In the first place, it is a curious spectacle to behold the rivalry of the two most ancient languages of the world, the languages in which Moses and Lycurgus published their laws, and David and Pindar chanted their hymns. The Hebrew, concise, energetic, with scarcely any inflection in its verbs, expressing twenty shades of a thought by the mere apposition of a letter, proclaims the idiom of a people who, by a remarkable combination, unite primitive simplicity with a profound knowledge of mankind. The Greek... displays in its intricate conjugations, in its inflections, in its diffuse eloquence, a nation of an imitative and social genius, a nation elegant and vain, fond of melody and prodigal of words..

Our terms of comparison will be: Simplicity; Antiquity of Manners; Narrative; Description; Similes or Images; the Sublime. Let us examine the first of these terms.

1. Simplicity.

The simplicity of the Bible is more concise and more solemn, the simplicity of Homer more diffuse and more lively. The former is sententious, and comes back to the same locutions to express new ideas; the latter is fond of expatiating, and often repeats in the same phrases what has been said before. The simplicity of Scripture is that of an ancient priest, who, imbued with all the sciences, human and divine, pronounces from the recess of the sanctuary the precise oracles of wisdom; the simplicity of the poet of Chios is that of an aged traveler, who, beside the hearth of his host, relates what he has learned in the course of a long and checkered life. . .

...

3. Narrative.

The narrative of Homer is interrupted by digressions, harangues, descriptions of vessels, garments, arms, and sceptres, by genealogies of men and things. Proper names are always surcharged with epithets; a hero seldom fails to be divine, like the immortals, or honored by the nations as a god. A princess is sure to have white arms, her shape always resembles the trunk of the palm-tree of Delos, and she owes her locks to the youngest of the Graces.

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The narrative of the Bible is rapid, without digression, without circumlocution; it is broken into short sentences, and the persons are named without flattery. Proper names are incessantly recurring, and the pronoun is scarcely ever used instead of them, a circumstance which, added to the frequent repetition of the conjunction and, indicates by this simplicity a society much nearer the state of nature than that sung by Homer. The forms of selflove are already evoked in the characters of the Odyssey, whereas they are dormant in those of Genesis.

4. Description.

The descriptions of Homer are prolix, whether they be of a pathetic or a terrible character, melancholy or cheerful, energetic or sublime. The Bible, in all its different species of description, gives in general but one single trait, but this trait is striking, and distinctly exhibits the object to our view.

5. Similes.

The Homeric similes are lengthened out by accidental circumstances; they are little pictures hung round an edifice to refresh the eye which has been fatigued with the height of the domes, by calling it back to rest on scenes of nature and rural manners. The comparisons of the Bible are almost all given in but few words: you have a lion, a stream, a storm, a fire, roaring, falling, ravaging, devouring. It is, however, no stranger to circumstantial similes, but then it adopts an Oriental turn and personifies the object, as pride in the cedar, etc.,

6. The Sublime.

Finally, the sublime in Homer commonly arises from the general combination of the parts, and arrives by degrees at its acme. In the Bible it is almost always unexpected; it bursts upon you like lightning, and you are left smoking and riven by the thunderbolt before you know how you were struck by it. In Homer, again, the sublime consists in the magnificence of the words harmonizing with the majesty of the thought. In the Bible, on the

contrary, the highest degree of sublimity often proceeds from a contrast between the grandeur of the idea and the littleness, at times even the triviality, of the word that expresses it. From this results a shock, a violent wrench to the mind; for when, raised by contemplation, the soul darts towards the highest regions, suddenly the expression, instead of buoying it up, lets it fall from heaven to earth, and hurls it from the bosom of God to the mire of this nether world. This species of sublime, the most impetuous of all, is admirably adapted to an immense and awful being, allied at once to the greatest and the smallest objects.

We shall conclude this parallel, and the whole subject of Christian poetics, with an essay which will show at once the difference between the style of the Bible and that of Homer; we shall take a passage from the former and paint it with colors borrowed from the latter. Ruth thus addresses Naomi:

"Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried."

Let us try to render this verse into the language of Homer: "The fair Ruth thus responds to the wise Naomi, honored by the people as a goddess: 'Cease to oppose the determination with which a divinity inspires me; I will tell thee the truth, just as it is, and without disguise. I am resolved to follow thee. I will remain with thee, whether thou shalt continue to reside among the Moabites, so dexterous in throwing the javelin, or shalt return to Judea, so fertile in olives. With thee I will demand hospitality of the nations who respect the suppliant. Our ashes shall be mingled in the same urn, and I will offer agreeable sacrifices to the God who incessantly accompanies thee.' She said; and as when the vehement West Wind brings a warm, refreshing rain, the husbandmen prepare the wheat and the barley, and make baskets of rushes nicely interwoven, for they foresee that the falling shower will soften the soil and render it fit for receiving the precious gifts of Ceres; so the words of Ruth, like a fertilizing rain, melted the heart of Naomi."

Such, perhaps, as closely as our feeble talents allow us to imitate Homer, is a shadow of the style of that immortal genius. But has not the verse of Ruth, thus amplified, lost the original charm which it possesses in the Scriptures? What poetry can ever be equivalent to this single stroke of eloquence, 'Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God'?

[RENAN, Histoire Générale des Langues Sémitiques, second edition, pp. 18-24.]

The unity and simplicity which distinguish the Semitic race are likewise found in the Semitic languages. Abstraction is unknown to them; metaphysics, impossible. Language being the necessary mold of a people's intellectual operations, an idiom almost destitute of syntax, without variety of construction, lacking the conjunctions which establish such delicate relations among the members of thought, portraying every object by its external qualities, ought to be eminently suitable to the eloquent inspirations of seers and the delineation of fugitive impressions, but should deny itself to all philosophy, to all purely intellectual speculations. To imagine an Aristotle or a Kant with such an organ of expression is as impossible as to conceive an Iliad or a poem like that of Job written in our metaphysical and complicated languages. Add to this that the Semitic languages, especially the older ones, are inexact, and correspond but approximately with the things themselves. Their formulas have not the precision which with us leaves no room for ambiguity. When we seek to translate into our European tongues, where each word has only a single meaning, the oldest monuments of Hebrew poetry, we experience the necessity of putting questions to ourselves, and of making a multitude of distinctions which never occurred to the author, but to which the mechanism of our idioms obliges us to attend.

This physical and sensuous character seems to us the dominant trait of the family of languages which forms the object of our study. Their roots are almost all derived from the imitation of nature, and allow us to perceive, as through transparent crystal, the

impressions which, reflected by the consciousness of primitive man, resulted in language. Derivative words are formed according to simple and uniform laws. The verb has a still evident character of priority. . . . The noun has but few inflections. . . . Certain parasitical monosyllables, which agglutinate at the beginning of words, take the place of terminal inflections. . . . Indeed, the whole construction of the sentence displays such a character of simplicity, especially in narrative, that we can only think of the artless stories of a child. Instead of the skilful involutions of phrase (circuitus, comprehensio, as Cicero calls them) within whose compass Greek and Latin unite with so much art the various members of a single thought, the Semites can only attach one proposition to the end of another, using as their sole contrivance the simple copula and, which serves them in lieu of almost every other conjunction.

Ewald has rightly observed that the language of the Semites is rather poetic and lyrical than oratorical or epic. It is true that the art of oratory, in the classical sense, has always been foreign to them. Semitic grammar is almost ignorant of the art of subordinating the clauses of the sentence; it taxes the race which created it with a patent inferiority of the reasoning faculties, but allows it a very lively sense of reality and much delicacy of sensation. Perspective is wholly wanting to the Semitic style; in vain should we seek in it those sallies, those retreats, those half-lights, which give the Aryan languages a second power of expression, as it were. Plain and destitute of inversions, the Semitic languages. are acquainted with no process save the juxtaposition of ideas, after the manner of Byzantine painting or the bas-reliefs of Nineveh. We must even admit that the idea of style, as we understand the word, is entirely wanting to the Semites. Their periods are very short; the extent of discourse which they can embrace at once does not exceed one or two lines. Solely concerned with the thought of the moment, they do not prepare in advance the mechanism of the sentence, and never consider what precedes or what is to come. Hence result strange inadvertences, into which they are led by their inability to follow to the end a