We say nothing of the conceit of misery killing its own father, because we wish to direct our observations, not to the imperfections of particular passages, but to the general want of fidelity to nature which pervades the whole performance. In the crowd of images here put into the mouth of Beatrice, there is neither novelty, nor truth, nor poetical beauty. Misery like hers is too intensely occupied with its own pangs to dwell so much on extraneous ideas. It does not cause the pavement to sink, or the wall to spin round, or the sunshine to become black; it does not stain the heaven with blood; it does not change the qualities of the air, nor does it clothe itself in a mist which glues the limbs together, eats into the sinews, and dissolves the flesh; still less does it suppose itself dead. This is not the language either of extreme misery or of incipient madness; it is the bombast of a declamation, straining to be energetic, and falling into extravagant and unnatural rant. "CEN. Andrea! Go call my daughter, And if she comes not, tell her that I come. One among which shall be-What? Canst thou guess? Her loathing will to her own conscious self Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin. ANDR. My Lord, 'twas what she looked she said: "Go tell my father that I see the gulph "Of Hell between us two, which he may pass, CEN. Go thou quick, Lucretia, Tell her to come; yet let her understand Ha! (Exit ANDREA.) (Exit LUCRETIA.) With what but with a father's curse doth God Panic-strike armed victory, and make pale Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came." (P. 59, 60.) This passage exemplifies the furious exaggeration of Mr. Shelley's caricatures, as well as of the strange mode in which, throughout the whole play, religious thoughts and atrocious deeds are brought together. There is something extremely shocking in finding the truths, the threats, and the precepts of religion in the mouth of a wretch, at the very moment that he is planning or perpetrating crimes at which nature shudders. In this intermixture of things, sacred and impure, Mr. Shelley is not inconsistent if he believes that religion is in Protestant countries hypocrisy, and that it is in Roman Catholic countries "adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration; nct a rule for moral conduct, and that it has no necessary connexion with any one virtue."-(Preface, p. 13.) Mr. Shelley is in an error: men act wrongly in spite of religion; but it is because they have no steady belief of it, or because their notions of it are erroneous, or because its precepts do not occur to them at the moment some vicious passion prevails. A Christian murderer does not amuse his fancy with the precepts and denunciations of his faith at the very moment of perpetrating the deed. The moral errors of this book prevent us from quarrelling with its literary sins. ART. XIII.-SCRIPTURE CHRONOLOGY. 1. The Chronology of our Saviour's Life; or, an Inquiry into the true time of the Birth, Baptism, and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. By the Rev. C. Benson, M. A. 8vo. Baldwin and Co. London, 1819. 2. Watson Refuted: being an Answer to the Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff. By Samuel Francis, M. D. 8vo. Reprinted by Carlile. London, 1819. 3. New Researches of Ancient History. By C. F. Volney. Translated in Paris, under the superintendance of the Author, by Colonel Corbet. 2 vols. 8vo. Lewis. London, 1819. 4. The Books of Genesis and Daniel defended against Count Volney, Dr. Francis, &c. By John Overton. 8vo. Simpkin and Marshall. London, 1820. It is only in reference to Scripture chronology that these books have any thing in common; except that two of them, written by avowed infidels, alike abound in scurrility, in faneness, and in gratuitous assertions, the positiveness of which is usually proportioned to their falsehood. The other two publications, though alike designed to elucidate and confirm the sacred Scriptures, have little in common but that becoming moderation by which they are both contrasted with the vehemence and virulence which characterize the effusions of infidelity. It is in this respect only, that we can commend Mr. Overton's performance: in every other, he continually reminds us of a citation sufficiently hackneyed-non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis, opus eget; for we confess that we had rather see Christianity assailed by twenty such foes as Count Volney and Dr. Francis, than defended by one such advocate as Mr. Overton. He professes to believe the Apocrypha, the book of Enoch, the testament of the twelve Patriarchs, the gospel of Nicodemus, &c. &c. as firmly as the Bible: and, indeed, if the latter warranted such extravagant hypotheses as he ascribes to it, it would be nearly as incredible as the writings to which he attributes equal authority. To pass from such books to Mr. Benson's performance, has afforded us a sensible gratification; and although this has doubtless been heightened by the contrast, we are confident that his "Chronology of our Saviour's life" will amply recommend itself to every reader who is qualified to judge of the discussion. As it belongs, however, to the latest department of Scripture chronology, we must postpone farther attention to it, till we have, in a rapid view of the whole subject, referred, as we find occasion, to leading parts of the other publications, under the periods to which they relate. The book of Genesis seems to be peculiarly offensive to disbelievers of divine revelation, who usually bring against it the most absurd and inconsistent charges. They object to it, as an invention of the Jews in order to carry their own antiquity as high as the creation. When reminded, however, that the Israelites were no more connected with Adam, or even with Noah, than the other nations of the globe; and that the Israelites always represented their own nation to be of inferior antiquity, not only to the Egyptians, Canaanites, and Philistines; but even to others who derived their origin, in common with themselves, from Abraham, Lot, and Isaac; the cavillers face about, and assert Genesis to have been an Armenian or Chaldean document, to which the Jews had no claim; and that it was at a late period added to the catalogue of writings falsely ascribed to Moses. The plain truth, so far as evidence of the existence of Hebrew writings can be traced, is, that it was always com prised in what the Jews called the Law, as distinguished from the Prophets (including the other historical, as well as the prophetical books), and from the Scriptures, containing the writings of David and Solomon. Whether the distribution of the law into five parts, or books, was first made by the Greek translators, or at an earlier date, it is certain that Genesis has always been reckoned one of those books. It was, therefore, sanctioned by Moses: but we admit that its subjects, and its mode of construction, imply him rather to have been the compiler than the author, of Genesis. It exhibits plain signs of comprising numerous distinct memorials; to many of which the original titles, These are the generations," &c. remain prefixed: and the style usually changes with the title, especially in the appellation of God; who in the first of these sections is called Elohim, in the next Jehovah Elohim, in the third, only Jehovah, and in others, alternately, Elohim or Jehovah. All the sections of Genesis, excepting the first, and those which contain genealogies, have every internal mark of having been committed to writing by eye-witnesses of the facts that are recorded. Even the fall of man is described precisely as an eye-witness might report the facts, relating only what was seen or heard, without inference or remark. Neither do we perceive any sound reason to deny that it could be recorded by the first father of mankind; who, in a life of more than nine centuries, might surely devise means of expressing, either by hieroglyphical or arbitrary characters, ideas so simple as those which are communicated to us of his history. Whether alphabetical letters were invented before, or after the deluge, appears to us to be wholly uncertain. The history of Creation, closing with verse 3, of the second chapter of Genesis, must evidently have been either revealed or fabricated. Against this portion of Scripture, therefore, the enemies of divine revelation especially direct their attacks; and it is to be lamented, that to these the oversights of its friends have afforded openings. Due attention to the precision of the original expressions would have guarded them. The term rendered "created" signifies to bring into first existence; that which is translated "made," signifies to form, organize, arrange, or finish, what had previously been created. So the hea vens," or celestial spheres," and the earth," were, at the same time, produced from nothing, chap. i. verse 1. Mr. Overton strangely imagines them to have been formed of something eternal, which he calls pure ether; because (he says) of nothing, nothing is made: as if GOD was nothing, or incapable of bringing anything into existence! Whatever was the first form of universal matter, it was created by God. Sir Isaac Newton supposed it, in the first instance, to have been formed into the various spheres of fixed stars and planets; but the subsequent process seems rather to imply that atoms, dispersed over the extent of the universe, were attracted one to another at various centres of gravitation; and cohered in bodies nearly spherical, of very unequal dimensions; the smaller of which then gravitated toward the nearest of superior magnitude. Disbelievers of the Bible do not fail to take notice of the plural name assigned to the Creator, and of his use of plural verbs and pronouns. Volney, who devoted much of his first volume to cavils against the book of Genesis, inferred, from this supposed inconsistency with the doctrine of the Divine Unity, that the compiler of the Pentateuch could not be Moses. Trinitarian Christians can otherwise account for this phænomenon: but it behoves Christian Unitarians (so called by themselves, in distinction from Jews, Mahometans, and Deists) to reflect whether the charge of producing obstacles to a belief of the Scriptures, which they have often brought against Trinitarians, does not more justly devolve on themselves. We must leave them to answer Volney, vol. i. p. 179, in the best manner they can. We relinquish to them also, in common with infidels, the translation of Elohim, when preceding a singular verb, by the English plural, Gods. The use of the title God, in English, agrees with that of Jehovah, not that of Elohim, in Hebrew. The latter is evidently a plural noun, but not the plural of God. The Greek translators used 905, because the language had no proper term for an eternal cause of all things. This is what we mean by GOD, and it therefore can have no plural. The second verse of the Bible apprizes us, that the Spirit of Elohim (in distinction from Elohim) operated in the process of creation. Those critics who chose to translate the original term "wind," instead of spirit, should explain to us how wind could precede the formation of the atmosphere. As it was not till the fourth revolution of the earth round its axis, that the heavenly bodies were finally arranged, so as to regulate seasons, days, and years, (to which the centrifugal movement, and obliquity in the ecliptics of the planets, were indispensable), they might, till then, have been gradually attracted toward the sun, and might have revolved round their axes less rapidly than afterwards. If the surface of the earth, instead of whirling, as now, with a velocity of more than 1000 miles in an hour, turned round (like our moon) but once in the |