PSALM XL-7-10. Bishop HORSLEY'S Translation. But mine ears hast thou opened; Burnt-offering and sin-offering thou demandest not: 8. Then said I, Lo! I come. In the roll of the book is written concerning me. I have delighted, O my God, to execute thy gracious will, 9. I have preached righteousness in the great congregation ; I have laid-no-restraint-upon my lips. 10. I have not kept thy righteousness hidden in my heart, Thy faithfulness and thy salvation I have proclaimed; I have not concealed thy tender love, And thy truth, in the great congregation.' The REVIEWER'S Translation. : 7. Sacrifice and offering thou hast no delight in 8. Then I said, Behold, I come! In the roll of the book it is written concerning me. 9. I have proclaimed righteousness in the great congregation.. O Jehovah, thou knowest. 10. Thy righteousness I have not concealed within my heart: Thy faithfulness and thy salvation I have spoken: I have not hid thy mercy and thy truth from the great congregation. The reader will perceive that in v. 7. we prefer the reading proposed by Pierce, of Exeter, strongly maintained by Kennicott, and warranted by the Septuagint, the Old Italic, the Æthiopic, and two manuscripts of the Syriac Version, and by the New Testament;- 18 for 8. The proper sense of is not to bore or dig, but to prepare, to acquire. PSALM XLV.-2-7. Bishop HORSLEY'S Translation. Therefore God hath blest thee for ever. 3. Warrior! gird thy sword upon thy thigh; 5. Thine arrows are sharpened, In the heart of the king's enemies. 6. Thy name, O God, is for ever and ever; A straight sceptre is the sceptre of thy royalty. 7. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated impiety; Therefore God hath anointed thee, Thy own God, with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.' The REVIEWER'S Translation. 2. Beauteous art thou, above the sons of men! Loveliness is diffused upon thy lips: Therefore God blesseth thee for ever. 3. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, Mighty in thy glory and thy majesty! 4. And in thy majesty proceed, Be borne forwards, on the word of truth and the meekness of righteousness; And thy right hand shall shew from thee awful things. 5. Thine arrows are sharpened; the peoples are beneath thee; They shall faint in heart who are the enemies of the King. 6. Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever! A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. 7. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness; Therefore God, thy God, hatlı anointed thee with the oil of joy above thy companions. In v. 6. 'name' must be a misprint for throne. PSALM CX.-Bishop HORSLEY'S Translation. 6 MESSIAH'S EXALTATION. 1. [Thus] spake Jehovah to my Lord, "Sit thou at my right hand, till I make 2. The sceptre of thy power Jehovah shall send abroad from Zion; Have thou dominion in the very midst of thine enemies. 3. With thee shall be offerings of free-will, In the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness, The dew of thy progeny is more than of the womb of the morning. • 4. Jehovah hath bound himself by an oath, and will not repent; Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedeck. 5. The Lord, at thy right hand, O Jehovah, Woundeth kings in the day of his wrath!' 'ORACULAR VOICE. 6. He shall strive with the heathen, filling all with slaughter, Wounding the head of mighty ones upon the earth. one. 7. He shall drink of the brook beside the way, Therefore shall he lift high his head.' The REVIEWER'S Translation. 1. Jehovah said to my Lord, "Sit thou at my right hand, 2. Jehovah out of Zion shall send the sceptre of thy strength: 3. Thy people [shall present] voluntary offerings, in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness: From the womb of the morning, thine shall be the dew of thy youth. 4. Jehovah hath sworn, and will not repent, "Thou art a Priest 5. "for ever, "After the constitution of Melchisedek." The Lord is on thy right hand: He smiteth kings in the day of his wrath; 6. He will execute judgement on the nations, filling them with the bodies of the slain; He smiteth the chieftain over a great country; 7. He will drink of the stream by the path, And will therefore [triumphantly] lift up his head. ક In verse 5. the Bishop inserts " O Jehovah," from conjecture. But we see no want of any emendation, still less of so bold a The clause is obviously an address to Jehovah, who had placed the Lord [Adonai] at his right hand, v. 1. and does not require any vocative to mark the transition from the third to the second person. The title ought to have intimated that all the Psalms are not included. Of the hundred and fifty, translations are given of only seventy-four, though of the rest some notice is taken in the notes. After having furnished our readers so amply with the means of judging for themselves, it is of little importance for us to interpose our own opinion. We acknowledge that we have been disappointed: but perhaps our expectations had been too highly excited. The work, considered generally, though affirmed to have been left ready for publication by the deceased prelate, seems to carry marks of haste and rashness, as well as of a subserviency to hypothesis. Its effect, we apprehend, will not be to raise the Bishop's character as a critic. But we are glad, upon the whole, that it is published. In judicious hands it may be turned to useful purposes; but it will not be a safe guide for the unlearned. Justice obliges us to express strong disapprobation at the extortionate price put upon these two thin and widely printed volumes. ART. III. The White Doe of Rylstone; or the Fate of the Nortons, a Poem. By William Wordsworth. 4to. pp. 162. Price lễ. 1s. London. Longman and Co. 1815. IT T is one of the worst effects resulting from the malignant abuse or the incompetent discharge of the office of the critic, that it has a tendency to render a man of superior genius unduly and proudly inattentive to the suggestions of his contemporaries. He is led to repay himself for the injustice with which he may have been assailed, by investing himself with the sullen, independent feeling of conscious merit. Mr. Wordsworth must feel that his character as a poet, has not been justly appreciated by his contemporaries; and this feeling, though operating in an amiable and ingenuous mind, has betrayed him into the language of arrogant egotism. He is conscious that he has been estimated by his faults rather than by his excellencies, the former only being on a level with the minds of his critics: for, in respect of the latter, he soars far above them. His poems have been tried by the eye and by the ear, for these, his critics could exercise with nicety; while with the plastic spirit that breathed in his numbers, they could hold no converse, for the only converse, to be held with a poet's mind, is that of sympathy. The feelings of the reader must be strung to a pitch in unison with those of the poet himself, or they will not vibrate in reply. That all persons who have a capacity for the pleasures and emotions of poetry, should derive equal gratification from the same class of compositions, must, we think, be regarded as neither desirable nor possible. Even among persons of real sensibility, the natural strength of imagination, the relative degree in which the faculties of the mind have received cultivation, as well as the moral habits of the individual, will very considerably modify the power of intellectual enjoyment. There are few minds in which the love of poetry does not form a sort of intellectual instinct; an instinct often blind and indiscriminating, yet having reference to something nobler than the wants of the physical being, and valuable as connected with a peculiar degree of moral sensibility, incident to the first development of the imagination and of the passions. The poetry which aims at popularity, must be adapted to that numerous class of readers, in whom this instinctive feeling exists, but who have stopped short at a very low degree of mental cultivation, or whose imagination has been neglected, amid the pursuits of after life. The rude idea which their infantile fancy first pictured, the broad features of romance, and the common objects of passion, will be the most likely to interest persons of this description; for poetry will engage them chiefly by carrying them back to the VOL. V. N.S. D age of poetry, when ideal objects were more nearly balanced with the realities of life. In their amusements, both individuals and nations long retain the feelings and characteristics of their childhood. They are the last traces of the correspondent periods of intellectual progress that disappear. In maturer life poetry is considered as an amusement, because it originated and expired, as a passion, in the season of amusement, and its higher purpose was never regarded. We shall perhaps make ourselves more clearly understood, by adverting to the success of Walter Scott's first production, as an illustration of these remarks. Throughout his poems, there is, perhaps, scarcely a sentiment expressed, or a feeling described, which the humblest intellect would find it difficult to understand, or the most common character fail to realize. He has not scrupled to employ all the common-place of poetry which first captivated our imagination, and so far as amusement is concerned, he has completely succeeded. In the vividness which his descriptions seem to impart to the faded colours of romance, in the feeling of novelty which he awakens by the most familiar images, and in the sprightliness and grace with which he tells the oft-told tale, we recognise the hand of no ordinary poet; although the materials of his composition are all ordinary. His "Lay of the Last Minstrel" is the happiest of his productions, and bears most evidently the glow of those feelings which the author brought warm from the study of the reliques of ancient minstrelsy. In imitating these, he seemed to have unconsciously transferred to himself the feelings of the ideal harper, while he transformed us into the children who listened to him. His subsequent poems have pleased as imitations of his first, but the same strain frequently repeated, palls at length upon the ear. Those who have but little taste for poetry, begin to be tired even of Mr. Scott's, and those who have taste, begin to ask for something better. Poetry, to be extensively popular, must, we have ventured to affirm, possess a universality of character. It is certain, however, that this sort of poetry cannot be of a very high order; and if there be no higher kind, the art must be considered as affording little that is adapted to minds of superior intelligence. Accordingly, this is the light in which it has been regarded by many persons, who have paid but little attention to the objects for which it is chiefly to be valued. As we ascend higher in the scale of intellectual cultivation, not only the class on which the poet's popularity depends, is diminished in point of numbers, but the varieties of character and habit which then become increasingly prominent, render it more difficult for an author to make himself intelligible to the feelings of each individual. Even if the pre-eminent character of his genius, |