write in conjunction, if the reader will attentively compare many pa pers which are certainly the respective productions of Steele and Addison, he will meet with a surprizing similarity of humour. In many instances Steele imitates what has been since called the Addisonian manner with a closeness which would have rendered it very difficult to assign the papers to their proper authors, if we had been left without any authority but a supposed knowledge of the style. Of this happy coincidence of talent, there are many striking instances in the Spectator, to which we shall have occasion to advert hereafter.' Vol. i. P. lvi.

Of the other authors to whom the Tatler is indebted, Swift undoubtedly takes the first place; and Mr. Chalmers's remarks on his character and conduct, though not very lenient, are just. We think, with him, that Swift's religion was equivocal; and the remarks on Swift's life, by Sheridan, who wishes to raise his subject beyond its proper bearing, are peculiarly judicious. Mr. John Hughes; Mr. W. Harrison, author of the Medicine, a Tale;' Mr. Twisden, author of the humourous Genealogy of the Family of the Staffs: Mr. Congreve, author of the Character of Aspasia; Mr. Fuller, to whom the paper on Gluttony is attributed; and Mr. James Greenwood, to whom the Tatler is indebted for the letter on Language, Education, &c. are next noticed-alas, how small a catalogue! Many were the authors of particular letters and of smaller communications; but these are sunk in eternal oblivion. Such is the perishable state of literary fame! Some remarks on the imitators of Steele and the spurious Tatlers follow, but are not of great importance. The edition of 1786, in crown octavo, is followed; and the notes are almost exclusively those of that edition. Several are, however, omitted, particularly those light, though to us entertaining, disquisitions respecting the probable author of a doubtful paper; and the numerous appropriate advertisements, preserved at the end. To literary gossips, and we own the failing, these are truly interesting. They show what were the objects that attracted attention, who the men that had attained popularity, what were the works sought after with avidity and read with eagerness. They are such as could not at this time be traced, and prove the insecure foundation of the fame built on the popularis aura.

On the whole, the Tatler, on a careful perusal, will be found to merit a much greater share of applause than it has of late received. The disquisitions, though short, are often interesting. Steele supports his varied characters with peculiar skill and discrimination. His humour is light and delicate; his language, if not at first, at least after his connexion with Addison, correct and elegant; in the earlier papers, though less accurate, perhaps more appropriate and characteristic. It afterwards loses it sharpness by refinement, and wears the polished surface of his coadjutor.

As we find the extent to which garrula senectus, the recol lection of former pleasures and of our early inquiries, has led us, will prevent our examining the preface to the Spectator, we shall only add to this article, by noticing the ornaments of the present edition. Of the elegant neatness of the printing, we have already spoken.

To the first and second volumes, the first of the Tatler, the heads of Steele and Swift are prefixed; to the sixth and seventh, the first of the Spectator, those of Addison and Hughes. 'The ornaments of the Guardian are Pope and Berkeley; of the Rambler, of course, Johnson; and of the Adventurer, Dr. Hawkesworth and Dr. Warton. The volumes that contain 'the World' have the appropriate frontispieces of Moore, lord Chesterfield, and Horace Walpole-for we cannot recognise him by his title. Colman and Thornton decorate the Connoisseur;' T. Warton-we trust, not satyrically-the IDLER; Mackenzie, the Mirror; and Cumberland, the Observer? The Lounger has no decoration. On the whole, we may repeat that the present collection appears to us very interesting. The works themselves have been stamped by the approbation of succeeding years and varied tastes; the form is well accommodated to readers of different descriptions, and the ornaments selected with judgement and executed with skill. We shall return to it soon with great satisfaction.

(To be continued.)

ART. VIII.-Song of Songs: or, Sacred Idyls. Translated from the original Hebrew, with Notes critical and explanatory. By John Mason Good. 8vo. 7s. 6d. Boards. Kearsley. 1803.

WHOEVER considers the nature of the Hebrew poetry, as essentially differing from every other in most of its constituent. principles, the necessary obscurity attached to it from its antiquity, and the little acquaintance we have with Oriental manners in private life, or the interior of the harem, as well as of the objects of allusion in nature and art, will not wonder that so much labour has been bestowed on the subject before us; nor, when we add that the composition is unique, with hitherto so little success. The failure of former attempts is, however, of use to every new adventurer, as their wrecks serve for beacons to those who come after.

Mr. Good begins with observing that the Song of Songs has hitherto been generally regarded as one continued and individual poem; either as an epithalamium, accompanied in its recitation with appropriate music, or else as a regular drama, divi

sible, and at first clearly divided, into distinct acts or parts; and adds, that, since the commentary of the learned and elegant Bossuet upon this admirable pastoral--and, more especially, by that excellent critic, the late bishop Lowth-the latter opinion has more generally prevailed.' The poem has, in consequence, been arranged into seven parts, each being appropriated to a distinct day in the bridal week, for to such a period of time the bridal celebration extended.

From these authorities, however, our translator deviates; and, after having stated his objections, from the want of con nexion necessary to such a composition, from the various openings and conclusions occurring in it, and from its having nei ther fable nor action, involution nor catastrophe, beginning, middle, nor end, finds himself compelled to pronounce it imperfect, as a drama, and proceeds to offer a different decision. Accordingly, he regards the whole

-as a collection of distinct idyls upon one common subject—and that the loves of the Hebrew monarch and his fair bride: and it has afforded me peculiar pleasure to observe, from a passage I have accidentally met with in the writings of sir William Jones, long since the composition of the present work, that some such opinion was entertained by this illustrious scholar. In forming this arrangement, I have followed no other guide than what has appeared to me the obvious in tention of the sacred bard himself: I have confined myself to soliloquy where the speaker gives no evident proofs of a companion, and I have introduced dialogue where the responses are obvious. I have finished the idyl where the subject seems naturally to close, and I have recom. menced it where a new subject is introduced. Thus divided into a multitude of little detached poems, I trust that many of the obscurities which have hitherto overshadowed this unrivalled relique of the eastern pastoral have vanished completely, and that the ancient Hebrews will be found to possess a poet who, independently of the sublimity of any concealed and allegorical meaning, may rival the best productions of Theocritus, Bion, or Virgil, as to the literal beauties with which every verse overflows.' P. iv.

These exquisite amorets, as they are styled by Mr. Good, he conjectures to have been part of the one thousand and five songs by the same royal author #, and considers this collection, under the title of generally rendered THE SONG OF SONGS, but which more literally signifies a song of the songs -to be a distinct set or diwan, a class of poetry, which among the Orientals, he observes, still branches into two divisions; one, in which the most rigid attention is paid to alphabetic arrangement and similarity of rhymes, and another, in which this alphabetic bondage is less strictly adhered to. In the di

* Mr. Good has added a long note, to vindicate his alteration of the name Salomon in English, to Soloman: but admitting what we are not convinced of the propriety of the change, it avails little, unless the analogy were universally followed,

wans of the Hebrews, he traces a similar division; and, while he refers the alphabetic psalms, as they are denominated, to the former, he arranges the Song of Songs under the latter.

We coincide in what follows-viz. that the word song, as here applied, may be illustrated, by the comparison of Teman, the Arabian poet, who resembled the arrangement of thoughts in verse to a string of pearls prepared for the neck of a beautiful woman; and, from the Persian Anacreon, Hafiz, who, in conformity to the same idea, asserts, in the last stanza of one of his most beautiful gazels, that he has now strung his pearls, and that they possess the lustre and beauty of the stars. We conceive, accordingly, that this poetic garland is not to be considered as an entire drama, distributed into distinct acts, but into short amatory poems, delivered, not by chorusses of interlocutory characters, but by youths and virgins reciting them in the manner of idyls or pastorals: therefore, that neither unity of argument and character, nor of time and place, are to be expected, but distinct compositions of the same class, the scene being one while in the city, and at another in the country, and the season either spring or autumn.

The mystic import of this book is admitted by Mr. Good, though he supposes it to have been literally founded on fact. He offers a brief ezplanation of the former; and endeavours, though not entirely to our satisfaction, to develope the latter. Whatever could be derived from Asiatic poesy, through the medium of sir William Jones, for the illustration of both, has been carefully selected and pertinently applied.

In respect to the style of translation, the following observations discover both judgement and taste.

• No translator I have yet met with has nevertheless rendered the Song of Songs with all the delicacy of diction to which the original is fairly entitled. The chief error of all of them results from their having uniformly given verbal renderings of Hebrew terms and idioms, which ought merely to have been translated equivalently: a method by which any language in the world, when interpreted into another, may not only occasionally convey a meaning altogether different from what the author intended, but convert a term or phrase of perfect purity and delicacy in its original import, into one altogether indelicate and unchaste. This observation applies particularly to the organs of the human body; most of which independently of their literal sense, which is capable of univocal interpretation, have a metaphoric import that cannot be communicated by any literal version whatever. Thus among the Hebrews the liver (2) as well as the heart was supposed to be the seat of love and delight; and in Psalm xvi. 9" My heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth," as it occurs in our common version, is literally "My heart is glad and my liver rejoiceth." Yet who could behold such an interpretation without a smile? or, who, if he were to behold it, would admit that the original was fairly translated? Among

ourselves, in like manner, the spleen is supposed to be the region of disappointment and melancholy. But were a Jew to be told in his own. tongue, that the inimitable Cowper had long labored under the spleen, be would be ignorant of the meaning of his interpreter; and, when at length informed of it, might justly tell him, that although he had literally rendered the words, he had by no means conveyed the idea; and, consequently, that he had travestied rather than translated. Thus again the ancient Hebrews used the term navel (w) in some such sense as we employ that of loins to describe the whole or the chief part of the waist: but, as, in our own language, they are never synony mous expressions, whenever the latter is intended by the former, instead of adopting the literal term natel, we should employ that of waist in its figurative meaning. What is the reader to understand by the fol lowing verse in its common acceptation (Sol. Songs, vii. 2)-"Thy NAVEL is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor?" None of our commentators, through inattention to this remark, have hitherto been able to explain it and it has consequently fallen into the list of those phraseologies in this inimitable poem which a translator, to adopt the language of a modern interpreter-non èspera nitescere posse. But exchanging the term navel for waist, to which the Hebrew substantive

equally applies as a synecdoche, and recalling to mind the exquisite elegance with which the ancients manufactured their vases, and the supreme blessing with which they regarded fertility, how obvious is the compliment of the royal bridegroom to his bride, as well as how delicate the language in which it is conveyed:

Thy waist is a well-turned goblet

Replete with the luscious' fluid.

But the Hebrew word or w, though in its stricter acceptation it imply the navel, is a term of far more refinement than its English synonym, as designating other ideas even independently of the waist; for it imports also a coil, a cord, a string, a musical string; and hence a song or canticle, in which sense it is employed by Soloman himself as the title of the very poem before us.

There are lights and shades in all languages, as well as in all landscapes; and the translator who has taste enough to seize and apply them will never suffer an indelicacy which does not exist in his original to enter into his copy. I have here enumerated but one example of ideas incorrectly transfused into our common versions: the reader will find many others pointed out in the progress of the appended notes. He will see that the term belly should in one or two instances have been rendered bosom; that in others it is used synecdochally for the frame at large; and, consequently, that this latter term must convey a more precise translation of it, because it best preserves the delicacy of the original. The word thigh is by a similar figure occa sionally employed for limb in general: and in every such case is better exchanged for it, though in the Hebrew it is a term sufficiently select. In like manner the Arabic (Mr. Good should rather have said Persic) which literally imports an arched club, and is metaphorically applied by the poets to the eyebrow of the fair from its supposed