i8 7 7] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 405 



may be doubted whether the Prcelectiones themselves have 

 not been more read in Germany than in England. Herder, 

 when he gave to the world his Geist der ebraischen Poesie 

 the book which marks the next decided step in the progress 

 of our subject could assume that the prelections of the 

 English bishop were familiar to all his readers. 1 



The very title of Herder s book indicates a vast advance 

 on his predecessor. While Lowth busies himself with the 

 art of Hebrew poetry, the theologian of Weimar expressly 

 treats of its spirit. If the former professed only to com 

 mend a choice poetry to students of polite letters (p. 22), 

 the latter seeks to introduce his readers, through the 

 aesthetic form, into the inmost spirit of the Old Testament. 

 His pages glow with an enthusiasm which is not the cold 

 admiration of an indifferent critic, but the warmth of a 

 man to whose heart the religious meaning of the Bible 

 comes home with personal force. Thus Herder displays 

 much more fully than Lowth the power to enter into the 

 soul of the Old Testament writers which is essential to 

 thorough criticism, and he recognises with wonderful 

 keenness many of the unique features that separate the 

 poetry of the Hebrews from that of the western nations. 

 Lowth proposed to survey the streams of sacred poetry, 

 without ascending to the mysterious source. Herder s 

 great strength lies in his demonstration of the way in 

 which the noble poetry of Israel gushes forth with natural 

 unconstrained force from the depths of a spirit touched 

 with divinely inspired emotion. Lowth finds in the Bible 

 a certain mass of poetical material, and says : &quot; I desire 

 to estimate the sublimity and other virtues of this litera 

 ture i.e. its power to affect men s minds, a power that will 

 be proportional to its conformity to the true rules of 

 poetic art.&quot; 2 Nay, says Herder, the true power of 

 poetry is that it speaks from the heart and to the heart. 

 True criticism is not the classification of poetic effects 

 according to the principles of rhetoric, but the unfolding of 



1 Vol. i. p. 3. z Pral. ii. p. 19. 



