12 



Ere the rifing fun beams break, 

 I the lofty mountain feek ; 

 Watch the new light's earliefl; ray. 

 Chafing the dark clouds away. 



2. 



Spirit hear ! When comes the night. 

 Silver moon, oh lend thy light ! 

 To my tent oh fpeed my way, 

 I.aden with the hunter's prey 1 



Even in the liquid and melodious Italian, a language as fmooth and 

 mufical as the Huronic is harfla and nigged, Le Clerc fliews us, by throw- 

 ing the verfe Into the order of profe, you (hall not be able to deteft the 

 rhime. And this argument we fliall prefently fee applies yet more ftrong- 

 ly to the parent poetry, that has been filent above two thoufand years, 

 " ab annis plus bis mille intermortua," as Lowth has it ; and whofe true 

 enunciation the feventy themfelves had loft, three hundred years before 

 the coming of the Meffias. Who then (hall reftrain the inftabiiity of 

 language, who fliall arreft its fugacioufnefs? Who, that confiders the un- 

 certainty of all human things, never at a ftay, expefts, that words fliall 

 be exempted from the general lot ? Shall words be lefs fleeting than the 

 things they reprefent, and of which they are but the fign ? Their mutatr- 

 ons fliall be various as the changes of other mortal things : and the vowels, 

 or tones of language, fliall in their very nature be the firft to depart. 

 The feventy, learned as they were, and felefted, for their fuperior erudi- 

 tion and judgment, have fallen into the common errors of humanity. 

 The very mode, that was prefcribed to enfure their accuracy, proved the 

 fource of their inaccuracies : for, being chofen out of the feveral tribes^ 

 each differing from its neighbour tribe in its refpeftive pronunciation of 

 the vowels, or elements of the language, they have more than once 

 juftled one another : each tribe, by enunciating the vowels in its own way, 

 and according to its own dialed, (for although the Chaldee was but a 



dialed 



