PARALLELISM: A RESTATEMENT 49
matical construction; these I call parallel lines,
and the words or phrases, answering one to
another in the corresponding lines, parallel terms.
Parallel lines may be reduced to three sorts:
parallels synonymous, parallels antithetic and
parallels synthetic.”
The vulnerable point in Lowth's exposition of
parallelism as the law of Hebrew poetry lies in
what he found it necessary to comprehend under
the term synthetic parallelism : his examples
include, indeed, many couplets to which the term
parallelism can with complete propriety be ap-
plied ; in such couplets the second line repeats
by means of one or more synonymous terms part
of the sense of the first; and by means of one or
more other terms adds something fresh, to which
nothing in the first line is parallel. In virtue of
the presence of some parallel terms such lines
may be called parallel, and in virtue of the pre-
sence of some non-parallel terms they may be
called synthetic, or in full the lines may be termed
synthetic parallels, and the relation between them
synthetic parallelism; but more convenient terms
for such lines, which are of very frequent occur-
rence,^1 and for the relation between them, would
be incomplete parallels and incomplete parallelism.
In any case, term them as we will, such examples
as these are in reality not distinct from, but mere
subdivisions of synonymous or antithetic parallel-
1 Many examples are cited below: see pp. 72-82.