of Israel, uttered in the spirit of prophecy be'fore the Lord.' And R. Aben Ezra, in the preface to his commentary, says, God forbid that 'the Song of Songs should be written or understood of things obscene; but it is entirely parabolical, and had it not been of very great excellency, it had not been written in the catalogue of the holy scriptures'.'

Agreeably to these sentiments, many of the rabbins, and of the fathers, wrote allegorical expositions of this book; and though it must be confessed their applications were various, and often fanciful to the extreme, they all (with a very few exceptions) united in the general principle, that the book was allegorical. And Jews, as well as Christians, are of the same opinion to the present day. So Mr. DAVID LEVI, This poem is an entire allegory-and describes the conjugal union of God with the Jewish church.-This is the 'solemn compact so frequently celebrated by ' almost all the Jewish writers under the same 'image'.'

.

To confirm this idea, I would add lastly, that this method of explication is perfectly congenial to the eastern taste. Sir JOHN CHARDIN says of the Persians, that the most serious of their po'ets treat of the sublimest mysteries of theology under the most licentious language, in the way of allegory, as Afez in his Kasels3.'

The Kasels (or Ghazels) of Afez (or Hafez) are, literally taken, Anacreontics; but Feridoun and other Turkish commentators, understand the terms of love and wine as expressing the trans'ports of a soul devoutly attached to heaven.' The eastern writers, and in particular the Gentoos, adopt many mystical expressions of this nature, and talk of being inebriated with divine love, &c. It has been, indeed, suspected, that the eastern poets, who indulged themselves in li centious compositions, endeavoured to throw a veil of mystery over them, to conceal their shame: this might sometimes be the case; but the austere and exemplary life of Hafez pleads strongly in his favour'.

But I cannot do justice to this subject without subjoining the following interesting extract from Sir W. JONES's very curious and learned essay on the mystical poetry of the Persians and Hin'dus';' which is so complete as to supercede all farther enquiries on the subject.

'A figurative mode of expressing the fervour ' of devotion, or the ardent love of created spirits 'toward their beneficent Creator, has prevailed 'from time immemorial in Asia; particularly among the Persian theists, both ancient Husbangis and modern Sufis, who seem to have bor'rowed it from the Indian philosophers of the 'Vedanta school; and their doctrines are also 'believed to be the source of that sublime, but

1 Richardson's Specimen of Pers. Poetry. Note, p. 15. • Asiatic Researches, p. 353 & seq. or Works, vol. I. P. 445.

poetical, theology, which glows and sparkles in "the writings of the old academics. Plato tra⚫velled into Italy and Egypt, says Claude Fleury, ⚫ to learn the theology of the Pagans at its fountain head' its true fountain, however, was nei⚫ther in Italy nor in Egypt, (though considerable ⚫ streams of it had been conducted thither by Pythagoras, and by the family of Misra) but in • Persia or India, which the founder of the Italic 'sect had visited with a similar design. What 'the Grecian travellers learned among the sages

of the east, may perhaps be fully explained in ' another dissertation; but we confine this essay 'to a singular species of poetry, which consists ' almost wholly of a mystical religious allegory, though it seems, on a transient view, to contain only the sentiments of a wild and voluptuous li'bertinism: now, admitting the danger of a poeti'cal style, in which the limits between vice and ' enthusiasm are so minute as to be hardly distinguishable, we must allow it to be natural, though 'a warm imagination may carry it to a culpable excess; for an ardently grateful piety is conge'nial to the undepraved nature of man, whose mind, sinking under the magnitude of the sub'ject, and struggling to express its motions, has ' recourse to metaphors and allegories, which it 'sometimes extends beyond the bounds of cool * reason, and often to the brink of absurdity.'

เ

The author here gives some considerable extracts from Barrow on the love of God, and the

mysterious union and communion of the soul with him, which he thinks, border on quietism and ' enthusiastic devotion'; and then adds, that these 'differ only from the mystical theology of the Sufis ' and Yogis, as the flowers and fruits of Europe differ in scent and flavour from those of Asia ' or as European differs from Asiatic eloquence; 'the same strain, in poetical measure, would rise up

to the odes of Spencer on divine love and beauty; ‹ and in a higher key, with richer embellishments 'to the songs of Hafiz and Jayadeva, the raptures ⚫ of the Masnavi, and the Mysteries of the Bhága

" vat.'

Sir W. Jones gives another considerable extract on the same subject, taken from M. Necker, in which he represents God as thus addressing man: Your nature is composed of those divine 'particles, which, at an infinite distance, consti'tute my own essence.' This, Sir W. says, is 'the exact system of the Sufis and Vedantis in epitome. They believe that the Deity pervades the universe; that he alone is perfect benevolence, truth and beauty that all the beauties of nature ' are faint resemblances only, like images in a mirror, of the divine charms;'-' that we must 'beware of attachment to such phantoms, and ⚫ attach ourselves exclusively to God, who truly, ' exists in us, as we exist solely in him; that we • retain, even in this forlorn state of separation 'from our Beloved, the idea of heavenly beauty, and the remembrance of our primeval vows; ' that sweet music, gentle breezes, fragrant flowN

ers, perpetually renew the primary idea, refresh our fading memory, and melt us with tender 'affections; that we must cherish those affections, and by abstracting our souls from vanity, that is, from all but God, approximate to his essence, in our final union with which will consist our supreme beatitude. From these principles 'flow a thousand metaphors and poetical figures, which abound in the sacred poems of the Persians and Hindus, who seem to mean the same thing in substance, and differ only in expression as their languages differ in idiom. The modern Sufis, who profess a belief in the Koran, suppose, with great sublimity both of thought and * of diction, an express contract, on the day of 'eternity without beginning, between the assemblage of created spirits and the Supreme Soul, 'from which they were detached, when a celestial ' voice pronounced these words, addressed to each spirit separately, Art thou not with thy Lord?' "that is, Art thou not bound by a solemn contract with him? and all the spirits answered with one voice, Yes' hence it is, that alist, or art thou "not, and beli, or yes, incessantly occur in the 'mystical verses of the Persians, and of the Turkish poets, who imitate them, as the Romans 'imitated the Greeks. The Hindus describe the same covenant under the figurative notion, so finely expressed by Isaiah, of a nuptial contract; 'for, considering God in the three characters of creator, regenerator and preserver, and supposing the power of preservation and benevolence to have become incarnate in the person of