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never-setting sun. To build our literature, and found our schemes of literary education, primarily on the Scriptures, seems then to be the dictate of sound judgment and pure taste. It conforms to that wise maxim, equally just in theory and safe in practice, that genius will always produce more admirable works, the richer and more various, the nobler and more beautiful the materials. A remarkable illustration of the supreme excellence of the Scriptures is found in the fact, that they are the only book, whose beauties cannot be destroyed by the worst translation. And such is the truth only because theirs are emphatically THE BEAUTIES

THOUGHT

OF

How common is the boast, for it never has been, and never will be, the lamentation of the classic devotee, that no translator can rival the beauties of the classics.* And this, so far as the remark is just, arises from the fact, that those beauties consist to a vast extent of the 'curiosa

felicitas' of expression, of the beauties of style. That the Greeks derived much from the original fountain of Hebrew Literature, through the medium of tradition, and of intercourse by traveling and commerce, we cannot doubt. Those elements, however, in the new forms and combinations, invented by Grecian genius, appear disfigured and darkened: for, if we compare them with the Bible, we feel their vast inferiority, and yet we acknowledge cheerfully that the pure, the simple, and the grand of Hebrew Literature, as beheld in its Grecian forms, have never lost

"All their original brightness, nor appear

Less than Archangel ruined, and th' excess
Of Glory obscured."

Grecian and Roman Literature are indeed two of the forms, as Persian and Arabian, Troubadour, Italian and Spanish are others, in which the principles of universal Literature are embodied. Those principles are found in their primitive beauty, energy and purity, only in the Scriptures. These we are accustomed to speak of, as Hebrew and Christian Literature, or perhaps more properly, as the fountains or text-books. With the exception, however, of allusions and illustrations, drawn from manners and customs, scenery and Jewish peculiarities, they are appropriately the literature of no age and of no country, but of all ages and all countries.

* Note E.

Mademoiselle Gournay expressed a wish that the language of Ronsard might never die; and La Harpe has styled Racine, “le modéle eternel de la poesie Françoise." Let them live to the end of time; and yet neither can ever be the language or the model of the world. This glorious destiny is the privilege only of the Bible.

We re

There is one point of view, in which we love to contemplate the Scriptures, and to us at least, it is new. gard them as furnishing the desideratum of the Critic, so anxiously and hitherto so vainly sought, THE STANDARD OF TASTE; because they are the only standard of immortal, allpervading, immutable THOUGHT. Thought is the only fountain of taste, the only parent of style. To cultivate taste and style, as though they were independent of thought, is too much the error of our schemes of literary education and it has arisen to a vast extent, from that idolatrous admiration of the Classics, so happily reproved by Perrault. "La docte antiquité fut toujours vénérable, Je ne la trouve pas cependant adorable."

*

What, indeed, is taste, rightly considered, but the art of judging correctly of the forms and modes, in which thought is expressed? And what is style, but those forms and modes? Thought is the living soul, invisible, intangible: style is the speaking features of the human countenance divine. This soul of the Scriptures, is eternal, universal, supreme, in its original beauty, power and purity. But this soul of Classic Literature has fled forever. The Bible then affords the only true, unchangeable standard of thought. And if we look to style, the Bible is equally preeminent. Perspicuity, says Aristotle, is the great excellence of the poetic dialect, and Michaelis has said the same of oratory. But, in truth, perspicuity is the great excellence of every style; and Cowley was right when he condemned Persius, as not a good poet, because of his obscurity. Now, the Scripture style is remarkable for simplicity, purity, clearness: and, as Lowth remarks, the sententious is the essence of Hebrew Poetry. Here then are the real elements of all style. It may indeed be safely asserted, that if Christian writers had formed themselves more upon the Scripture standard of thought and

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style, and less after the Classic model, we should now have a nobler order of thought, a better style. And whenever the Bible shall be the text-book of duty and usefulness, and the pattern of taste and style, Literature will become more valuable and dignified, more chaste and lovely.

We regard the Bible as illustrating most happily, and indeed as establishing, in our opinion at least, that usefulness is the only fundamental, genuine standard of taste. We have said that the beauties of the Bible are essentially the beauties of thought: their dress is the pure, the artless, yet graceful and lovely robes of Angel forms. In the Scriptures, all is usefulness, grand and comprehensive in the scheme, delicate and accurate in the details; with all the beauty of coloring, and all the fascination of simplicity. Usefulness here is inseparable from beauty: that is the end, this the means. It is only to such a Standard of Taste, that we can apply the happy thought of Ariosto,

"Non è un sì bello in tante altre persone;
Natura il fece, e poi ruppe la stampa."

The mould is indeed broken; since never again shall the sacred legislator, prophet and apostle, give us a divine standard of Duty and Usefulness, of thought and reasoning, of eloquence, poetry, taste, and style.

Let us then prize the Scriptures, not merely as the richest treasure-house of thought; but as the unerring standard of taste. Let us add to them, what indeed ought ever to be inseparable from them, the study of the human heart and of the natural world; and we shall have no reason to imitate or to envy the forms or the style of Grecian and Roman models. Let us look for thought preeminently in the Bible. There, let us seek the most energetic, simple, perspicuous modes of expressing it. Let us contemplate the sublimity and loveliness of the natural world, not in the classic page, but as Claude, and Thomson, and Gainsborough did, beside the river bank, on the mountain, and in the forest. Let us study the human heart, in all its varieties of good and evil, of beauty and deformity, not in Grecian and Roman authors, but in the world of living men. With such materials and such a standard, we feel assured that a literature, founded upon and inspired by them, however justly it may respect the authors of Greece and Rome, will be far above the courtly humility of Statius,

"Nec tu divinam Eneida tenta,

Sed longè sequere et vestigia semper adora.”

The Bible has hitherto influenced but little the literature of modern Europe; nor do we need a stronger illustration of the fact, in regard to English Literature, than that Paradise Lost, the poem of poems, the great Scripture Epic, is untaught in schools or colleges. And yet the Iliad and Æneid, far inferior as poetry, pernicious in principles and sentiments, in morals and manners, are the companions of the boy and the youth. But the Bible is destined to exercise a far greater influence over the Literature of future ages, than it has over that of the past or the present. Nations will hereafter arise, of whose Literature the Bible will be, not only the cornerstone, but the broad and deep foundation. What that Literature shall be, in all its height, breadth, and depth, time only can show. But if we may venture to give at least one individual opinion, we hesitate not to express the firm belief, that it will not only exceed all the varieties, that have hitherto existed, in its conformity to the sole standard of duty and usefulness; but will surpass them, in all that is most rich and simple, most noble and beautiful. Our settled judgment is, that many a people will rear up for themselves a Literature of a higher order, with the Bible only as their fountain of thought, taste and style, than they ever could, with the whole casket of Grecian and Roman jewels. Does any one esteem the opinion, idle or extravagant? We would ask him then to point us to the origin of Grecian Literature. He can discover no primitive standard there, at all comparable to the Bible. And if Greece, without models, could build such a structure, as she has transmitted to us, from the imperfect materials, which she possessed, does it require a martyr's faith, to believe that with vast advantages over her, Greece shall be excelled, as far as she has surpassed the fame of Rome?

To us, it has always appeared an astonishing fact, that the Christian Fathers should have subjected themselves, and the whole Christian Church, to the influence of Pagan Literature, as extensively as they did. The meat, in the Bithynian shambles, often remained unsold, as Pliny tells us; because the Christians would not purchase what had been offered to idols. And yet the Bishops and Pastors of their Church, sought in the Eastern and Western Philosophy, and in the history, eloquence and poetry of Greece and Rome,

those thoughts and that standard, which were alien to the spirit and objects of the Scriptures. When Alexander placed the Iliad, with his sword, under his pillow, and the Emperor Ælius Verus did the like with Ovid's Art of Love, we perceive an exact conformity with the warlike character of the one, and the licentious habits of the other. But when we find that Chrysostom slept with Aristophanes under his head, we are filled with surprise, indignation and sorrow. Had the Scriptures been made inflexibly the basis of Education and Literature, the Christian Church would never have been so disgracefully corrupted and deformed by heathen influences; nor should we have ever recognized in its character such striking proofs of the empire of the oriental and western pagan literature. That the New Testament was in Greek, and that Greek and Latin were the living languages of the Roman Dominions, will certainly account, in a great measure, for this phenomenon. But, when we consider that Christianity was actually engaged for centuries, in a war of extermination, with Heathenism, in all its forms, as well as in its spirit, this familiarity and good understanding between the Literature of each, must appear extraordinary. It is with us a subject of astonishment and regret, that the talented and the learned, in the early Christian Church, did not employ themselves steadfastly and zealously from age to age, in founding and perfecting a complete scheme of Christian education; so as to supersede gradually, if not at once, the use of the Greek and Roman Classics. A noble example was set by Gregory Nazianzen, who composed a number of Poems, as a substitute for the classics, when the Apostate Julian forbade the study of these by christian youth; but the death of Julian restored the ascendancy of Pagan Literature. Had they loved the practical, moral improvement of the Church more, and polemical divinity less, we believe that much of the calamity and dishonor, which befel that church, and her literature and education, would have been avoided. Then if the age of the Reformation must have come, Religion would only have needed the dexterous hand, which sets the broken bone, not the intrepid skill of the surgeon, who cuts away the cancer or amputates the shattered limb.

We have said that the Scriptures have exercised but little influence over Modern Literature. Its elements must be sought in Classic Authors; in the Mythology of the

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