58 Oriental Literature. 



he was in possession of principles by which it might 

 be scanned, like any other poetry, and its rythm 

 discovered with the utmost precision. He sup- 

 posed that in Hebrew poetry all the feet consist of 

 two syllables; that no regard is to be paid to the 

 quantity of the syllables; that when the number of 

 syllables is even, the verse is Trochaic, and the ac- 

 cent to be placed on the first; but that when 

 the number is odd, the verse is to be accounted 

 Iambic, and the accent to be placed on the second 

 syllable; that the periods generally consist of two 

 Verses, often of three or four, and sometimes of a 

 greater number; that verses of the same period, 

 with few exceptions, are of the same kind; that 

 the Trochaic verses, for the most part, agree in 

 the number of feet, but that to this rule there are 

 a few exceptions; that in the Iambic verses the 

 feet are in general unequal, though in some in- 

 stances it is found to be otherwise. To accom- 

 modate the sacred text to these doctrines, he in- 

 dulged in many conjectures and fancied emen- 

 dations, which were altogether capricious and 

 unwarrantable/ This hypothesis was generally 

 considered, by the most judicious critics, as a 

 fanciful and unfounded speculation. The Bishop's 

 doctrine was, however, adopted by Dr. Thomas 

 Edwards, of Great-Britain, a contemporary He- 

 brew scholar of considerable reputation. It was 

 also adopted and carried to a still greater length* 

 by Mr. William Green, an English clergyman, 

 in his metrical version of the Psalms/ But at the 

 close of the century, it is believed, this doctrine 



c Oomarus, a learned Hebraist of Holland, in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, invented and taught an hypothesis concerning Hebrew Metre, some- 

 what resembling that of Bishop Hare, but not attended with so many ar- 

 bitrary and conjectural emendations of the sacred text. 



d A New Translation of the Psalms from the Original Hebrew. By Wll' 

 Li AH Green, M. A. Rector of Hardingham, Norfolk, cvo. 1 763. 



