then the inadequacy of art. What the heart demanded he found not the talent to portray. If he used a less timid hand in inserting the head of the Master in the copy at Castellazzo, that circumstance enhances the value of Morghen's engraving, which is taken from that copy. G. F. S. ART VIII.-NOYES'S PROVERBS, ECCLESIASTES, AND CANTICLES.* No writer in our language, either on this or the other side of the sea, has rendered such valuable service as Dr. Noyes, in that department of Sacred Literature, to which the volume before us belongs. We do not say this inconsiderately. We will take in the whole series of translations of the Hebrew Scriptures into the English tongue, extending over nearly a hundred years, from Chappelow and Heath, through Bishop Lowth and his school, down to Rev. Alfred Jenour and Albert Barnes, and maintain that no one among them all has deserved so well as our Hebrew Professor at Harvard College. His first work was an "Amended Version of the Book of Job," printed so long ago as 1827; of which a second edition appeared in 1838, in an improved form, with corrections and additions. His "New Translation of the Book of Psalms" followed in 1831, and of this we are glad to learn that another edition is preparing. The greater labor of "A New Translation of the Hebrew Prophets, arranged in chronological order," was given to the public in three volumes; the first in 1833, and the other two in 1837. All these works were noticed in our journal from time to time, as they were brought forward; and on each successive occasion with a praise, that deserves to be on the increase. This eminent success has long made us wish that we might have at least one volume more from the same hand, corresponding to the rest, and completing what is called the Hagiographa of the Old Testament. The wish is at * A New Translation of the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Canticles, with Introductions, and Notes, chiefly explanatory. By GEORGE R. NOYES, D.D., Hancock Professor of Hebrew, etc., and Dexter Lecturer in Harvard University. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1846. 12mo. pp. 290. 1846.] Book of Proverbs. 425 last gratified by the book that we propose to make at present the subject of a few remarks. We must acknowledge, that it does not carry with it the attractiveness or importance of its predecessors. Its subjects are inferior. What can come after the sublime dramatic poem of Job; the religious odes of the Hebrew minstrels, ranging through every variety of tones, from the groan of the penitent to the shout of the conqueror, with the harp of King David ringing at their head; and the "goodly fellowship of the Prophets," not gathered into a circle, but spreading down in a line, from Joel and Amos to Malachi, over a space of four hundred years? What can be added to a divine train like this, and hope to share the same honors, or to close it upon equal terms? The homely wisdom of the Proverbs must seem tame, we are ready to think, and the gloomy prose of the Preacher repulsive, compared with the impassioned strains of a poetry that has filled the earth with the holy breath of its devotion. And as for the love-verses of the Canticles, for that is all they are, they never seemed to us very captivating specimens even of their own kind; so alien is the extravagant imagery of the old Eastern world, from the ideas and tastes of modern refinement. And yet we shall see reason, on reflection, to qualify the judgment thus broadly expressed, not a little. We do not think this volume less interesting than those that went before it. It certainly does not yield to them at all in the careful ability with which it has been written. In some respects it has even the advantage over them. It is much richer in its annotations than either of the rest, with the exception of Job. Its contents admit of its being illustrated throughout with the most agreeable and various learning. It gives a satisfactory answer, also, to many questions of curiosity, which will rise in the minds of the most cursory readers of the Jewish Scriptures, and which have perplexed the judgments of the most attentive. The Book of Proverbs is much more than its name would seem to indicate. It contains long passages of the noblest order of beauty, and sustained upon the highest flight of imagination. We need but instance in the two descriptions of Wisdom in the eighth and ninth chapters. Neither are its sententious sayings of a dull and monotonous character. Sometimes they are witty; and it is pleasant to have them brushed from the dust that time and mistake have strown over them, and made to sparkle with something of their original playfulness. Sometimes they are enigmatical, and dark as a riddle; and then there is a satisfaction in having them cleared up by one whose researches have qualified him for the task. It is also true of it, as our author says in his Introduction, that "in a moral and religious point of view it is one of the most valuable portions of the Old Testament; giving a view of the Jewish religion and morality, as pervading the common life of the people, much more favorable than that which we receive from the accounts of the ceremonies and forms which are elsewhere enjoined." When we pass from this book to that of Ecclesiastes, we come into an entirely different region. It is like leaving the open fields and the sunny hills for tangled thickets and dark, overhanging woods. The sounds that we hear around us are plaintive, full of doubt and woe. The thoughts that occupy us do not go abroad over nature, or deal with the pursuits and duties of practical life, but rather turn inward with a melancholy scrutiny upon a troubled mind. The scene is not laid in the house, or by the way, but among the mysterious problems of our being. The style of the original language, as the scholar reads it, is altogether of a different stamp from that of the foregoing book. Professor Stuart, in speaking of this difference, tells us that "Chaucer does not differ more from Pope than Ecclesiastes from Proverbs." The wording of this comparison is not a happy one. We might suppose at first that he meant to say just the reverse of what he intends; for it is the former work that carries so strongly the mark of a later date, and not the other, as the unlearned reader might be led to think from the Professor's language. It is a just comparison, however, in the point that was the only one designed. Ecclesiastes, or "Coheleth," as he prefers to call it, is written in a harsh, barbarous speech, that falls far below the courtly language of Solomon, in the golden age of the Hebrew Commonwealth, or of any of the writers that lived before the Captivity at Babylon. The book has always found censurers, also, on account of its complaining and skeptical spirit; its dangerous doc 427 trines, or its want of sound doctrine; and the strange inconsistencies that startle us between one part of it and another. Jerome, in the close of his commentary upon it, at xii. 13, writes thus: "The Hebrews say, that among other writings of Solomon that were worn out of use and retained no memory, this also seemed worthy of being effaced, since it pronounces the creatures of God to be vain, and accounts everything as nothing, and prefers eating and drinking and transient delights to all besides. But it deserves its authority, if but for this sentence alone, and should be placed in the number of the divine volumes, because it condenses its whole dispute and its whole. description into the epitome, that we should fear God, and keep his commandments." Dr. Noyes, in his Introduction to it, makes the best vindication of its author that the cause admits of. He describes him "as a man of wisdom, virtue and religion, according to the light which he had; not a fatalist, nor a skeptic, nor an Epicurean, in any offensive sense of those terms." With regard to "the seeming (?) inconsistencies" that run through it, we entirely agree with him in rejecting the theory, that would reconcile them by throwing the work into the form of dialogue; as some most learned men have done.* We recorded that dissent almost thirty years ago; on the grounds, that no such lines of division could be satisfactorily or fairly drawn, that there was not a single direct reply anywhere, or anything like discussion, and that finally, as an insuperable objection, on this supposition Solomon, "the wise king," would be the rash complainer, who was rebuked by the Mentor at his side. Certainly no romancer, writing under the fictitious name of another, would have been guilty of so stupid an invention as that. We agree, likewise, that there is no occasion for resorting to such an hypothesis. And yet it would hardly have arisen, if the inconsistencies had not been startling, and if there had not been a real difficulty in the case. difficulty is well met and replied to, in the Introduction to which we have just referred. But there is another element This *Herder and Eichhorn suppose a dialogue held between two. Seiler, though the author of an excellent work on Hermeneutics, or the Laws of Interpretation, takes refuge in the hypothesis of three persons engaged in the conversation. in the solution, which we consider to be of great importance. This is, the natural fluctuation of a disturbed and vehement spirit. Let us but imagine a mind contending with itself. Then both the obscurity and objection will grow less, if they do not disappear. Such a mind is now desponding, and now encouraged; at one time almost impious, and then returning to its sober reason; here wandering without rest, and there setting up some principle to which it fastens its confidence, or endeavors to do so. Is it inconsistent? Inconsistency is the very language of passionate and unsettled thoughts. The whole impression that the reading leaves upon us, we must acknowledge, is a sad one, sad as a great part of human experience is, and of God's word also, but in no degree is it immoral. The work favors nothing that resembles the worldling's merriment, or the cynic's indifference, or the fatalist's despair; but, on the contrary, is fixed in opposition to them all. It draws no conclusion that is at variance with its last words, which inculcate piety and obedience. It is one of the most affecting books that the canon contains, and none the less so for being far behind that full assurance of faith, which the Gospel only can inspire. It may be read with edification by all classes of persons; especially with the aid of such a translator and critic as it has now found. - — We do not mean to say, that in every instance the sense that he attaches to the original is the one that recommends itself to us the most. In the doubtful passage, for example, iii. 11, which reads according to him: "God makes every thing good in its time; but he has put the world into the heart of man, so that he understands not the work which God does, from the beginning to the end;" we cannot help preferring the version of our old friends Augusti and De Wette: "He hath made everything beautiful in its time; also he hath set the everlasting in their heart; although no mortal can find out the work that God doeth, either from the beginning, or to the end." So in the 18th verse of the same chapter, we feel attached to the meaning which the same distinguished scholars have given it: "I said in my heart: concerning the sons of Adam, God has separated them (from all other creatures,) to see if they would account themselves as beasts." Our author's version is: "I said in my heart concerning the sons of men, that |