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"I trust that philosophy will forgive me when I add, that the writings of the poet are more useful than those of the philosopher."

"What is there of all which the most devoted admirers of poetry have ever written or fabricated in its commendation, that does not fall greatly short of the truth itself? what of all the insinuations which its bitterest adversaries have objected against it, which is not refuted by simply con templating the nature and design of the Hebrew poetry. Let those who affect to despise the Muses, cease to attempt, for the vices of a few who may abuse the best of things, to bring into disrepute a most laudable talent. Let them cease to speak of that art as light or trifling in itself, to accuse it as profane or impious; that art which has been conceded to man by the favour of his Creator, and for the most sacred purposes; that art consecrated by the authority of God him. self, and by his example in his most august ministrations."

Bishop Lowth on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews. Lec. 1.

SCENES IN PALESTINE;

OR,

DRAMATIC SKETCHES FROM THE BIBLE.

TO WHICH IS ADDED

THE FAIR AVENGER;

OR, THE

DESTROYER DESTROYED,

AN ACADEMIC DRAMA.

BY J. F. PENNIE.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR WILLIAM COLE,

10, NEWGATE-STREET.

1825.

193

DORCHESTER:

PRINTED BY G. CLARK,

CORNHILL.

PREFACE.

LET not the most serious reader feel inimical to the secondary title of this volume,-Dramatic Sketches from the Bible, for there are numerous examples of Dramatic Poetry in the inspired writings of the Hebrews; and where can we find in classic lore events that so abound with the pathetic, the wonderful, and the sublime, events so interesting to the youthful mind, as in the Sacred Volume of Divine Truth?

All poetical composition was arranged by the ancients into three classes,-the narrative, the imitative or dramatic, and the mixed. The term dramatic was originally given to every poem composed in dialogue, when the poet did not speak at all in his own person; such are some of the Bucolics of Theocritus and Virgil, several of the Satires of Horace, and two of his Odes,

Winter, or the fourth pastoral of Pope, and most of Mrs. Rowe's pastoral pieces. Such are the more simple kind of dramatic poems, wholly destitute of plot or fable; and to this species of writing belong the following Scenes, having no pretension to regular dramas, which contain a concatenation of events naturally rising out of each other, and wrought up to a happy or disastrous climax. The more simple and ancient form of dramatic composition which I have adopted, comes nearest to the genius and form of the Hebrew poetry, in which no poem can be found that has any appearance of a regular plot, either simple or implex, or that has any affinity, except in the chorus, to the dramatic productions of the Greek and Roman school. But are we to be told in this age of universal reading; in this age of enlightened ideas and superior refinement, diffusing their euphonical influence over all ranks and degrees, from the palace to the cottage; in this boasted age,-when the Bible is translated into half the known languages of the world,-when its divine pages are attentively listened to, by the rude Indian in his hut of ice and snow, amid the horrid frozen deserts of North America, the ferocious Scythian of the east,

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