"THE prophet having predicted the deliverance of the Jews, and their return into their own country from their rigorous Babylonish captivity, inftantly introduces them finging a triumphal fong on the fall of the king of Babylon; a fong abounding in the most splendid images, and carried on by perpetual, and those very beautiful, personifications. The fong begins with a fudden exclamation of the Jews, expreffing their joy and wonder at the unexpected change of their condition, and death of the tyrant. Earth with her inhabitants triumphs; the firs and cedars of Libanus, under which images the allegoric style frequently fhadows the kings and princes of the Gentiles, rejoice, and infult with reproaches the broken power of their most implacable foe. She is at reft, the whole earth is quiet: they break Even the firs rejoice at thee, the cedars of Libanus: There follows a moft daring profopopeia of ORCUS, or the infernal regions: he rouzes his inhabitants, the manes of princes, and the fhades of departed kings: immediately all of them arife from their thrones, and walk forward to meet the king of Babylon; they infult and deride him, and gather confolation from his calamity. Art thou also made weak as we? art thou made like unto us? Is thy pride dashed down to Orcus, the noife of thy harps? The worm is ftrewn under thee, the earth-worm is thy covering! The Jews are again reprefented fpeaking: they most strongly exaggerate his remarkable fall, by an exclamation formed in the manner of funeral lamentations: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, fon of the morning! Thou art dafhed down to the earth, thou that didft crush the nations! They next represent the king himself speaking, and madly boafting of his unbounded power, whence the prodigioufnefs of his ruin is wonderfully aggravated. Nor is this enough; enough; a new character is immediately formed: Thofe are introduced who found the body of the king of Babylon caft out: they furvey it closely and attentively, and at last hardly know it. Is this the man who made earth tremble, who fhook the kingdoms? Who made the world a folitude, and destroyed it's cities? They reproach him with the lofs of the common rite of fepulture, which was defervedly denied to him for his cruelty and oppreffion, and curse his name, his race, and posterity. The fcene is closed by a most awful speech of God himfelf, menacing a perpetual extirpation to the king of Babylon, to his defcendants, and to his city; and confirming the immutability of his councils by the ratification of a folemn oath. WHAT images, how various, how thickfown, how fublime, exalted with what energy, what expreffions, figures, and fentiments, are here accumulated together! We hear the Jews, the cedars of Libanus, the shades of the departed kings, the kings of Babylon, those who find his body, and lastly Jehovah himself, all speaking in order; and behold them acting their feveral parts, as it were in a drama. One continued action is carried on; or rather a various and manifold feries of different a Єtions is connected;-an excellence, more peculiarly appropriated to the fublimer ode, and confummately displayed in this poem of Isaiah, which is the most perfect and unexampled model, among all the monuments of antiquity. The perfonifications are frequent, but not confufed; are bold but not affected: a free, lofty, and truly divine spirit predominates through the whole. Nor is any thing wanting to crown and complete the fublimity of this ode with abfolute beauty; nor can the Greek or Roman poefy produce any thing that is fimilar, or fecond, to this ode*”. Prælect. xiii. pag. 121. IT cannot be thought ftrange, that he who could fo judicioufly explain, could as poetically express, the ideas of Isaiah: the latter he has performed in many instances; but in none more ftrikingly than in the following, which magnificently represents the Meffiah treading the wine-prefs in his anger, and which an impartial judge, not blinded by the charms of antiquity, will think equal to any description in Virgil, in point of elegance and energy: Ille patris vires indutus et iram Dira rubens graditur, per ftragem et fracta potentum |