which he wrote. The first chapter of Genesis is the
greatest and most splendid Poem ever conceived by human imagination, or
written by human hand.

All Poets, ancient and modern, are mere plagiarists, if Moses was
uninspired. We prove his Divine Legation by the intrinsic and
transcendent merits of the Poem which he wrote. Imagination originates
nothing absolutely new. It merely imitates and combines. It is regarded
as the creative faculty of man; but its material is already furnished.
The portrait of an unreal Adam is as conceivable as a child without a
father, or an effect without a cause.

Thus we are obliged, by an inseparable necessity, to admit the
credibility of the Poem which he wrote. And what does Moses say? Nothing
more than that _God spoke, and the universe was!_ This is the sublime of
true Poetry. This is more than the logic of the proposition, _God was,
therefore we are!_ It is more than the philosophy, _ex nihilo, nihil
fit!_ or than, that _nothing_ cannot be the parent of _something_.

But we must place our foot on a higher round of the ladder, before we
can stand on such an eminence as to see, in all its fair proportions,
the column on which the Muses perch themselves.

Job, and not Moses, shall be our guide, and the oracle alike of our
reason and our imagination. But who is Job? There is not much poetry in
the name, Job. But Rome and its vulgate vulgarized this hallowed name,
and Britain followed Rome. His name in Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic, is
Jobab. There is more poetry in this. There is no metre, no poetry in a
monotone or monosyllable. Born among rocks and mountains, the proper
theatre of a heaven-inspired Muse--not in Arabia the Happy, but in
Arabia the Rocky--he was a heart-touching, a soul-stirring, emotional
Bard. In such a case the clouds that overshadow the era of the man only
enhance the genius and inspiration of the Poet.

In internal and external evidence, according to our calendar of the
Muses, he is the first-born of the Poets that yet survive the wasteful
ravages of hoary Time. He sings not, indeed, of Chaos and Eternal Night.
But as one inspired by a heaven-born Muse, he echoes the chorus of the
Angelic Song, when on the utterance of the first _fiat_ the Morning
Stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Hence we
argue, that Poetry is not only prior to prose, but that language, its
intellectual and emotional embodiment, is heaven-conceived, and
heaven-born.

Bu