pared for it.

We next will look at David in his character as man of genius, musician,
artist, poet. It is not often that an eminent statesman and soldier is, at
the same time, a distinguished poet and writer. Sometimes they can write
history or annals, like Caesar and Frederick the Great; but the imaginative
and poetic element is rarely found connected with the determined will and
practical intellect of a great commander. Alexander the Great had a taste
for good poetry, for he carried Homer with him through his campaigns; but
the taste of Napoleon went no higher than a liking for Ossian.

But David was a poet, in whom the tender, lyrical, personal element rose
to the highest point. The daring soldier, when he took his harp, became
another man. He consoled himself and sought comfort in trial, and sang his
thankfulness in his hours of joy. The Book of Psalms, so far as it is the
work of David, is the record of his life. As Horace says of Lucilius and
his book of Odes, that the whole of the old man's life hangs suspended
therein in votive pictures; and as Goethe says that his Lyrics are a book
of confessions, in which joy and sorrow turn to song; so the Book of
Psalms can only be understood when we consider it as David's poetical
autobiography. In this he anticipates the Koran, which was the private
journal of Mohammed.

"The harp of David," says Herder, "was his comforter and friend. In his
youth he sang to its music while tending his flocks as a shepherd on the
mountains of Judaea. By its means he had access to Saul, and could sooth
with it the dark mood of the king. In his days of exile he confided to it
his sorrows. When he triumphed over his enemies the harp became in his
royal hands a thank-offering to the deity. Afterward he organized on a
magnificent scale music and poetry in the worship of God. Four thousand
Levites, distinguished by a peculiar dress, were arranged in classes and
choirs under master-singers, of whom the three most distinguished, Asaph,
Heman, and Jeduthun, are known to us by specimens of their art. In his
Psalms his whole kingdom lives."

We speak of the inspiration of genius, and distinguish it from the
inspiration of the religious teacher. But in ancient times the prophet and
poet were often the same, and one word (as, in Latin, "vates") was used
for both. In the case of David the two inspirations were perfectly at one.
His religion was poetry, and his poetry was religion. The genius of his