pomote, in the first place, every thing that may contribute to the advancement of true Religion, and to favour every well-meant design, which has that great object in view. This consideration encourages me to beg leave humbly to approach your Majesty with this small offering, accompanied with the truest sentiments of duty, affection, and gratitude; and with the most fervent prayers to Almighty God for Your Majesty's happiness, private and public, temporal and eternal. Your Majesty's Most dutiful Subject, And most devoted Servant, R. LONDON. THE PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. THE design of the following translation of Isaiah, is not only to give an exact and faithful representation of the words and of the sense of the prophet, by adhering closely to the letter of the text, and treading as nearly as may be in his footsteps; but, moreover, to imitate the air and manner of the author, to express the form and fashion of the composition, and to give the English reader some notion of the peculiar turn and cast of the original. The latter part of this design coincides perfectly well with the former: it is indeed impossible to give a just idea of the prophet's manner of writing, otherwise than by a close literal version. And yet, though so many literal versions of this prophet have been given, as well of old as in later times; a just representation of his manner, and of the form of his composition, has never been attempted, or even thought of, by any translator, in any language, whether ancient or modern. Whatever of that kind has appeared in former translations (and much indeed must appear in every literal translation), has been rather the effect of chance than of design, of necessity than of study: for what room could there be for study or design in this case, or at least for success in it, when the translators themselves had but a very imperfect notion, an inadequate or even false idea, of the real character of the author as a writer; of the general nature, and of the peculiar form, of the composition? It has, I think, been universally understood, that the Prophecies of Isaiah are written in prose. The style, the thoughts, the images, the expressions, have been allowed to be poetical, and that in the highest degree: but that they are written in verse, in measure, or rhythm, or whatever it is that distinguishes, as poetry, the composition of those books of the Old Testament which are allowed to be poetical, such as Job, the Psalms, and the Proverbs, from the historical books, as mere prose; this has never been supposed, at least has not been at any time the prevailing opinion. The opinions of the learned concerning Hebrew verse have been various; their ideas of the nature of it vague, obscure, and imperfect: yet still there has been a general persuasion, that some books of the Old Testament are written in verse; but that the writings of the prophets are not of that number. The learned Vitringa says,* that Isaiah's composition has a sort of numbers, or measure; "esse orationem suis adstrictam numeris:" he means, that it has a kind of oratorial number, or measure, as he afterward explains it; and he quotes Scaliger as being of the same opinion, and as adding, that " however upon this account it could not rightly be called poetry."† About the beginning of the eighteenth century, Herman Von der Hardt, the Hardouin of Germany, attempted to reduce Joel's elegies, as he called them, to Iambic verse; and, consistently with his hypothesis, he affirmed, that the prophets wrote in verse. This is the only exception I meet with to the universality of the contrary opinion. It was looked upon as one of his paradoxes, and little attention was paid to it. But what was his success in making out Joel's Iambics, and in helping his readers to form in consequence a more just idea of the character of the prophetic style, I cannot say; having never seen his treatise on that subject. The Jews of early times were of the same opinion, that the books of the prophets are written in prose: as far as * Prolegom, in Iesaiam, p. 8. + Scaliger, Animadvers, in Chron. Eusebii, p. 6. we have any evidence of their judgment on this subject, Jerom* certainly speaks the sense of his Jewish preceptors as to this matter. Having written his translation of Isaiah from the Hebrew verity in Stichi, or lines divided according to the cola and commata, after the manner of verse; which wast often done in the prophetic writings, for the sake of perspicuity; he cautions his reader, "not to mistake it for metre; as if it were any thing like the Psalms, or the writings of Solomon; for it was nothing more than what was usual in the copies of the prose work of Demosthenes and Cicero." The later Jews have been uniformly of the same opinion; and the rest of the learned world seem to have taken it up on their authority, and have generally maintained it. But if there should appear a manifest conformity between the prophetical style, and that of the books supposed to be metrical; a conformity in every known part of the poetical character, which equally discriminates the prophetical and the metrical books from those acknowledged to be prose; it will be of use to trace out and to mark this conformity with all possible accuracy; to observe, how far the peculiar characteristics of each style coincide: and to see, whether the agreement between them be such as to induce us to conclude, that the poetical and the prophetical character of style and composition, though generally supposed to be different, yet are really one and the same. This I purpose to do in the following dissertation; and I the more readily embrace the present opportunity of resuming this subject, as what I have formerly written upon it seems to have met with the approbation of the learned. And here I shall endeavour to treat it more at large; to pursue it farther, and to a greater degree of minuteness; and to present it to the English reader in * Præf. in Transl. Esaiæ ex Heb. Veritate. + See Grabe, Proleg. in LXX. Intt. tom. i. cap. i. sect. 6. the easiest and most intelligible form that I am able to give it. The examples with which I shall illustrate it, shall be more numerous, and all (a very few excepted) different from those already given; that they may serve by way of supplement to that part of the former work, as well as of themselves to place the subject in the fullest and clearest light. Now, in order to make this comparison between the prophetical and the poetical books, it will be necessary, in the first place, to state the true character of the poetical or metrical style, to trace out carefully whatever plain signs or indications yet remain of metre, or rhythm, or whatever else it was, that constituted Hebrew verse; to separate the true, or at least the probable, from the manifestly false; and to give as clear and satisfactory an explanation of the matter as can now reasonably be expected, in the present imperfect state of the Hebrew language, and in a subject, which for near two thousand years has been involved in great 'obscurity, and only rendered still more obscure by the discordant opinions of the learned, and the various hypotheses which they have formed concerning it. The first and most manifest indication of verse in the Hebrew poetical books, presents itself in the acrostic or alphabetical poems: of which there happily remain many examples, and those of various kinds; so that we could not have hoped, or even wished, for more light of this sort to lead us on in the very entrance of our inquiry. The nature, or rather the form, of these poems is this: the poem consists of twenty-two lines, or of twenty-two systems of lines, or periods, or stanzas, according to the number of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; and every line, or every stanza, begins with each letter in its order, as it stands in the alphabet; that is, the first line, or first stanza, begins with &, the second with, and so on. This was certainly intended for the assistance of the memory; and was chiefly employed in |