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Service than the Age of Moses; But the Opinion of one Deity, and Adored without any Idol or Representation, was Professed and Received among the antient Persians and Hetruscans and Chaldæans. So that if Job was an 5 Hebrew, 'tis probable he may have been of the Race of Heber, who lived in Chaldæa, or of Abraham, who is supposed to have left that Country for the Profession or Worship of one God, rather than from the Branch of Isaac and Israel, who lived in the Land of Canaan. Now I I think it is out of Controversy that the Book of Job was Written Originally in Verse, and was a Poem upon the Subject of the Justice and Power of God, and in Vindication of his Providence against the common Arguments of Atheistical Men, who took occasion to dispute it from the 15 usual Events of Human things, by which so many ill and impious Men seem Happy and Prosperous in the course of their Lives, and so many Pious and Just Men seem Miserable or Afflicted. The Spanish Translation of the Jews in Ferrara, which pretends to render the Hebrew, as near as could be, 20 word for word, and for which all Translators of the Bible since have had great Regard, gives us the Two first Chapters and the Last from the seventh Verse in Prose, as an Historical Introduction and Conclusion of the Work, and all the rest in Verse, except the Transitions from one 25 Part or Person of this Sacred Dialogue to another.

But if we take the Books of Moses to be the most antient in the Hebrew Tongue, yet the Song of Moses may probably have been Written before the rest; as that of Deborah, before the Book of Judges, being Praises sung to God upon 30 the Victories or Successes of the Israelites, related in both. And I never read the last without observing in it as True and Noble Strains of Poetry and Picture as in any other Language whatsoever, in spight of all Disadvantages from Translations into so different Tongues and common 35 Prose. If an Opinion of some Learned Men, both Modern

and Antient, could be allowed, that Esdras was the Writer or Compiler of the first Historical Parts of the Old Testament, though from the same Divine Inspiration as that of Moses and the other Prophets, then the Psalms of David would be the first Writings we find in Hebrew; and next 5 to them, the Song of Solomon, which was written when he was young, and Ecclesiastes when he was old. So that from all sides, both Sacred and Prophane, It appears that Poetry was the first sort of Writing known and used in the several Nations of the World.

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It may seem strange, I confess, upon the first thought, that a sort of Style so regular and so difficult should have grown in use before the other so easy and so loose: But if we consider what the first end of Writing was, it will appear probable from Reason as well as Experience; For 15 the true and General End was but the Help of Memory in preserving that of Words and of Actions, which would otherwise have been lost and soon vanish away with the Transitory Passage of Human Breath and Life. Before the Discourses and Disputes of Philosophers began to 20 busie or amuse the Gracian Wits, there was nothing Written in Prose, but either Laws, some short Sayings of Wise men, or some Riddles, Parables, or Fables, wherein were couched by the Antients many Strains of Natural or Moral Wisdom and Knowledge, and besides these some 25 short Memorials of Persons, Actions, and of Times. Now 'tis obvious enough to conceive how much easier all such Writings should be Learnt and Remembred in Verse than in Prose, not only by the Pleasure of Measures and of Sounds, which gives a great Impression to Memory, but by 30 the order of Feet, which makes a great Facility of Tracing one Word after another, by knowing what sort of Foot or Quantity must necessarily have preceded or followed the Words we retain and desire to make up.

This made Poetry so necessary before Letters were 35

invented, and so convenient afterwards; and shews that the great Honor and general Request wherein it has always been has not proceeded only from the Pleasure and Delight, but likewise from the Usefulness and Profit of 5 Poetical Writings.

This leads me naturally to the Subjects of Poetry, which have been generally Praise, Instruction, Story, Love, Grief, and Reproach. Praise was the Subject of all the Songs and Psalms mentioned in Holy Writ, of the Hymns 10 of Orpheus, of Homer, and many others; Of the Carmina Secularia in Rome, Composed all and Designed for the Honor of their Gods; Of Pindar, Stesichorus, and Tyrtaus, in the Praises of Virtue or Virtuous Men. The Subject of Job is Instruction concerning the Attributes of 15 God and the Works of Nature. Those of Simonides, Phocillides, Theognis, and several other of the smaller Greek Poets, with what passes for Pythagoras, are Instructions in Morality; The first Book of Hesiod and Virgils Georgicks, in Agriculture, and Lucretius in the 20 deepest natural Philosophy. Story is the proper Subject of Heroick Poems, as Homer and Virgil in their inimitable Iliads and Eneids; And Fable, which is a sort of Story, in the Metamorphosis of Ovid. The Lyrick Poetry has been chiefly Conversant about Love, tho' turned often 25 upon Praise too; and the Vein of Pastorals and Eclogues has run the same course, as may be observed in Theocrytus, Virgil, and Horace, who was, I think, the first and last of true Lyrick Poets among the Latins. Grief has been always the Subject of Elegy, and Reproach that of Satyr. 30 The Dramatick Poesy has been Composed of all these, but the chief end seems to have been Instruction, and under the disguise of Fables or the Pleasure of Story to shew the Beauties and the Rewards of Virtue, the Deformities and Misfortunes or Punishment of Vice; By Examples of 35 both, to Encourage one, and Deter Men from the other; to

Reform ill Customs, Correct ill Manners, and Moderate all violent Passions. These are the general Subjects of both Parts, tho' Comedy give us but the Images of common Life, and Tragedy those of the greater and more extraordinary Passions and Actions among Men. To go further upon 5 this Subject would be to tread so beaten Paths, that to Travel in them only raises Dust, and is neither of Pleasure nor of Use.

For the Changes that have happened in Poetry, I shall observe one Ancient, and the others that are Modern will 10 be too Remarkable, in the Declines or Decays of this great Empire of Wit. The first Change of Poetry was made by Translating it into Prose, or Cloathing it in those loose Robes or common Veils that disguised or covered the true Beauty of its Features and Exactness of its Shape. 15 This was done first by Æsop in Greek, but the Vein was much more antient in the Eastern Regions, and much in Vogue, as we may observe in the many Parables used in the old Testament as well as in the New. And there is a Book of Fables, of the Sort of Æsop's, Translated out of 20 Persian, and pretended to have been so into that Language out of the antient Indian; But though it seems Genuine of the Eastern Countries, yet I do not take it to be so old nor to have so much Spirit as the Greek. The next Succession of Poetry in Prose seems to have been in the 25 Miletian Tales, which were a sort of little Pastoral Romances; and though much in request in old Greece and Rome, yet we have no Examples that I know of them, unless it be the Longi Pastoralia, which gives a Tast of the great Delicacy and Pleasure that was found so generally 30 in those sort of Tales. The last Kind of Poetry in Prose is that which in latter Ages has over-run the World under the Name of Romances, which tho' it seems Modern and a Production of the Gothick Genius, yet the Writing is antient. The Remainders of Petronius Arbiter seem to 35

be of this Kind, and that which Lucian calls his True History. But the most antient that passes by the Name is Heliodorus, Famous for the Author's chusing to lose his Bishoprick rather than disown that Child of his Wit. 5 The true Spirit or Vein of antient Poetry in this Kind seems to shine most in Sir Philip Sidney, whom I esteem both the greatest Poet and the Noblest Genius of any that have left Writings behind them and published in ours or any other modern Language,-a Person born capable not 10 only of forming the greatest Ideas, but of leaving the noblest Examples, if the length of his Life had been equal to the excellence of his Wit and his Virtues.

With him I leave the Discourse of antient Poetry, and to discover the Decays of this Empire must turn to that 15 of the modern, which was introduced after the Decays or rather Extinction of the old, as if, true Poetry being dead, an Apparition of it walked about. This mighty Change arrived by no smaller Occasions nor more ignoble Revolutions than those which destroyed the antient Em20 pire and Government of Rome, and Erected so many New ones upon their Ruins, by the Invasions and Conquests or the general Inundations of the Goths, Vandals, and other Barbarous or Northern Nations, upon those Parts of Europe that had been subject to the Romans. After the Conquests made by Cæsar upon Gaul and the nearer Parts of Germany, which were continued and enlarged in the times of Augustus and Tiberius by their Lieutenants or Generals, great Numbers of Germans and Gauls resorted to the Roman Armies, and to the City it self, and habituated 30 themselves there, as many Spaniards, Syrians, Græcians had done before upon the Conquest of those Countries. This mixture soon Corrupted the Purity of the Latin Tongue, so that in Lucan, but more in Seneca, we find a great and harsh Allay entered into the Style of the 35 Augustan Age. After Trajan and Adrian had subdued

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