THE _HEBREW_ LANGUAGE Its survival and revival――Its influence upon the English mind――De Quincey――Bacon――Shakespeare――Milton――Cowley――Taylor ――Tillotson――Barrow――Dryden――Parnell――Pope――Addison――Young ――Akenside――Gray――Warton――Cowper――Byron――Shelley――Southey ――Moore――Sir Thomas Brown[e]――Earl of Clarendon――John Pym ――Viscount Falkland――Sir Henry Vane――Earl of Chatham――Browning ――Tennyson――John Bright. THE _Hebrew_ language, mysteriously preserved like _Israel_, the people after whom it is called, through the tempests of many centuries, politically annihilated, but spiritually full of vigour, has never ceased to be a vehicle for the expression of sublime thoughts and sentiments. Not only in the brilliant epoch of _Hebrew_ literature in Spain, from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, but since then, _Hebrew_ has been written in prose and in poetry with power and effect unattainable in any of the languages that have ceased to live. It is entirely wrong to consider _Hebrew_ a dead language. _Hebrew_ has never been dead. At no time in its long history has it ceased to be employed by the Jewish people, as a medium for the expression, whether in speech or in writing, of the living thoughts and the living feelings of the Jew. Its use as a national medium of everyday speech came, indeed, to an end with the destruction of the political organization of the Jewish people. But that catastrophe did not destroy the life of the language any more than it destroyed the life of the nation. The marvellous revival of the _Hebrew_ language in our times in Palestine, which is one of the greatest achievements of the Zionist movement, shows that the language was only neglected, and that it was essentially a living language. The _Hebrew_ language, with its naturalness and noble simplicity, has exerted an influence not less powerful than that of Biblical ideas on the English mind. Knowing little of artificial forms, it has a natural sublimity of its own, and a great logical clearness in discriminating between nice shades of meaning. It appeals strongly to the English mind, because it is the holy language, bringing the Divine Word and coming from the sanctuary of that ancient covenant, whose faithful guardians are the people of _Israel_. The Semitic word has within historic times exercised on the civilisation of the whole human race an influence to which no parallel can be found, and which, if the future may be measured by the past, is destined triumphantly to extend, for the incalculable benefit of mankind, to the uttermost bounds of the earth. The poetry of the Bible has no rival.