POGGIO
177
POGGIO
definite? Since no Jewish "Poetics" have been pre-
served from any age of the Bible, we have only the
text itself upon which to set up our theories. But if
we consider how many fragments of divers periods
enter into this literature, and how all alike have been
passed through the mill of a late uncritical recension,
— we mean the Massora — can we suppose that in
ever)- case, or even in general, we enjoy so much evi-
dence as is required for a soUd judgment on this
matter? Infinite conjecture is not science. One re-
sult of which we may be certain is that Hebrew verse
never proceeded by quantity; in this sense it has no
metre. A second is that the poetical phrase, be it
long or short, is governed by tone or stress, rising and
falling naturally with the speaker's emotion. A third
would grant in the more antiqueforms a freedom which
the development of schools and the fixedness of liturgj-
could not but restrain as j-ears went on. At all times,
it has been well said by W. ^lax Mtiller, the lost
melody was the main thing"; but how little we do
know of Hebrew music? Under these complicated
difficulties to fix a scale for the lines of verse, beyond
the rhj-thm of passionate utterance, can scarcely be
attempted with success.
G. Bickell, from 1S79 onwards, undertook in many volumes to reduce the anarchy of Old Testament scansion by applying to it the rules of Syriac, chiefly as found in St. Ephrem. He made the penultimate tonic for .syllables, counted them regularlj-, and held all lines of even syllables to be trochaic, of uneven iambic. On such a Procrustean bed the text was tor- tured into uniformity, not without ever so many changes in word and sense, while the traditional read- ings were swept aside though supported by the ver- sions (see his "Metrices biblicae regulae exemplis illus- trata;", 1S79, "Carmina Vet. Test, metrice", 1882; Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs). This deaUng, at once arbitrarj- and fanciful, leaves us with so uncertain a text that our problem is utterly transformed, and the outcome is scepticism. Yet BickeD has indicated the true poetic measure by his theory of main accents, such as travellers note in the modern songs of Pales- tine. JuUus Le}- constructs a system on the tone- syllable which, preceded by unaccented syllables and followed by one that has "a dying fall", constitutes the metre. His unit is the verse formed by parallel lines; he admits the coesura; with regard to text and vocaUzation he is conservative ("Grundzuge d. Rhvthmus, d. Vers.u.Strophenbauind.hebr. Poesie", 1875; "Leitfaden d. Metrik Der heb. Poesie". 1887). A third writer, Grimme, while not chscarding the received vowel-signs, gives them a new value, and combines quantity with accent. Probably, our con- clusion should be that none of these ingenious theories will explain all the facts; and that we had better let the tcx-t alone, marking onlj' where it seems to be corrupt.
Another amusement of Hebrew scholars has been the discover}- and delimitation of " strophes " (Koster, 1831), or of larger units embracing several verses. Bickell and many recent critics allow the four-line combination. Anything more is verj' doubt- ful. In Ps. xhi, and elsewhere, a sort of refrain occurs, which corresponds to the people's answer in Catholic litanies; but this does not enter into the verse-struc- ture itself. C. A. Briggs, who clings resolutely to the idea of complex Hebrew metre, extravagates on the subject, by taking the "whole of sense" for a rhyth- mical whole. We must obey the plain law of parallel- ism, and allow a three-line arrangement where the words themselves demand it. But much of what is now written concerning the hidden links of Old Testa- ment poetry is like the Cabbala, perversely and need- lessly wrong. The lamentation verse lends itself to strophe; and beginnings of it may well e.xist, provided we do not assimilate this hard and severe language to the gracious flexures which were native in Hellenic XII.— 12
composition. There is a species of "canon" or fugue
in the fifteen chants called "Songs of Ascent" — our
"Gradual" Psalms — an ambiguous title referring per-
haps to this feature as well as to the pilgrim journey
they denoted. Various poems and especially the
great Ps. cx\-iii (Hebrew cxix) are arranged alphabeti-
cally; so the Book of Lamentations; Prov. xxxi;
Ecclus., li, 13-29. In Talmudic and Rabbinical writ-
ings the Psalms cxiii-cxviii (Hebrew) are taken as one
composition and known as the "Hallel of Egj-pt",
intended to be sung on the feast of Hanukkah or of
Machabees (I Mach., iv, 59). Ps. cxxx\-i, Hebrew
(Vulgate cxxxi') "Confitemini Domino", is the "Great
Hallel", and Ps. cxlvi-cxlviii make up another collec-
tion of these "Alleluia" hj'mns. In Hebrew poetry
when rhymes occur they are accidental; alliteration,
assonance, word-play belong to it. We find in it
everj'where vehemence of feeling, energetic and abrupt
expression, sudden changes of tense, person, and fig-
ure, sometimes bordering on the grotesque from a
Western point of \'iew. It reveals a fine sense of land-
scape and abhors the personification familiar to
Greeks, whereby things lower than man were deified.
In sentiment it is by turns sublime, tender, and ex-
ceedingly bitter, full of a yearning after righteousness,
which often puts on the garb of hatred and vengeance.
"From Xature to God and from God to Nature" has
been given by Hebrews themselves as the philosophy
which underlies its manifestations. It glorifies the
Lord of Israel in His counsels and His deeds. In
prophecy it judges; in psalmody it prays; in lamenta-
tion it meditates on the sufferings which from of old
the chosen people have undergone. Though it com-
poses neither an epic nor a tragedy, it is the voice
of a nation that has counted its heroes in everj- age,
and that has lived through vicissitudes unequalled in
pathos, in terror, in a never defeated hope. By all
these elements Hebrew poetry is human; by some-
thing more mysterious, but no less real, breathed into
its music from on high, it becomes di\-ine.
Meier, D. Form d. hebr. Poesie (Tubingen, 1S53) seems to anticipate Ley's theon- of verse; Bellerm.^n, Versuch uber d. Metrik d. Hebr. (Berlin," 1813) ; Zuxz, Synagogale Poesie d, M. A. (Berlin. 1853); Ewald, D. Dichter d. A. B., I (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1866) ; Neteler, Grundzuge d. Metrik d. Psalmen (Munster, 1879) ; Briggs, Biblical Studies (1SS3) and other works; Budde, D. Volk^' lied Israels im Munde d. Propheten in Preuss, Jahrb., Sept., 1893; Dec, 1895; Idem in Hasting, Did. of the Bible, s. v. Poetry, Hebrew; AltTLLER, D. Propheten in ihrer ursprunglichen Form (Vienna. 1896) ; Zexner, D. Chorgesange im Buch d. Psalmen (Freiburg, 1896); KoXTG, S(i7/s(a-, Rhetorik. Poetik etc. in .4. T. (Leipzig, 1900); modern views in Ency. Biblica. 1902. older in Hamburger, Realency. of Judaism, 1896; medieval and late Heb. poetry, see Jewish Ency.
William Barry.
Poggio Bracciolini, Giovanni Fr.\ncesco, Ital- ian humanist and historian; b. at Tcrranuova, near Arezzo, in 13S0; d. at Florence, 10 Oct., 1459. He studied at Florence and went to Rome about 1402. Boniface IX made him one of the Apostolic secretaries, which position he held under Innocent VII, Gregory XII, Alexander V, and John XXIII. The deposition of John XXIII and the delays of the Council of Con- stance afforded him leisure to search the hbraries of the monasteries of Germany and France. In 1415 he discovered at Cluny a manuscript containing the following discourses of Cicero : "Pro Cluentio", "Pro S. Roscio", "Pro Murena", "Pro Milone", and "Pro Caho". This manuscript was sent to Florence where Francesco Barbaro deciphered it with great difficultj'. Later Poggio discovered at St. Gall's the first complete text of Quintilian's "Institutio Oratoria", of which Petrarch had known only fragments, a portion of Valerius Flaccus (I-IV, 317), commentaries on Cicero, among others that of .\sconius, a commentarj' of Priscian on twelve verses of ^'irgil, and a manuscript of Mtruvius. During another search through the mon- asteries, probably Einsiedeln, Reichenau on Lake
