i8 77 ] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 409 



which all these fragments find their harmony. Concen 

 trating this peculiar instinct on the historical monuments 

 of the religion of revelation, Ewald has enriched all parts 

 of Old Testament science with a multitude of fresh and 

 original views, and has everywhere struck out paths in 

 which even those scholars are compelled to walk who have 

 least sympathy with the peculiar character of his genius. 

 With these rare powers, Ewald it must be admitted unites 

 corresponding defects, which have greatly limited his 

 influence and often imperil the accuracy of his conclusions. 

 As his historical inductions are intuitive rather than 

 reasoned out, he lacks the power of verifying his results. 

 His arguments are always constructive, and he is seldom 

 able to acquiesce in a negative result, or to admit a doubt 

 as to the objective truth of a theory that satisfies his 

 subjective sense of harmony. But as a constructive critic 

 he has no equal, and many scholars who ungenerously 

 depreciate his services to biblical science are themselves 

 doing little more than laboriously check off, and verify 

 or reject by the usual apparatus of historical induction, 

 the wealth of results, theories, and suggestions which 

 Ewald has lavished upon the world of science. 



Since Herder s unfinished essay, only one considerable 

 attempt has been made to construct a comprehensive 

 history of Hebrew poetry. And though the late Professor 

 Meier was a man of unquestionable aesthetic capacity, and 

 though in Germany his work has drawn forth the interest 

 of many who are not theologians by profession, its merits 

 are not such as to forbid the expression of the opinion 

 that even now many essential points of Hebrew history, 

 and many questions as to the date of the Hebrew records 

 remain so obscure that any such work, however interesting 

 and instructive, must either fall in great measure into the 

 shape of detached essays, or must assert the form of 

 historical continuity by bold guesses and large assumptions. 

 The character of the different epochs of Hebrew literature 

 is gradually growing clear to us, and some of the greatest 



