pro- riumpb over the fall ..f Babyl [sa.
tench, we can find only in the book of Judith, and with rather more reason in that of Tobit, anything which
.like the riddle of ?PP"»che» '" "I'"' !""■"->;■ fadeed fiction= which if it is n.. t the essence, enters for a very large share into h..th
1 id-. \iv. 14), or -dark Baying," a- th.- A. V.
i' Jix, 5; lxxviii, 2. The former passaga
hi. I therefore lyrical character
: ' "I will incline mine ear to a ■ dark sa\ ings upon the harp."
i rtible t. mis in
I
":.-:•;. melitsdh, a I
. di Jewish gram-
ntuation only to
•ii-. Job, and I'i ■■■•. . ,i,-. i here
tbl that th.- Song ..i Solomon i- also
and witl i anciently,
joined, though the form of com-
|
epic and dramatic p. .dry. was wholly alien from the -cuius of the Hebrew muse, whose high and noble func- tion was not to invent, bul to celebrate the goodness of God; nol to indulge the fancy, bul to express the deep- est feelings of the soul; nol to plaj with words and feign emotions, but to utter profound truth and com- memorate r. al events, and pour forth li\ ing sentiments. ( If the three kinds of poetry which are illustrated hy
the Hebrew literature, the lyric occupies the foremost place, commencing, as we have seen, in the pre-M aic times, flourishing in rude vigor during the earlier pe- riods of the Judges, the heroic age of the Hebrews, growing with the nation's growth and strengthening wiih its strength, till it reached its highest excellence in David, the warrior-poet, and thenceforth began slowly t.. decline, in this period art though subordinate, was
leremiah, and the smaller not neglected, .as indeed is proved by the noble Ivrics I prophetic writ- which have come down to us. and in which the art is
POETRY
319
POETRY
only relatively small and low — that is, the art is incon- siderable and secondary — merely because the topics are so august, the sentiments so grand, the religious im- pression so profound and sacred. At later periods, when the first fresh gushing of the muse had ceased, art in Hebrew, as is the case in all other poetry, began to claim a larger share of attention, and stands in the po- ems for a greater portion of their merit. Then the play of the imagination grew predominant over the sponta- neous outpourings of the soul, and among other crea- tions of the fancy alphabetical poems were produced, in which the matter is artistically distributed sometimes under two-and-twenty heads or divisions, corresponding with the number of the Hebrew letters.
Gnomic poetry is the product of a more advanced age than the lyric. It arises from the desire felt by the poet to express the results of the accumulated expe- riences of life in a form of beauty and permanence. Its thoughtful character requires for its development a time of peacefulness and leisure ; for it gives expression, not like the lyric to the sudden and impassioned feelings of the moment, but to calm and philosophic reflection. Being less spontaneous in its origin, its form is of neces- sity more artificial. The gnomic poetry of the Hebrews has not its measured flow disturbed by the shock of arms or the tumult of camps; it rises silently, like the Temple of old, without the sound of a weapon, and its groundwork is the home life of the nation. The period during which it flourished corresponds to its domestic and settled character. From the time of David on- wards through the reigns of the earlier kings, when the nation was quiet and at peace, or, if not at peace, at least so firmly fixed in its acquired territory that its wars were no struggle for existence, gnomic poetry blos- somed and bore fruit We meet with it at intervals up to the time of the Captivity, and, as it is chiefly charac- teristic of the age of the monarchy, Ewald has appro- priately designated this sera the '■ artificial period" of Hebrew poetry. From the end of the 8th century B.C. the decline of the nation was rapid, and with its glory departed the chief glories of its literature. The poems of this period are distinguished by a smoothness of dic- tion and an external polish which betray tokens of labor and art ; the style is less flowing and easy, and, except in rare instances, there is no dash of the ancient vigor. After the Captivity we have nothing but the poems which formed part of the liturgical services of the Temple.
Whether dramatic poetry, properly so called, ever existed among the Hebrews, is, to say the least, ex- tremely doubtful. In the opinion of some writers the Song of Songs, in its external form, is a rude drama, designed for a simple stage. But the evidence for this view is extremely slight, and no good and sufficient reasons have been adduced which would lead us to con- clude that the amount of dramatic action exhibited in that poem is more than would be involved in an ani- mated poetic dialogue in which more than two persons take part. Philosophy and the drama appear alike to have been peculiar to the Indo-Germanic nations, and to have manifested themselves among the Shemitic tribes only in their crudest and most simple form.