VERSIFICATION. 



Of the fame kind is Noah's prophecy concerning his 

 fons (Gen. ix. 25 — 27.), Jacob's bleffing to the twelve 

 patriarchs (Gen. xlix. 2 — 27.), the fong of Mofes (Exod. 

 XV.) ; and the book of Job, of Pfalms, the fongs of Solo- 

 mon, Ifaiah, &c. afford ample proof not only of the ex- 

 iftence of vcrfe among the ancient Hebrews, but that in its 

 origin and earlier hiflory it was intimately connefted with 

 mufic ; that is, it was frequently fet to fome air or tune, 

 for vocal or inftrumental performance. 



Having thus pointed out the origin of verfe, at an early 

 period, among the Hebrews ; we fhall now endeavour to 

 trace its rife amongft other nations, affigning the precedence 

 chiefly to thofe where we are moil likely to find it in a 

 native, rather than in a borronued or ingrafted ftate. 



Tcho-Yong, the fixteenth emperor of the ninth period, 

 is the firlf on record among the Chinefe for his attachment 

 to the Mufes. Feu-Hi compofed verfes on the pifcatorial 

 art. Chin-Nong, a fucceeding emperoi', wrote verfes on 

 the fertility of the earth. Here we find what is frequently 

 remarkable in the early hiftory of the ancients, the office of 

 a chief or legiflator and bard or poet united in one perfon : 

 for many of the ancient poems were of a legiflative call, and 

 contained, in verfe, the mofl elTential parts of their rehgious, 

 moral, and political fyftems. The laft emperor whom we 

 find to have retained the poetical charafter was Chao-Hao. 

 After him the complex office feems to have feparated, as the 

 next bard we meet with is in the perfon of the philofopher 

 Confucius, who lived about fix hundred years before the 

 Chriftian era. (See Extraits des Hift. Chinois, and Du 

 Halde Hift. Chinois.) The Chinefe ode, therefore, tranf- 

 lated by fir William Jones, muft be of high antiquity, as 

 Confucius confidered it as very ancient in his time. About 

 one century before the fame epoch, Calidas, who has been 

 termed the Shakfpeare of India, wrote his poems. Such 

 being the ftate of oriental verfe at thefe early periods, it is 

 not more than we might expeft, that the Portuguefe mif- 

 fionaries ftiould meet with it on the coaft of Proper India, 

 where they found the natives poffefled of a fpecies of rude 

 verfe fet to mufic. They compofed, in the Malabar tongue, 

 a long ode, containing a hiftory of the Portuguefe prelate, 

 and a defcriptive detail of what had pafTed at his fynod. 

 This nation had preferved the ancient cuftom of tranfmitting 

 to pofterity, by this kind of poem, all the moft remarkable 

 events. (La Croze's Hift.) The miffionaries, who vifited 

 the oppofite coaft of Coromandel, give us fufficient proof 

 that the culture of verfe vpas not inconfiderable at that early 

 period. (Lettres Edifiantes, rec. xviii. p. 28.) With 

 refpedl to Egypt, the origin of the belles lettres is fo loft 

 in the antiquity of that famous kingdom, that we know no- 

 thing of the firft advances made there in verfe. We naturally 

 exped. that it met with the fate of its kindred fcience, 

 mufic ; which, in an early period, had all its forms un- 

 alterably fixed by law, and, therefore, improvement and 

 corruption were alike prevented. 



In adverting to thofe points of the poetic horizon, where 

 we ai-e moft hkely to defcry the early dawn of the art of 

 verfe, it is now incumbent on us to notice the Arabs, whofe 

 language, from its manifeft afBnity, unqueftionably had a 

 common origin with the Hebrew and Chaldaic ; and, confe- 

 quently,_is one of the moft ancient in the world. Count 

 Reviczki, however, was of opinion, that with refpeft to 

 the metrical art of the Arabs, it was an invention of a date 

 much later than that of the Hebrews, and that it afl'umed its 

 form only a fhort time before Mohammed. At the begin- 

 ning of the feventh century, the Arabic language was 

 brought to a high degree of perfeftion, by a fort of poetical 

 academy, that ufed to aftemble at ftated times in a place 

 called Ocadb, where every poet produced his beft compofi- 



tion, and met with the applaufe which it deferved The 

 moft excellent of thefe poems were tranfcribed in charafters 

 ot gold upon Egyptian paper, and hung up in the temple 

 ot Mecca, whence they were named mozahebat, or solden 

 and moallakat, or fufpended. The poems of this fort were 

 called cafieidas, or eclogues, feven of which are preferved in 

 our libraries, and are confidered as the fineft that were 

 vvritten before the time of Mohammed. Concerning the 

 Arabic and oriental verfe in general, count Reviczki re- 

 marks, that he " anticipates the mortification of all our 

 European poets, when they difcover that the oriental dia- 

 lefts had a greater variety of feet, and confequently the true 

 fcience of metre and profody." After the above-mentioned 

 period, however, the Mufes difl"eminated their gifts with a 

 prohhc hand, and many were fignalized with their favours 

 Amongft the reft, the caliph Almamon, fometimes termed 

 the Arabian Auguftus, for the protedion he aff'orded to the 

 belles lettres, bore an early and a diftinguiflied rank. We 

 have only to confult the .abbe Andres, in his luminous work 

 " DeU' Origme, de' progreffi e dello Stato attuale d'Ogni 

 Letteratura," to afl"nre ourfelves, on the authority of the 

 authentic manufcripts which he cites, that the Arabs had 

 now become pre-eminent for their cultivation of the Mufes. 

 Scoppa affirms that there is no exaggeration in the expref- 

 fion of the " Hiftoire de la Poefie Fran^aife," which, from 

 undoubted evidence, afferts " that there had been more 

 poets amongft the Arabs than in all the reft of the world." 

 Abilabba-Abdalh, fon of the caliph Motaz, recapitulates 

 the hves of an hundred and twenty-one poets of the firft 

 rank. Another work, entitled " Theatre des Poetes," 

 forms a hbrary of twenty-four volumes. Cafiri, the cel'e- 

 brated author of the " Bibhotheque Arabico-Hifpana de 

 I'Efcurial," does not hefitate to maintain that the excel, 

 lencies of the Arabian poets rofe as high in the fcale of 

 merit as thofe of the Greeks and Latins. 



In our endeavour to trace the hiftory of verfification 

 where it is more likely to be found in its native and unbor- 

 rowed ftate, we now turn to the northern nations of Europe 

 Tacitus mentions the verfe and hymns of the Germans, at a 

 time when that rough people inhabited the woods^ and 

 whilft their manners were yet favage. The Arthur of Teu- 

 tonic romance is the hero Dieterich of Berne, who lived 

 about the year 450 A.D. It is thought that his deeds of 

 high enterprife were fung in the ancient and barbarous verfes 

 fome of which were colleded by Charlemagne. The flight 

 of Theodoric to the Huns is related in an exceedingly 

 curioiis fragment, from the language and metre of which 

 we infer, it muft have been compofed in the eighth century 

 We learn from a Latin fragment, written by Du Chefne 

 that Lewis the Pious, fon of Charlemagne, being defirous' 

 that all his fubjeds fpeaking the Theotifc language fliould 

 be enabled to read the fcriptures, " ordered a Saxon, who 

 was reputed to be no vulgar bard, to make a poetical tranfla- 

 tion of the Old and New Teftament into the German 

 tongue." li ,s fuppofed by Eccard and the German phi- 

 lologifts, tnat the " Harmony of the four Evangelifts '' in 

 the Cottonian library, forms a part of this tranflltion. 

 Ottfried's Paraphrafe of the four Gofpels, made about the 

 year 870, aff'ords a proof that alliteration had fallen into dif- 

 ufe, and prefents us with the earheft fpecimen of German 

 rhyme. 



^ Nor is this early produdion uninterefting. The infant 

 Saviour IS defcribed as growing amongft men as a hly 

 amongft thorns. 



The vidory gained in the year 883 over the Normans, 



by Louis III., was recorded, as is ftated by a contemporary 



chronicle, " not only in our annals, but alfo in our national 



fongs." The Franks had cot yet adopted the language of 



S their 



