Many of the Psalms date from David’s time; one (Psalm xc.) carries us as far back as Moses, and others were as late as the Captivity. They were probably arranged as we now have them in the fifth century B.C.; though certain critics refer some of them to the Maccabean period (second century B.C.). =Elegiac Poetry.=—King David was also a writer of elegy, that kind of song in which the Hebrew poets and prophets poured out their grief in the unaffected language of nature. Some of his Psalms are beautiful specimens of this species of poetry, especially Psalm xlii., “As the hart panteth after the water-brooks,” composed during his exile among the mountains of Lebanon. Another exquisite and pathetic elegy of this poet, rendered below in English verse by Lowth, is the LAMENTATION FOR SAUL AND JONATHAN. “Thy glory, Israel, droops its languid head, On Gilboa’s heights thy rising beauty dies; In sordid piles there sleep the illustrious dead, The mighty victor fall’n and vanquished lies. Yet dumb be Grief; hushed be her clam’rous voice! Tell not in Gath the tidings of our shame! Lest proud Philistia in our woes rejoice, And rude barbarians blast fair Israel’s fame. The sword of Saul ne’er spent its force in air; The shaft of Jonathan brought low the brave; In life united equal fates they share, In death united share one common grave. Daughters of Judah! mourn the fatal day, In sable grief attend your monarch’s urn; To solemn notes attune the pensive lay, And weep those joys that never shall return. With various wealth he made your tents o’erflow, In princely pride your charms profusely dressed; Bade the rich robe with ardent purple glow, And sparkling gems adorn the tissued vest. On Gilboa’s heights the mighty vanquished lies, The son of Saul, the generous and the just; Let streaming sorrow ever fill these eyes, Let sacred tears bedew a brother’s dust. Thy firm regard revered thy David’s name, And kindest thoughts in kindest acts expressed; Not brighter glows the pure and generous flame That lives within the tender virgin’s breast. But vain the tear and vain the bursting sigh, Though Sion’s echoes with our grief resound; The mighty victors fall’n and vanquished lie, And war’s refulgent weapons strew the ground.” =Didactic Poetry.=—In the golden age, didactic poetry also reached the acme of perfection. The Proverbs that then flowed from the inspired pen of SOLOMON, prince of didactic writers as his father was of lyric poets, are too well known, with all their richness of practical wisdom, to require more than a passing mention. Expressed concisely in energetic words, according to the different forms of parallelism, these moral precepts are indeed “like apples of gold in baskets of silver.”