(of course “similes” is an English word: the author of a recent ’Essay on Magna Charta’ has been learned enough to write it “similae,” for which original piece of Latinity let him be congratulated; I safely follow Johnson, who would have roared like a lion at “similia;” and, though Shakspeare does write it “similies,” it may stoutly be contended that this is of mixed metal, and that Matthew Prior’s “similes” is the purer sample: all the above being a praiseworthy parenthesis.)

The similes of Scripture, then, were to have been demonstrated apt and happy: for there is indeed both majesty, and loveliness, and propriety, and strict resemblance in them. “As a rolling thing before the whirlwind,” “as when a standard-bearer fainteth” “as the rushing of mighty waters,” “as gleaning grapes when the vintage is done,” “as a dream,” “as the morning dew,” “as” but the whole book is a garden of similitudes; they are “like the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude.” It is, however, too true, that often-times the baldness of translation deprives poetry, Eastern especially, of its fervour, its glow, its gush, and blush of beauty: to quote Aristotle’s example, it too frequently converts the rosy-fingered Morn into the red-fisted; and so the poetry of dawning-day, with its dew-dropped flowers, its healthy refreshment, its “rosy-fingers” drawing aside the star-spangled curtain of night, falls at once into the low notion of a foggy morning, and is suggestive only of red-fisted Abigails struggling continuously with the deposits of a London atmosphere. In like manner, (for all this has not been an episode beside the purpose,) many a roughly rendered similitude of Scripture might be advantageously vindicated; local diversities and Orientalisms might be explained in such a treatise: for example, in the ‘Canticles,’ the “beloved among the sons,” is compared with an apple-tree among the trees of the wood: now, amongst us, an apple-tree is stunted and unsightly, and always degenerates in a wood; whereas the Eastern apple-tree, probably one of the citron class, (to be more correct,) may be a magnificent monarch of the forest. “Camphire,” to a Western mind, is not suggestive of the sweetest perfume, and perhaps the word may be amended into the marginal “cypress,” or cedar, or some other: as “a bottle in the smoke,” loses its propriety for an image, until shown to be a wine-skin. “Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness, like pillars of smoke?” probably intending the swiftly-rushing columns of sand flying on the wings of the whirlwind. “Thine eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon,” might well be softened into fountains tearful, calm, resplendent, and rejoicing; and in showing the poetic fitness of comparing the bride to a landscape, it might clearly be set out how emblematic of Jewish millennial prosperity and of Christian universality, that bride was; while comparisons of a like un-European imagery might be taken from other Eastern poets, who will not scruple to compare that rare beauty, a straight Grecian nose, with a tower, and admire above all things the Cleopatra-coloured hair which they call purple, and we auburn. Very much might be done in this vein of literature, but it must be by a man at once an Oriental scholar and a natural poet: the idioms of ancient and modern times should be more considered, and something of apologetic explanation offered to an English ear for phrases such as “the mountains skipping like rams,” “the horse swallowing the ground with fierceness,” and represented as being afraid as a grasshopper. A thousand like instances could be displayed with little searching; let the above be taken as they are meant, for good, and as of zeal for showing the best of books to the best advantage: but it will appear that this essay trenches on the former one so slenderly hinted at, as ‘The Wisdom of Revision,’ therefore has been stated too much at length already. Let it then rest on the shelf till a better season. For this time, good reader, I, following up the object of self-relieving, thank you for your patience, and will turn to other themes of a more sublunary aspect.

One of the most natural and indigenous productions of a true author’s mind, is, by common consent, an epic poem: verily, a wearisome, unnecessary, unfashionable bit of writing. Nevertheless, let my candour humbly acknowledge that, for the larger canticle of two mortal days, I was brooding over, and diligently brewing up, a right happy, capital, and noble-minded thesis, no other than