172 



On the Mystical Poetry of 



the Romans imitated the Greeks. The Hindus defcribe the fame covenant? 

 imder the figurative notion, fo finely expreffed by Isaiah, of a nuptial 

 contract; for considering God in the three characters of Creator, Regenera- 

 tor and Preferver, and fuppofing the power of Preservation and Benevolence 

 to have become incarnate in the perfon of Crishna, they reprefent him 

 as married to Ra'dha', a word lignifying atonement, pacification, or Satisfac- 

 tion, but applied allegorically to the foul of man, or rather to the whole of- 

 femblage of created fouls', between whom and the benevolent creator they 

 fuppofe that reciprocal love, which Barrow defcribes with a glow of 

 expreiTion perfectly oriental, and which our moil orthodox theologians be- 

 lieve to have been myiticaily Jhadowed in the fong of Solomon, while 

 they admit, that; in a literal fenfe, it is an epithalamium on the marriage of 

 the fapient king with the princefs- of Egypt. The very learned a: thor of 

 the prelections on iacred poetry declared h : s opinion, that the canticles 

 were founded on historical truth, but involved' an allegory of that fort,. 

 which he named myftical ; and the beautiful poem on the loves of 

 Laili and Majnun by the inimitable Niza'mi (to fay nothing of other- 

 poems on the fame fubjecV) is indifputably built on true hiftory, yet 

 avowedly allegorical and myiterious ; for the introduction to it is a con- 

 tinued rapture on divine love ; and the name of Laili feems to be ufed in; 

 the MafncLvi and the odes of Hafiz for the omniprefent fpiritof God. 



It has been made a queftion, whether the poems of Hafiz mull: be 

 taken in a literal or in a figurative fenfe ; but the queftion does not 

 admit of a general and direct anfwerj for even the moll enthufiaftick of 

 his commentators, allow, that fome of them are to be taken literally, and 1 

 his editors ought to have diitinguiilied them, as our Spenser has diitin- 

 guiihed his four Odes on Love and Beauty?, iaftead of mixing the profane 



