work. We take leave, therefore, of Mr. Pinkney with feelings of a mixed kind; in which, however, those of a favourable character are predominant, though they owe their ascendancy not to the learning and taste of the writer, but to that utility which he kept steadily in view throughout his inquiries and remarks. The principal subject of regret with his readers should be, that his time of observation was limited to a few months. ART. II. Hebrew Criticism and Poetry; or the Patriarchal Blessings of Isaac and of Jacob, metrically analysed and translated; with Appendixes of Readings and Interpretations of the Four Greater Prophets, interspersed with metrical Translation and Composition; and with a Catena of the Prophecies of Balaam and Habakuk; of the Songs of Debórah and Hannah, and of the Lamentations of David over Saul, Jonathan, and Abner, metrically translated; also with the Table of First Lessons for Sundays, paged with References. By George Somers Clarke, D.D. Vicar of Great Waltham, Essex. 8vo. PP. 440. 15s. Boards. White & Co. 1810. RE EVIEWERS ought perhaps to be ashamed of confessing that they are ever embarrassed: but such are the excentricities which occasionally develope themselves, especially in the theological department, that, to use an old word, we are so astounded by them as to feel a difficulty in making our report. We offer this remark not with respect to Dr. Clarke's Hebrew criticisms and arrangement of Hebrew poetry, but in reference to his very unique preface; which the orthodox and the heterodox, the churchman and the dissenter, the Christian and the infidel, will regard with equal amazement. Gibbon observes that "all the idolatrous systems of the heathen world were considered by the common people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the politician as equally useful ;" and though Dr. C. does not seem to go this length with regard to the established religion of his country, he teaches us to estimate its principal value as a mere political scheme,' (p. xv.) and pleads for its support, not so much because it is doctrinally right, as because it is uppermost.' (see also preface, p. xv.) His conformity appears to be completely philosophic. There certainly ought to be no quarrels,' says he, on account of religion. If subscription is the faw of the land, every one ought to subscribe.' (p. xv. note.) He farther intimates that every private sentiment or interpretation ought to be cancelled before the superior learning of the law.' If, however, the law is to be the supreme dictator of faith, if right be in favour of power,' (p. xx.) and if systems, because they are uppermost' by the patronage of civil rulers, are, for that C3 sole - sole reason, to obtain universal acquiescence, how absurd is it to address an Invocation to the light of Learning,' as Dr. C. does at the beginning of this work, and to raise doubts and perplexities by critical disquisitions? Our capacities are too dense to comprehend how, by these singular admissions, the church of England will be exalted, and the Romish and sectarian churches annihilated. (preface p. ix.) The Romanist will say, if absolute submission to authority be the true line of conduct, "You, Dr. C., owe your first duty to the mother-church, and not to the rebellious daughter;" while sectaries, the very naughty children of this rebellious daughter, will add that they have only followed their precious mother's example. Thus Catholics and Protestant dissenters will have the laugh against Dr. C.; and the Established Church will disclaim such an advocate, who, though he demands for her all the homage which is due to sacred truth, imprudently admits that she is a mass or heterogeneous compound of errors. (see p. xiv.) Indeed, this clergyman would have us to believe that, if the whole of the New Testament, with the exception only of the sermon on the Mount, and of the plainest parts of the narrative of the life of Christ, upon which the Evangelists are generally agreed, should at any time. be proved to be the fabrication of well-designing persons in very early ages, tinctured with nearly the sole knowledge of the. Old Testament, not in its original, but through the medium of the Chaldæo-Coptico-Alexandrine-Greek;-still is the Christian religion, still is the Church of England safe, (p. x. and xi.) This, however, is a kind of safety in which the clergy in general will not much exult; and when Dr, C. adds, But where is the church of Rome?' and vauntingly replies, in the opinion of all dispassionate persons, condemned to annihilation in the miserable corruption of apparent ignorance and detected artifice,'-can he want, to be told, that the falsifi cation of the greatest part of the New Testament must alike affect the doctrines of both churches? Surely he cannot seriously mean to assert that, as matters now stand, the Protestant any more than the Catholic clergy can avoid every thing that is in comprehensible.' (p. xi, note.) A curious argument in favour of the Established Church is set up at p. xx.viz., that all persons out of the pale of the established religion very greatly misinterpret the Bible:' but if 'every thing is to be avoided that is incomprehensible,' do not all within the pale of the established church, who are obe dient to her articles, very greatly misinterpret the Bible also? In short, we know not what to make of Dr. Clarke's assertion that the right of deciding on religious truth is in favour of power, unless he means covertly to maintain the policy among learned men men, of having one set of exoteric and another set of esoteric doctrines; to maintain a pretended zeal for public opinions, however erroneous; and to follow in private, unrestrained by the fetters of Established orthodoxy, the light of learning and philosophical inquiry. Yet surely he cannot mean to inculcate on the clergy lessons of the most consummate hypocrisy, to make them the mere tools of statesmen, to destroy in their minds the noble feeling of self-respect, and to render them despicable in the opinion of all enlightened men. We must not suspect Dr. C. of any such intention. Then his preface must be regarded as a species of masked irony; and we may conclude that he has hit on this mode of writing, in order to put at defiance those who would prosecute him for heterodoxy, as poor Mr. Francis Stone was prosecuted; and, by this new manceuvre, more effectually to banish from the Established Church those very opinions for which he ironically professes so high a veneration. Must he not be ironical when he calls on us to assent to the creeds and articles of the church, because they are a convenient bodge-podge of errors? The authors of them,' [the creeds and articles,] says he, have endeavoured to unite in one bond of religious consent error on all hands for the mutual good of all; the error of Origen, of Jerome, and of the Church of Rome, with the error of Calvin, of Luther, and of Grotius: for where is human perfection? Should the Archbishops and the Bishops think that Dr. C. has placed the church on something better than a rock, by giving her so many legs (of error) to support her, they are certainly bound in duty to recommend him for the next vacant mitre; which will doubtless become him as much as the triple-crown became Leo X., who, in one of his prayers to the Goddess of Error, gratefully exclaimed, "What a profitable fable is that of Jesus Christ!" Having endeavoured to struggle through the embarrassment into which we have been thrown by the truly singular preface to this work, we trust that the author will forgive our blundering, if we have blundered, and pardon a plainness of speaking which we can practice without having the fear of the Spiritual Court before our eyes; a fear which seems to have had a due effect on the Doctor, and to have driven him to an expedient by which, in the eye of the discerning, he developes his free sentiments, and at the same time saves his bacon-we mean, his tythe-pig. As a preliminary to the Hebrew criticisms, we are furnished with the following poetic Invocation to the Light of Learning: Progressive light of learning's ripening age! C4 Unveil Unveil to mortal eyes thine hidden store ; * Hare, Secker, Green, Lowth, Blayney, Newcome, went! Bid thou thy blaze, to sainted ‡ sires unknown, • Give him in measured numbers to expose Beneath her palmy shade Debórah's song; The strains of Hannah's joy, and David's plaintive tongue, To fix the sense of each divine record; Nothing having descended to us respecting the prosody of the antient Hebrew poets, we are left to conjecture as to the rules which they followed, and the metrical arrangement which *The immortal author of CRITICA SACRA, which his bigotted enemies termed Critica Audacia.' + The spoil of words and meanings left by barbarian interpreters ignorant of their value,' The fathers (of all, Dr. Jortin might have said, as well as) of the fourth and following centuries, considered as historians or recorders of facts, are valuable; considered as divines, are of very small use and importance for the most part,' Remarks on Eccles. Hist. vol. iii. p. 84. ed. oct. 1805.' The reputed instigators of the Greek, Latin, and English ver sions of the Hebrew. they they adopted. The parallelism is the best guide to us in our ignorance; and this, perhaps, as Dr. C. hints, may furnish rules for the restoration of corrupted Passages in Isaiah, and other prophetical writings.' He adds, if this should so appear, let it not be esteemed a small discovery, by which obscurities may be removed, and a right division of a sentence into metrical lines may exhibit a prophecy in its just features.' Keeping the idea of parallelism in view, a metrical arrangement differing from that of Bishop Lowth is recommended, on the following presumptive principles : Ist, That the metrical lines of the Hebrew writers never consisted of more than four terms or words; not excepting very small ones, such as and ; and admitting very rarely, if ever, two words, joined together by maccaph, as one : 2dly, That such lines most commonly have only three words, which often stand by themselves, and also are not seldom intermixed with those of four: and, 3dly, That both the lines of four words and those of three are very frequently succeeded by a line of only two words joined to them; usually by the conjunction 1, which comprehends an understood repetition of one or more of the terms of the proposition in the immediately preceding line; and sometimes also by the force of some term in that preceding line, the repetition of which term is to be understood as introducing the verse of two words. To preserve the integrity of these rules, it is further to be presumed; that words of repetition, or prosaical explanation, or of which ellipses are allowed by the language, or which do not materially affect the sense, such as לאמר את אשר כה כי אמר יהוה are, whenever the metre requires, to be considered as interpolations, and removed from the text. On the contrary, as some of these small words so often appear, they may, in many cases, when the metre de mands, and the sense allows, be judged to have fallen from the text, and be restored. It is hoped that this will not be deemed intemperate criticism.' This criticism may not be intemperate, but it is bold and hypothetical. Having followed, as nearly as he could, his own rules in the distribution of the sublime ode of Isaiah in the xivth chapter, Dr. Clarke subjoins a general remark on the ars poetica of the Hebrews: The poetic art of the Hebrews was so chastised by nature, that, grasping the sublime substantiality of things, they regarded not at all times the accurate insertion of words and syllables; whose powers were therefore not the less counted in the metre, and whose sense was not the less supplied by the context. A remarkable instance of this is in the particle not, whose force is not confined to that member of a sentence in which it is read, but is further extended; so that what |