CATLEY'S METRICAL VERSION OF THE PSALMS. * CAN there be such

a thing in English as a good metrical version of the Psalms—that is to say a version sufficiently accurate to satisfy the Hebrew scholar, and sufficiently rhythmical and grace- ful to be approved by readers of cultivated taste ? Public opi- nion' whether empirical or theoretic, has with singular unani- mity answered this question in the negative. The thing has never yet been done, though many have attempted it, and Spenser and Milton are among those whose failures remain as warnings to lesser men. If it could be done, who more likely to do it thaix the greatest devotional poet of our own times, Professor liable? Yet he has not only abstained from such an enterprise, but ex- pressly declared it to be impracticable. All this was neither unknown to Mr. Cayley nor forgotten by him when he boldly, but not rashly, applied himself to a task as destitute of outward. encouragement as any he could have chosen. He has not over- looked the considerations that might seem to weigh against this design, but has fairly stated them in his preface, and shaped his course in accordance with their true import, which is not exactly what it has hitherto been supposed to be. How often, as Six John Herschel has remarked in a memorable passage, how often. have seeming impossibilities suddenly vanished, as if by magic, upon a mere change in the inquirer's point of view ? This is what has happened to Mr. Cayley—but no, we recall the word "hap. pened," for there was nothing fortuitous in his discovery ; he had the sagacity to seize the point of view which had been neglected. by all his predecessors, and from it he descried the one practicable way into the fortress against whose impenetrable front they had. spent their strength in vain. "There is he says, "as I believe that I can show, an inherent insuperable obstacle to anyone's writing a really poetio version of the Psalms (or of most of them) that shall be a serviceable litargio rendering—at least, until the composer of psalm tunes shall be controlled by the versifier, iii- stead of controlling him, as hitherto, and shall apply some unde- veloped resources of his art to produce accompaniments for such couplets or stanzas as are at first adopted, in deference to the structure of the Hebrew, without consulting him." Rem acu tetig. it. The whole difficulty is a factitious one, and here is its perteet solution. All versifiers of the Psalms have hitherto been predoomed to failure by their obedience to a purely arbitrary rule, that of adopting the ballad metre or other forms of verse not less incongruous with the concentrated brevity of the Hebrew diction. The least fault of this rule is that it some- times makes it necessary to couple together, for the sake of com- pleting a. quatrain, two sentences, or two halves of sentences, which ought, in all logical propriety, to be kept asunder; but the worst and most frequent evils attendant upon it are pleonasm, paraphrase, and intercalation. When you have three, four, or five words given you to spin into four verses, you must needs have recourse to every contrivance for stretching and stuffing out, and you must inevitably produce something very unlike the original. But why should you take so much trouble to such bad purpose ? Better refuse the order at once, and insist on cutting your coat according to your cloth. The capabilities of English verse are not so restricted that it may not be possible to borrow or invent a metre which "gives a verse-unit of convenient shortness and which also, if need be, can be modified, without offending the ear, by an occasional intercalation of feet within the line or lines with- in the stanza." These advantages are found in the couplet of un- equal lengths, of which Mr. Cayley uses several varieties. The terseness obtainable in this metre maybe seen in this short ex- tract from Psalm oix, verses 17-20.

"As he loved cursing, let that be his lot ;

As blessing pleas him n4 So keep it from him far. Let malison Be the robe he puts on, And sink like water through him, and about His bones like oil poured out. This the Lord yield to them who peace refuse me, Who lyingly accuse me.

Before we give farther examples of Mr. Cayley's versification, we will revert to his preface for an extract, in which he very

• The Psalms in Metre. By C. B. Cayley, B.A. Published hy Lonsman and Co. happily demonstrates the needfulness of a poetical rendering of works so essentially lyrioaL and elegiacs.' as the Psalms.

"We readily dispense, most of us, with prose translation for Homer refer Tease, because we hope, notwithstanding all technical difliculties, to realize the (berm and power of their compositions more effectually where they are not quite divested of all conns.tural form and euphony. And not only our

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heart and imagination, but our understanding even, s not slightly inte- rested in people's imitating the original shape of great poetic writings ; for the understanding fears to be misled by poetic utterances presented to her under the mask of prose, and to take as materially true that which is only true in sentiment and spirit. Yet it would be most ridiculous to derogate in a general way from the value of a prose version of any part of the Bible ; for prose only can give that high material accuracy which must be demanded where we have recourse so confidently, as regards every detail, to deduce all the principles of morality and of religion. Still, the practical exposition of the Bible must demand some recognition of the dissimilarity of its diction in prose and poem and this even, as could be demonstrated, to prevent gross errors and sophistications. And on this ground, an occasional reference to a poetic version of the Psalter, or other Scriptures, may be useful even to those who, by nature or by training, are most insensible or indifferent to poetry in a general point of view. But here an objection to my argument will be readily started by many who are acquainted, if even slightly, with the Hebrew language. The poetry of your originals,' they will say, is not verse in our modern sense : the prose of your authorized version is not, in the fullest sense, prosaic; the Hebrew form and the Elizabethan are not se incompatible as you pretend, We find no rhymes in Hebrew—no regu- lar accentual metres—not even those quantitative verses which we recognize in Greek or Latin, but which we generally despair of seeing imitated in a modern language. The cadences of parallel clauses, the equality or the simple proportions which we observe in their length, give the Hebrew text a poetic character that we feel, but are incapable of defining; yet the same cadences, the same symmetry, seem to come of themselves, by the grace of nature, into a literal prose version : a little art, at most, is requisite to bring them into strong relief, as we see by the translations of Herder, or by some of the chants and anthems used in our own worship.' This objection I can only in part hope to overcome. I will remark, however, that, despite the general resemblance between Hebrew poetry and what we call measured prose in English, the former is distinguished by a remarkable brevity and compactness (so that not half as many words, perhaps, go to a verse in the Hebrew as in the most literal prose English), as likewise by great freedom in grouping the leading words—not in the order of the logical sentence, but many that may suit the feeling of the writer. And the necessity of pre- serving such a brevity is the greater, because it generally implies a simple breadth and vagueness, though without equivocalness, in the import of a phrase, that cannot but be sorely injured by those continual fillings-up, qualifications and limitations which we know so little how to dispense with in modern languages. This conciseness, this compactness and simplicity, this comeliness of well-grouped words, cannot be at all imitated in English without sometimes using such ellipses and inversions as we are not accus- tomed to tolerate in prose, though a simple rhyming metre renders them fsmiliar and acceptable, while it tends to strengthen the cadences, and the correspondences of term to term, that might otherwise be lost or weakened through the inevitable multiplication of words in English."

The two kinds of couplets most used by Mr. Cayley are those seen in the following examples.

"PSALM' XXIII.

"Jehovah is my shepherd ; there shall be Nought wanting unto me. He'll in green meadows couch me, and beside Refreshing waters guide ; Revive my soul, and in his righteous ways Guide me for his name's praise. Hence will I through the valley of the shade Of death walk undismayed : For thotelt be with me, and thy staff sod rod Shalt comfort me, 0 God. Thou wilt in m3 foes' front my table spread, And'plenteously mine head Anoint with oil, and make my cup o'ertiow. Goodness and. grace, I know, Shall follow me through life ; I shallappear

In God's house every year."

"PSALM NC.

"From race of men to race Thou hest, 0 Lord, been our abiding-place. Before the lulls had birth, Or ever thou hadst formed the world and earth ; From all time heretofore, Thou art God, and to all evermore. Thou bring,'st mankind to death ; Thou sayst, Return, children of man, to breath. A thousand years pass by As yesterday, as a night-watch in thine eye. Thou eausest them to stream Onwards—as transient as a sleep they seem, Or as the grass's prime,

That.groweth and is green at morning time,

And is cut down, and fades, And shrivels up before the evening shades.

We in thine anger pine, We are consumed with parching wrath of thine.

Thou keep'st our guilt in sight. Our youth's offences in thy aspect's light. Our clays come to a close In thy displeasure; yea, as breath that goes, Do we consume our years. The days we live are ten and threescore years ; And the' some men attain To fourscore, 'lls but weariness and pain : For outworn ia their might, And haseneth to depart, and we take flight. Who knows of thy displeasure

The power? who can thy wrath, thy terrors measure ? Teach us to count our days,

So that our hearts to wisdom we max raise.

How long? nay ! turn thee tow'rd

Thy servants' and repent thyself, 0 Lord. Betimes with grace upraise Our hearts, and make thou glad and blithe our days.

For, all our days of tears Rejoice us, and for sorrow-visited years. Before thy servants show Thy works, and let their sons thy splendor know : Yea, let the Lord God's favor Be shown us, and support our handa' endeavor : Support our hands' endeavor."

The following is a fine dactylic measure, and the only example of it in the volume.

"Come, let us utter a cry to the Lord, a shout of exultation

To the rock of our salvation.

Let us approach in a grateful acclaim before him, loudly voicing A melody of rejoicing. Truly the Lord is a mighty God, and a mighty ruler, far Above all the gods that are. All hidden hollows c f earth in his hand, and all the mountains' crests, Are under his behests.

His the sea is, to which he set a bourne ; and all the dry main-land Was moulded by his hand.

Come we, come all to the face of the Lord, who made us, and adore him, And bow to kneel before him.

Sure God is our God ; a people of his we are, the sheep he feedeth, Whoever his voice now heedeth.

' Harden your hearts not against me, as in the day of provocation, The day of my temptation, When in the wilderness I was assayed ; your fathers tempted me, And my great works did see, Forty years long was I grieved, and said, False-hearted sons are they, Who have not known my way. Wherefore in anger an oath to them I recorded, that by none Should my repose be won.' "

It is a pity that the strikingly appropriate rhythm of this jubi- lant song should be marred by so discordant a line as the first of the seventh verse. It is false, whether scanned by accent or quan- tity. Neither prosody, euphony, nor the law of emphasis will allow us to read.

" &Ire Gilid is I otir GOd, a I people of

Mr. Cayley sometimes places his rhymes in a very awkward manner, as in these lines from the 132d Psalm, which have every- thing in common with the most unrhythmical prose except the form in which they are printed-

" From offspring of thine own Blood, I will set thine heir upon thy throne." In a few instances, his rendering falls greatly below the dignity of the original, and is therefore 'esthetically untrue to its sense. In the second psalm,—an invective upon the heathen foes of the Lord and His anointed,—the grand phrase of the Bible version, "the Lord shall have them in derision," is degraded by Mr. Cayley into this ignoble one, " the Lord shall sneer at them ; " and the eighth verse—" Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron : thou shalt dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel "— becomes-

" Thou shalt with iron rod them rule, and break Like that which potters make,"

—a piece of doggrel not surpassed by Tate or Brady' and worthy even of that paragon of " tmdittori, traduttori," Elphinstone, the translator of Martial.

But a few blemishes, which may easily be removed in future editions, may well be forgiven in a work of so much labour as Mr. Cayley's' and are as nothing in comparison with its great and signal merits both of conception and execution. He has broken down an inveterate and barren literary prejudice, and raised up a fruitful principle upon its ruins. Had he done no more than this, he would be entitled to our cordial thanks ; but they are due to him in still ampler measure because he, and he alone, has suc- ceeded in enriching English literature with a really poetical ver- sion of the Psalms.