17 



Though many learned rabbies had endeavoured to preferve or 

 illuflrate the facred text, while the Chriftian church flept in finful and 

 flothful ignorance, yet it was not till about the fifteenth century, that 

 the Hebrew became an objeft of claffical regard : foon after this period 

 we find Abarbanel, the learned jew, better known by the name of 

 Abrabanel, or Abravanel, writing his differtation on the minor prophets ; 

 a work which I have not feen, but in which, it feems, the author 

 lays down rhime as a principle, or primary canon of Hebraic poetry. 

 Previous to Abarbanel, I do not know of any writer who has noticed 

 the rhimes of the facred text ; although the rhimes of his brother rab- 

 bies, who learned theirs of the Arabians, are fufficiently numerous. 

 Indeed, Le Clerc himfelf, whofe learning and obfervation fcarcely any 

 thing efcaped, does not feem to have been confcious that Abarbanel 

 had ever wTitten a word on the fubjeft; not fo much as naming 

 him, he only obferves generally that later critics, fuch as BuxtorfF, the 

 father, in his Profodia, and Theodore Herbert in his de Poeticd He- 

 braicd, and Ferrand, in his Commentary on the Pfalms, with fome, 

 perhaps, of lefs note, had here and there difcovered rhimes in the He- 

 brew poetry, and flightly mentioned them, but that they had all im- 

 puted them to accident : this, therefore, being pretty much the cafe, 

 we mud not be furprized to find the learned Dr. Lowth, and other 

 Hebrew fcholars, oppofing the new doftrine, as a fort of poetic herely, 

 whofe very novelty had been fufficient to provoke the thunders of 

 orthodoxy. Of Abarbanel's differtation, however, the doftor thus deli, 

 vers himfelf, " Abarbanel tres Itatuit fpecies canticorum. Prima eft 

 " rythmica, five o^wTEAcmMis conftans ; id ufu apud recentiores Hebrasos, 

 " qui ab Arabibus didicerunt, fed facris fcriptoribus plane ignota." {Prai. 

 18. in Annot, ) Abarbanel, then, for ought that appears to the contrary, was 

 the lirft that had noted the rhimes of the Hebrew poetry : and it is fomewhat 

 extraordinary, that he, Le Clerc, Garofalo, Fourmont, and other learned 

 champions, fhould difcover in it what we are as pofitively affured is not 

 there to be found : and juft as extraordinary, that if the Rhimes are there 



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