderings, must still regard this as by far the most elegant, and, at the same time, the most faithful translation which has yet been given of this beautiful poem: "The Song of Songs," (he observes in his preface) has hitherto been generally regarded as one continued and individual poem either as an epithalamium (opios nuptialis) accompanied, in its recitation, with appropriate music; or a regular drama, divisible, and, at first, clearly divided into distinct acts or periods. Since the commentary of the learned and elegant Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, upon this admirable pastoral, and more especially since the confirmation of his ingenious conjecture by that excellent critic, the late bishop Lowth, the latter opinion has more generally prevailed; and the poem has been arranged into seven parts, one being appropriated to every day of the bridal week, or period of time allotted among the Hebrews for the celebration of the nuptial solemnity. "Great as are the authorities for both these speculations, I have ventured to deviate from them in the version now offered to the public. The Song of Songs cannot be one connected epithalamium, since the tran sitions are too abrupt for the wildest flights JOHN MASON GOOD. 8vo. pp. 210. "It is the object of the present version, therefore, to offer a new arrangement, and to regard the entire song as a collection of distinct idyls upon one common subject, and that, the loves of the Hebrew monarch and his fair bride: and it has afforded me peculiar pleasure to observe, from a passage I have accidentally met with in the writings of Sir William Jones, long since the composition of the present work, that some such opinion was entertained by this illustrious scholar. In forming this arrangement, I have followed no other guide than what has appeared to me the obvious intention of the sacred bard himself: I have confined myself to soliloquy, where the speaker gives no evident proofs of a companion; and I have introduced dialogue where the responses are obvious: I have finished the idy where the subject seems naturally to close; and I have recommenced it where a new subject is introduced. Thus divided into a multitude of little detached poems, I trust that many of the obscurities whish have hitherto overshadowed this unrivalled relique of the Eastern pastorál, have vanished completely; and that the ancient Hebrews will be found to possess a poet who, independently of the sublimity of any concealed and allegorical meaning, may rival the best productions of Theocritus, Bion, or Virgil, as to the literal beauties with which every verse overflows.” Preface p. iii.—vi. Agreeably to this system, the whole poem is divided into twelve idyls; the new translation, metrically arranged, occupies one page; and on the opposite page is a corresponding poetical version, to which the notes, which are numerous and interesting, are adapted. We shall select as a specimen the fourth idyl, both because it is short, and is accom panied by notes which will serve to shew the general character of that part of the book, and introduce a beautiful little poem from the Persian. 1. On my bed, in the night, I sought him whom my soul loveth. I sought him, but found him not. 2. I arose, and went into the city; In the streets, and in the broad-ways, I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. 3. The watchmen of the city beheld me: "Saw ye," said I, "hin whom my soul loveth?" 4. But a little had I passed from them, When I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, Till I had brought him into my mother's house, Into the dwelling of her who conceived me, 5. Icharge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem! ROYAL BRIDE. "Twas in the night: my head the pillow pressed, And anxious dreams, disturbed my throbbing breast; I sought the darling object of my pain; Intent I sought him-but I sought in vain: Abrupt I rose, in hopes my love to meet; Wide through the city, wearying every street, I sought the darling object of my pain; Intent I sought him-but I sought in vain. The midnight watchmen found me as I strayed; Of them I sought, with spirit deep dismayed, "Saw ye the darling object of my pain!” Of them I sought him-but I sought in vain. Not long I left them, ere, with crowned, rapture The darling object of my pain I found. Daughters of Salem born!-by all ye prize, eyes, I charge you stir not-hushed be every breeze, Watch o'er my love, nor wake him till he please." NOTES. "And anxious dreams-) The word "dream" does not occur in the original; but from the period of time, the place, and position of the fair bride, there can be no doubt she is here describing a dream. In the earlier ages of the world, in which visions of the night were made the medium of divine communication, as well to those who were without the pale of the Jewish hierarchy, as to those whom it embraced, dreams were pondered upon with far more deference than at present; and, for this reason, the images in natural sleep appear to have been often more vivid and permanent. Much of the beauty of ancient poetry, therefore, both sacred and profane, has been exhausted in delineating the history of individual dreams. In the sacred scriptures this is so frequent as to render it useless to enumerate instances. In Virgil, Moschus, and Bion we meet with many similar narratives; but the Odes of Anacreon are, of all specimens of poetry, the nearest, perhaps, in this respect, to the idyls before us. The third and eighth, in the arrangement of Barnes's edition, are both of this description most precisely and the former, in its general tale and construction, so extremely resembles the seventh of the present idyls, that the reader will find it introduced under the poem for a comparison. Gessner has happily referred to this species of poetic fiction in his idyl, entitled Daphnis. The delighted swain applies to heaven, and supplicates that dreams of love and of himself may descend on the fair idol of his heart: and if she do not dream of him, his object, at least, is obtained by the supplication; for when the morning arose, and his beloved appeared at her window-holdselig grüst sie ihn und holdselig blickt sie ihn nach; denn sie hatte seiuen machtlichen gesang behorcht" tenderly she saluted him, tenderly her eyes still followed his footsteps:-for she had listened to his midnight song." "Intent I sought him-but I sought in vain. This lineal iteration, chorus, or intercalary verse, as it is called by Dr. Lowth, is in perfect unison with the true spirit of the idyl or eclogue. Theocritus is full of the same figure: his very first idyl affords us an instance of it Αρχετε βακολίκας, Μωσας φίλαι, άρχετ' αοιδας. which is repeated at the commencement of every sentence, till the poet has nearly finished his song. "The first idyl of Bion, in like manner, offers us a similar instance Αιάζω τον Αδωνιν Απώλετο καλος Αδωνις degree, and with great elegance, varied in The latter part of the verse being in a small almost every recurrence. "Gessner has occasionally introduced a similar iteration, though not very frequently. The first idyl, however, furnishes us with an example in the soliloquy of Alexis, who concludes his pathetic apostrophes with, “Ich sie liebe mehr als die biene den früling liebt"-" I love her more than the bee loves the spring," "The lyrists of every country, both sacred and profane, have been as attentive to |