Hill was
apparently the first to prove the esthetic loss in such a
practice by an analysis of particular paraphrastic expansions.
Despite his theory, however, Hill's own paraphrase seems almost
as artificial and un-Biblical as those he condemns. He often
forgets the principles he preaches. But even in his preface there
is evident a blind spot that is a mark of his age. His false
ideas of decorum, admiration for Milton, and approval of Dennis's
interpretation of the sublime as the "vast" and the "terrible,"
all lead him to condemn the "low" or the familiar. And his own
efforts to "raise" both his language and his comparisons to suit
the "high" Biblical subject, result in personifications, compound
epithets, and a Miltonic vocabulary, by which the very simplicity
he himself found in the Bible is destroyed.
Another decade was to pass before John Husbands would demonstrate
a clear appreciation for the true simplicity of the Bible and
praise its "penmen" in terms close to those employed to describe
original genius.
Gretchen Graf Pahl
Pomona College
The essay "Of Genius," from the _Occasional Paper_ (1719), is
reproduced from a copy in the New York Public Library. The
typescript of Aaron Hill's preface is based on a copy in the
Henry E. Huntington Library. Both works are used with
permission.
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