originated bears constant witness to an imagination, which is not only anterior to all prosaic culture, but as a rule is wholly incompatible with the faculty of ordinary common sense, and is capable in fact of endowing the fundamental tendencies of this national consciousness, in its essentially unique and collective conception of the universe, with an original artistic form. The later Epics, on the contrary, which are called _Puranas_, in the more restricted sense of the term, that is, poems of the Past, appear rather to be compiled in the prosaic and dull style similar to that adopted by post-Homeric cyclic poets, and pursue their downward course at great length from the creation of the gods and the universe to the genealogies of human heroes and princes. Finally the epic care of the old myths dissolves into vapour and artificial elegance of a purely external poetic form and diction, while on the one hand the phantasy, which exhausted itself in a dreamy wonderland, becomes the wisdom of fables whose most important function is to instruct us in morality and worldly wisdom. (_γ_) We may compare side by side in a _third_ division of epic Oriental poetry that respectively belonging to Hebrews, Arabs, and Persians. (_αα_) The sublimity of the Jewish imagination no doubt in its conception of the Creation, in the histories of the Patriarchs, the wandering in the wilderness, _the_ conquest of Canaan, and in the further historical course of national event, full as such a vision is of sterling content and natural truth, possesses many elements of primitive epic poetry; the religious interest is here, however, so predominant, that, instead of being genuine Epopaea, they merely approximate either to religious myths in the guise of poetry, or to religious narratives which are wholly didactic.