adduce, in such connection, the authority of a book which we thought the learned had long agreed to pronounce a modern forgery; in which opinion, it appears, Mr. H. coincides, after giving an extract, at considerable length, which is probably well known to most of "the readers of the Methodist Quarterly Review," of whom he affects or enjoys a complacent ignorance.

We have here to say, that Mr. H. misunderstood us again, (for surely he "is an honorable man,") in supposing that we. claimed for the book of Jasher "authentic antiquity."--P. 272. We affirmed nothing on this point. We said, (p. 510,) "We do not propose to say who was Jasher, or what the book of Jasher, but only to examine what has been said to us." Mr. H. assumed that it was ancient, and testified of by Josephus. We denied that Josephus said anything about it; and in this he now agrees with us. He assumed that it "was probably a collection of sacred songs, composed on various occasions; and one of its pieces undoubtedly was that recorded in 2 Samuel i," (p. 112,) which certainly makes it synchronous with David. From this opinion we expressly dissented. Though we cannot demonstrate our opinion, we have reasons for it, stronger than any we have seen for regarding it a book of poems. Having assumed the fact, that the book was a compilation of poems, he wishes to argue that its date must have been subsequent to that of the book of Joshua, because there was no intervening time between the acts and the writing of the history. At this point we took issue with him, and claimed that if there was a national ode to celebrate the victory of Joshua and the miracle, "it was more reasonable to suppose that the poetic effusion should have been antecedent to the prose record; that the flight of the winged Pegasus should have outstripped the tardier movements of the pedestrian muse.' We further gave arguments, for which we challenge refutation, that the book of Joshua was not written till some time subsequent to the man Joshua.

"The readers of the Methodist Quarterly Review" shall have the benefit, in full, of his reply to these two positions. It is this: "The man whose credulity can overcome such obstacles will never find anything in the way of a position he may wish to establish." The " obstacles" he means are, the "absurdity" of supposing the ode could be written before the history, and that the history could be written some little time after the deeds of it were done! So absurd! he redoubles upon the track, and finds it the "ultimatum in absurdity" to suppose the poet could compose an ode, or (to conform our ideas to the customs of the age) that the

rhapsodist could utter his impromptu song before the historian had accomplished his task! Why, the strains might have been caught by the daughters of Israel, and sent echoing round all the hills of Palestine, ere the general was sufficiently refreshed from battle to withdraw the stylus from his belt, or unrol his parchments. And if our sires and grandams tell us truly, the victories of our revolution were sung all over the land long before men thought of history, save the living history in the conversation of the people.

We are sorry he should have written so rashly-we might be justified in saying, absurdly 'twere more just to the fact, however, to say stupidly-but we dislike either word.

One other thing, en passant. We hope Mr. H. "will be satisfied with the assurance" that we did not intend to unsettle his nerves so sadly by the sight of a Pegasus. We "presumed" that a man who could do and undo the writings of antiquity, was too familiar with the whole classical menagery to take fright at the commonest of the herd. Poor Peg! he's a harmless beast in these days. That he did not comprehend the common phrasenot to say trite-pedestrian muse, we are satisfied did not result from any will to pervert or misunderstand, but simply from having forgotten the use of it in our standards, and from lack of a dictionary. His error here is no doubt from his memory. A pity for its shortness! If he has forgotten his Quinctilian, and his Horace, and our English classics, any good dictionary would have served as a prompter; and would have taught him, that though "professing to know a little of almost everything," (we had judged as much,) he has guessed totally wrong this time.

But perhaps it were as well to stop. These misconceptions and misstatements-unintentional we hope, for the man abhors to misrepresent-yet utter and unjustifiable misstatements-fall frequenter than the pages. A pity for its shortness, we said-his memory's. See how it serves him in a quotation; or better to say, sub

serves.

He had said that Josephus gave a full account of Jasher, and recites that account item by item, (p. 110.) We denied that Josephus even so much as intimates that he ever heard of such a book. And, respecting the passage in that author, where he speaks of "the books laid up in the temple," from which Dr. Horne deduces a detailed opinion about Jasher, we said this:

"The inquiry, then, is, What were the books laid up in the temple? We can easily conceive that it is not among the wildest of conjectures that have been made, to suppose that the book of Jasher was intended; and that point assumed, the further con

jecture, that the other items above named must also have been of Josephus's opinion, gains a strength of probability, amounting, perhaps, to inference. But remove this substratum, and the fabric it supports goes with it. And we claim that such a conjecture is. entirely independent of the data which might have guided it."P. 512.

Mr. Hopkins quotes us thus: (he means to do it "literally," of course :)

"Now we can easily conceive,' adds this reviewer, 'that it is not among the wildest of conjectures to suppose that the book of. Jasher was intended.' Nay; he admits that this opinion gains a strength of probability, amounting, perhaps, to inference." "P. 282.

That we call pitiable, literally pitiable.

We then showed that, by the books, Josephus could have meant no other than the sacred Scriptures. This Mr. H. now admits, abandons his former opinion, and again reiterates that we "admit that it is altogether probable Josephus did refer to this book." A literal man, no doubt, and an honorable, and who abhors to misrepresent.

Another. On the question, whether the passage is poetry, he quotes us to have said :-" The characteristics by which we are accustomed to distinguish poetry are these, to wit: the determination of the verse by a certain number and fixed order of feet, ascertained by the number and quantity of syllables in each." Here he stops; and upon these disjointed fragments of our sentence he remarks:-"Will the learned professor deny that the book of Job (excepting, &c.) is poetry? And can he find here his 'determination of the verse?' &c., &c. Let him look also at the book of Psalms and that of Proverbs," &c. Now the simple thing we said was, that the characteristics above named are wanting in Hebrew poetry. We said it thus :-"That all the obvious characteristics by which we are accustomed to distinguish poetry, to wit: the determination of the verse by a certain number and fixed order of feet, ascertained by the number and quantity of syllables in each; in fine, the entire subject of prosody as it exhibits itself from the ancient Greek hitherward, was wholly unknown to the Hebrew: at least we have no knowledge that it was recognized by them at all." We then noticed the characteristics of Hebrew verse, as defined by all the grammarians, and referred to Nordheimer for a more full exhibition of what we received as the true doctrine. If he dislikes our views, the question is with Nordheimer and Stuart, and the German philologians. But we in

troduced this to show how literally he quotes. He does not attack our argument."

He next makes us say,-"That which follows the question in verse 13, ('is it not written? &c.) is a little more poetical than that which precedes it;" and adds, "There are degrees, then, it seems, in poetry, according to his own standard, and that, too, where there is no poetry at all!" Our sentence was literally this. After having noticed the characteristics of Hebrew poetry, and having said, "They had poetic thoughts, poetic diction, we might even say, a poetic style, but no verse;" that is, in the Greek and Latin, and modern sense of the word verse; we said,--"The latter clause of the thirteenth verse may be said to be, in its phraseology, poetic." It is surely time to refer this literal man, who "professes to know a little of almost everything," to Noah Webster, to renew his extinct memory of the use (not ab-use) of the "marks of quotation."

The argument about tradition rests where we left it. He does not attempt to refute it. He quotes a part of it; so as not to exhibit its force, however; but does not misquote under this head, only to make us say something about the flood which we never said. If he would not put his constant misstatements in quotation marks, as if we had said so, it would not have been quite so guilty. We have not said the half that he has thus marked for us.

We must give one more. "The writer of the Examination" had found a difficulty in the passage, from the relative position of Gibeon to Joshua; and this difficulty he had invented by misreading the text-over Gibeon, for upon Gibeon. We felt, indeed, that it was childish in us to stoop to illustrate the fact, that

*It will be remembered that we did not deny the quotation in verse thirteenth to be poetry. That it exhibits the rhetorical figure of parallelism is evident to any one; and so far we said its phraseology was poetic; but we reaffirm that this figure is one of the common ornaments of prose, and, therefore, does not sustain the unqualified assertion that the clause is poetry. But if we are to admit any sentence to be absolutely poetry on such slight evidence, and then agree with Mr. H. that a poetic clause cannot legitimately stand in connection in prose, we have done a sad work. The knife of excision must at once go through the Gospel histories, cutting them piecemeal from beginning to end. Many of the most pointed and instructive of our Saviour's parables, and other portions of his discourses, suddenly become, in the hands of such critics, modern interpolations from smutty monks' books! Nay, go through the masters of literature in all languages, and you reduce their symmetry to utter deformity, and annihilate the very idea of art or refinement in prose composition.

if one would look, at evening, to see the sunlight rest upon a mountain, he must, of course, look toward the east; and that when the sun is near the horizon, whether east or west, and we say the sun is upon the mountain, we always imply that the two objects are in opposite directions from us. Having done this, however, with due gravity, the spirit of burlesque got the better of us for a moment. We said, "We have read that this preposition, upon, once gave rise to an elaborate discussion by all the learned jurists that attend on the two highest courts in the British empire, to determine whether it meant before or after; and it gained a different decision from each of the august benches. It was not argued at that time whether it might also signify over."— P. 521.

Listen, now, to the man who proffers, and quite urges us to accept, his emendations of the sacred text. After complaining that we think so little of his argument, we have literally this :-" He has read, as he informs us, somewhere in the course of his researches after wisdom and knowledge, 'that the preposition upon once gave rise to an elaborate discussion in the British Parliament,* to determine whether it meant before or after.' This, as it would seem, is sufficient to satisfy him, that when Joshua, standing at Makkedah, near the close of the day, gave command that the sun and moon should halt 'upon Gibeon,' a city lying directly east of him, he meant only that the sun should stand still either 'before' or 'after' Gibeon."-P. 290.

Now we will not call this absurd; for we are convinced, from his use of it, that Mr. H. has forgotten the meaning of that word; nor misrepresentation, for that he abhors; nor lack of veracity, for he must have but vague notions of that virtue who can question the veracity of another for choosing not to imitate his bad grammar, by inserting a word which could add nothing to the sense, in a place where it could not properly stand, though when quoting his language, he did it literally-verbatim et grammaticatim-we will call it none of these; in fine, we will not name it. A friend at our elbow suggests that it simply looks to him likehopeless stupidity, or willful perversion; that he either could not understand simple language, or has deliberately falsified. We affirm not, lest we should not be literally correct.

On page 280, he says we have not noticed a single one of the

* He evidently quotes from memory-and that a very short one, which is as good as mismemory. A pity for such a memory! If he will look into the Reports of the Courts of Queen's Bench and the Exchequer for 1839, he will find the arguments in full.