By-paths in Hebraic bookland

On April 25, 1655, six months before starting on his mission to Cromwell, Menasseh ben Israel—visionary about to play the rôle of statesman—completed in Amsterdam the Spanish book which forms the subject of this paper. Duodecimo in size (5¹⁄₄ x 2⁷⁄₈ inches), it consists of 12 + 259 pages, with a list of the author’s works published or projected, and on the last of the unpaginated leaves a Latin version of Psalm 126. In the catalogue of his works appended to the Vindiciæ Judæorum (London, 1656) Menasseh includes “Piedra pretiosa, of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, or the fifth Monarchy.” This was not, however, the real title. The title was, in truth, in Hebrew Eben Yekarah, and in Spanish Piedra Gloriosa, i.e., the “Precious Stone.” The date given above for the completion of the book is fixed by the dedication, which is addressed to Menasseh’s Christian friend, Isaac Vossius.

On a casual glance the book seems a hopeless jumble of incongruities. Nebuchadnezzar’s image, Jacob’s dream, the combat of David and Goliath, the vision of Ezekiel—what have these in common, and what has the title to do with them? The answer to these questions is soon found.

The whole work is Messianic, and in his usual symbolic style, Menasseh seizes on a “Stone” as the central feature for his little treatise. There was the stone, “cut out without hands,” which smote the image seen by the king of Babylon. There was the stone, gathered from the field of Beth-el, on which Jacob laid his weary head to rest when fleeing from his brother. There was the stone, picked smooth from the brook, with which David slew the Philistine. Perhaps the three were one and the same stone, Menasseh seems to imply. Anyhow, he saw in all these incidents a Messianic reference. Nebuchadnezzar’s image, with its feet of clay, typified the Gentiles that were to rise and fall before the great day of the Lord. The ladder of Jacob, with its ascending and descending angels, typified again the rise and fall of nations. David’s victory over Goliath foreshadowed the triumph of the Messiah over the powers of earth. And the whole is rounded off with Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot with its strange beasts and emblems—a chariot which, in the view accepted by Menasseh, typified the Kingdom of the Messiah.

MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL
(From an etching by Rembrandt, in the possession of Mr. Felix Warburg, New York)

Following the dedication to Vossius is an explanatory note to “the Reader.” In this note the author explains that to make his meaning clear he has added four illustrations. He does not name the artist. But we know that he was none other than Menasseh’s neighbor and intimate, Rembrandt. Four etchings, signed by Rembrandt and dated 1654, are possessed by more than one library; probably the fullest sets are to be found in the Fitzwilliam and British Museums. They were originally etched on one plate, which was afterwards cut into four. When all four etchings formed one plate, the arrangement was (as Mr. Middleton explains in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Rembrandt, p. 240):

The Museum, as already implied, possesses proof of the etchings in various “states”—the artist touched and retouched them, until they assumed the state reproduced by the present writer in 1906, in commemoration of the tercentenary of Rembrandt’s birth. The etchings are beautiful tokens of sympathy between the Rabbi and the painter. The various “states” show, as Mr. I. Solomons has suggested, that Rembrandt took unremitting pains to obtain Menasseh’s approval of his work.

Yet he failed to win this approval. It is pretty certain that the etchings were never used. Mr. Fairfax Murray possessed the Piedra Gloriosa with the etchings, and has now presented the volume to the University Library, Cambridge; another copy is to be seen in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, a copy formerly owned by M. Dutuit of Rouen. But Mr. Solomons seems right in asserting that “the original etchings in the copies of Mr. Murray and M. Dutuit were no doubt inserted after by admirers of Rembrandt’s work, but certainly not with the knowledge and sanction of Menasseh.” Why not? The etchings are good work; they really illustrate their subject, and must have added to the commercial, as well as to the artistic value of Menasseh’s work.

The most curious fact is that, though Rembrandt’s etchings were never used, a set of copper-plate engravings, based, as Mr. Solomons guesses, by the Jewish engraver Salom Italia on Rembrandt but not identical with his work, is found in some copies of Menasseh’s book—copies possessed by Mr. Solomons, M. Didot, and the Levy Collection in Hamburg. These engravings are laterally inverted, the right of Rembrandt’s etchings becomes the left of Salom Italia’s engravings. There are other differences in detail, all calculated to render the pictures more fitted for book illustration, but of all the changes only one is of consequence, and it was Mr. Solomons who detected the real significance of the change.

The change referred to gives the clue to the whole mystery. On comparing the two versions of the Vision of Ezekiel a striking variation is discernible. The figure of the Almighty has been suppressed! Here was the fatal defect in Rembrandt’s work. Menasseh could not possibly use a drawing in which the Deity is represented; he was not the one to repeat the inadvertence of the artist of the Sarajevo Haggadah. Possibly he only detected the fault at the last hour. But a fatality clung to the second set of illustrations also. Several copies of the Piedra Gloriosa are extant without any pictures at all.

LANCELOT ADDISON ON THE BARBARY JEWS

“Justice is done to the private virtues of the Jews of Barbary.” So Mr. Francis Espinasse remarks in his biography of Lancelot Addison. It is an accurate comment. Lancelot, the father of the more famous Joseph Addison—who himself wrote so amiably of the Jews a generation later—spent several years in Africa as English chaplain. Born in 1632, he showed an independent mind at Oxford. He roughly handled some of the University Puritans in 1658, and was promptly compelled to recant his speech on his knees in open Convocation. Tangier came into the possession of Charles II in 1662. Lancelot Addison had officiated in Dunkirk for the previous three years; but when that port was given up to the French, Addison was transferred to Morocco.

Here he kept his eyes open. Several lively volumes came from him on Tangier life, on Mohammedanism, on Moorish politics. The most remarkable of these deals with the Jews. So popular was this volume on their “Present State” that three editions were called for. The first came out in 1675. If one may judge by the British Museum copy, it lacked the awesome frontispiece which may be seen in the edition of 1676. Though superscribed “The Present State of the Jews in Barbary,” the almost naked figure is not meant to represent a child of Israel. The personage depicted wears a gorgeously feathered hat and a short waist-covering, also of feathers. Add to this a spear bigger than its wielder, and you have his full costume. It is less Addison’s than his illustrator’s idea of a typical Moor.

From the very opening paragraph of the dedication we see that Lancelot possessed some of his son’s gift of gentle humor. He had inscribed a former book to Secretary Williamson, and he now repeats the act, “it faring with Scriblers, as with those Votaries who never forsake the Saint they once finde propitious.” As for his account of the Jews, he claims that his is more “particular and true” than other descriptions, “this being,” he says, “the result of Conversation and not of Report.” (“Conversation,” of course, he uses in the old sense of “direct intercourse”). Some of the modern assailants of the Jews who appropriate aristocratic names will hardly like Addison’s justification of his interest. It is because of their clear genealogies and ancient lineage that he in the first instance admires the Jews. And if their ancestry was noble, they were not less happy in their primitive religion. “Now seeing that they have been the channel of so many benefits to the rest of mankind, they ought to be the matter of our thankful Reflection, and not of our obloquy and reproach.”

With fine indignation, he goes on to resent the manner in which the Jews of Barbary were “lorded over by the imperious and haughty Moor.” The Moorish boys beat the Jewish children, and the latter dare not retaliate. “The Moors permit not the Jews the possession of any war-like weapons, unless in point of Trade.” Addison adds that this gratifies the Jews, who are, he asserts, as “destitute of true courage as of good nature.” It is important to remember these severe remarks on the Jewish character, as it shows that when the author praises he does so not from partiality but from conviction. Curiously enough, he has hardly done calling them cowards, when he tells us that the Christians and Moors use the Jews for “sending them upon hazardous messages,” such as “collecting the maritime imposts,” an office which must have needed more than a little hardihood.

Our author contrasts the black caps of the Jews with the red of the Moors, and has other quaint details as to costume. He then calls attention to the religious unanimity of the Jews. “They are signally vigilant to avoid divisions, as looking upon those among Christian Professors, to be an argument against the truth of the things they profess.” This is amusing, coming from a man who, throughout his life, was a rather sturdy opponent of union among the Christian bodies. And what would he think of the unity among Jews if he could see our “present state”? Addison then enters into a eulogy of the sobriety and temperance of the Jews; he terms their conduct “well civilised,” and declares that they “cannot be charged with any of those Debauches which are grown unto reputation with whole nations of Christians.” Then he specifies. “Adultery, Drunkenness, Gluttony, Pride of Apparel, etc., are so far from being in request with them that they are scandalised at their frequent practice in Christians.” Again and again the author laments that he has to praise the Synagogue at the expense of the Church. But he takes it out in firm abuse of the rabbinic theology, information on which he obtained from a local Rabbi, “Aaron Ben-Netas”—a not unlearned man, he says, one who only needed to be a Christian to be thoroughly worthy of esteem.

But we must pass over Addison’s elaborate analysis of the Jewish creed, and of his many curious and mostly accurate details on rites and superstitions. The notable thing is that as soon as he touches fundamental social questions, his eulogy of the Jews reappears. “Orderly and decent” are the adjectives he uses of the Jewish marriage customs. I regret that I am unable to find space for Addison’s allusion to the fashions of dressing the brides for the canopies, or rather “bowers and arbours,” which in Barbary replaced the canopies used in other countries. Thus the custom in some American homes of performing Jewish marriages under a floral bower rather than a canopy has its analogue in the past. Very significant is another statement about marriage. Theoretically he found polygamy defended, but monogamy was the rule of life. “The Jews of whom I now write, though they greatly magnify and extol the concession of polygamy, yet they are not very fond of its practice.” He ascribes this abstinence to policy rather than to religion, and there is more truth in this than Addison saw. For such social institutions are entirely a matter for the social conscience, and “policy” dictates them. So long as social institutions remain within the bounds of such sanctification as religion can approve, religion must be content to follow “policy.” Monogamy is so clearly felt to be the best policy for mankind, under modern conditions, that religion in the West maintains it. “Religion” and “policy” are here at one.

Addison fairly gives his enthusiasm the rein when he discusses Jewish education. “The care of the Jews is very laudable in this particular, there being not many people in the world more watchful to have their children early tinctured with religion than the present Hebrews.” Though they usually speak “Moresco, the Language of their Nativity, and a sort of Spanish which enables them for Traffick,” they learn Hebrew. The children, he informs us, are usually taught the Hebrew for the domestic utensils and “terms of Traffick Negotiation.” The method was quite in accord with modern ideas of teaching a language. “By this Order they furnish the Children with a Nomenclature of Hebrew Words; and all this before they admit them to Syntax and Construction.” Addison pictures the Jewish Sabbath with some charm; he even cites passages from Luria, to whom the home and synagogue rites of the day of rest owe so much. On no subject is our author more interesting than with regard to the Jewish charities. The Jews live “in a more mutual charity of alms than either the Moor or Christians”; and Addison admits, “it cannot be denied that the Jews’ manner of relieving the poor, is regular and commendable.” In his day it was, as it is in ours, the Synagogue’s ideal to relieve its own poor. There were no beggars in the Barbary Jewry. “For though among the Jews of Barbary there is a great store of needy persons, yet they are supplied after a manner which much conceals (as to men of other religions) their poverty.” Obviously Addison would like these people to become Christians. Why do they refuse? The “stiffness of their necks,” on the one hand, and the “naughtiness of our lives,” on the other, cries the author. The “naughtiness” will, let us hope, be more easily removed than the “stiffness.” Lancelot Addison, says Macaulay, “made some figure in the world.” He deserved to do so. His book on the Jews was a credit to his power of observation and his goodness of heart.

THE BODENSCHATZ PICTURES

Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz, a priest of Uttenreuth, underwent a triple training for his great work on Jewish Ceremonial. He studied literature, observed facts, and used his hands. The Jewish Encyclopedia remarks that he “is said to have made elaborate models of the Ark of Noah and of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness.” There is no reason for the qualifying words “is said.” In a dedicatory epistle to the Margrave Friederich of Brandenburg, Bodenschatz distinctly informs us that in 1739 he constructed these models, “after the records of Scripture and of Jewish Antiquities.” He adds that the models were preserved in the royal Kunst und Naturaliencabinet. I cannot say whether they still exist; but at the beginning of last century, the Tabernacle was at Bayreuth and the Ark at Nuremberg.

In 1748 Bodenschatz began to issue his work on the Jews; he completed the publication in the next year. In it he dealt with the Jewish religion (Kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden, sonderlich derer in Deutschland). He had planned a continuation on the Civil Laws of the Synagogue. But he left it unfinished, though he lived another half-century. Perhaps he had exhausted all his means, for the thirty copper-plates must have been expensive. The very title-page states he paid for them out of his own pocket. These illustrations he introduced with a double object: they were, in part, to serve as an ornament, but chiefly as an elucidation of the text. Both his book and his pictures became very popular, and did much to secure for Judaism a favorable consideration in Germany.

As we know that Bodenschatz possessed some artistic skill, we may safely assume that he inspired and assisted the artists whom he employed. He does not appear, however, to have done any of the drawings with his own hand. Nearly all the pictures are signed. Most of them were designed by Eichler in Erlangen, and engraved by G. Nusbiegel in Nuremberg. Both of these belonged to artistic families; there were three generations of Eichlers, and a Nusbiegel engraved illustrations for Lavater’s works. One of the Bodenschatz pictures was engraved by C. M. Roth; another, among the best of the whole series—the illustration of Shehitah—was drawn by Johann Conrad Müller. It would be interesting to collect the names of those Christian artists and mechanics who, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were engaged in illustrating books on Judaism. There was, for instance, the Englishman R. Vaughan who worked at Josephus (Josippon); there was the Frenchman Bernard Picart; and there were very many others, though the exquisite medallions, which adorn the title-pages of all six volumes of Surrenhusius’ Latin Mishnah, were from a Jewish hand.

Bodenschatz made use of his predecessor Picart, whose twenty plates illustrative of the “Ceremonies des Juifs” appeared in Amsterdam in 1723. But what he chiefly owed to Picart was the composition of the groups; the details are mostly original. Similarly he derived his idea for the processions of the bride and the bridegroom, with their musical performers, from Kirchner, but here, again, the details are his own, and the total effect is full of charm. I do not wish, by any means, to depreciate Kirchner, who in his Jüdisches Ceremoniel (1726) has some fine engravings. One of them, depicting the preparation of the Passover bread, is as vigorous as anything in Bodenschatz, though I think that the latter is, on the average, superior to Kirchner. Readers can easily judge the character both of the Bodenschatz and the Kirchner pictures from the specimens so wisely reproduced in the volumes of the Jewish Encyclopedia. No one need complain that the Encyclopedia prints these illustrations too profusely. For—to limit my remarks to Bodenschatz—though copies of that worthy’s book are common enough, many of them are incomplete. From the British Museum example, six of the thirty plates are missing; the Cambridge copy also lacks some of the plates, in particular the marriage ceremony under the canopy, which, however, may be seen in the Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. vi, p. 504. On the other hand, the Encyclopedia (vol iii, p. 432) somewhat exaggerates the glare of the eyes in the grim realism of Bodenschatz’s picture of an interment.

What is assuredly one of the most interesting of Bodenschatz’s plates does not, so far as I have noticed, appear in the Encyclopedia. I refer to the Pentecost celebrations, where Bodenschatz shows us both the cut flowers and the growing plants in the synagogue decorations of the day. The floral border of this plate is particularly well conceived. Very attractive, too, is the picture of Blessing the New Moon: the outlines of the houses stand out in bold relief. Bodenschatz is careful to inform us that the favorite time for the ceremony is a Saturday night, when the men are still dressed in their Sabbath clothes, and thus make a good show. The Priestly Benediction is also a notable success; the Cohen with his hands to his eyes impresses. More than once Bodenschatz depicts a curious scene, once common now almost unknown. On the front of the synagogue is a star, cut in stone, and after the marriage the husband shatters a vessel by casting it at the star. The glass, where the custom is retained, is now broken under the canopy. By the way, the author also introduces us to the more familiar ceremony of the same nature at the actual wedding or betrothal. Altogether ingenious is the plate on which are diagrammatically represented the various forms of boundaries connected with the Sabbath law.

Naturally a goodly number of the pictures deal with curiosities. The quainter side of Jewish ceremonial obviously appeals to an artist. Thus the waving of the cock before the Day of Atonement, the Lilit inscriptions over the bed of the new-born infant, the Mikweh, the Halizah shoe, make their due appearance. But Bodenschatz does not show these things to ridicule them. He is among the most objective of those who, before our own days, sought to reproduce synagogue scenes. He must have had a very full experience of these scenes; he must have been an eye-witness. It would seem as though he meant us to gather this from one of his Sabbath pictures, of which he has several. I do not refer to the vividness of the touches in his representation of the Friday night at home—though this illustration presupposes personal knowledge. Nor do I refer to his pictures of Sabbath ovens, for these could have been examined in shops. But what I allude to is this. In his picture of the interior of the synagogue, we see the Sabbath service in progress. Standing on the right, looking on, is a hatless observer. Does Bodenschatz mean this for himself, thus suggesting that he had often been a spectator where the rest were participators? It may be so. Anyhow, most of those who have had to steep themselves in literature of this kind have a warm feeling of regard for Bodenschatz. He was not invariably just, but he was never unkind; no mistakes that he made (and he is on the whole conspicuously accurate) were due to prejudice. Any scholar, any artist, would be proud to deserve such a verdict.

LESSING’S FIRST JEWISH PLAY

There are bigger virtues than consistency, and I have spared a good word for that human chameleon Leon Modena. But, undeniably, a great career is all the nobler when through it there runs a consistent purpose. Wordsworth, in a famous poem, asked:

Who is the happy warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?

And the first sentence of his answer runs:

It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought.

If this be so, then Lessing was a happy warrior indeed. For religious tolerance is interwoven with his combative life. It was the ideal of his boyhood and of his age. It is to be seen in his “Nathan,” the masterpiece of his mature genius, and it equally underlay his youthful drama The Jews. Nathan the Wise is Mendelssohn, and was drawn on the basis of experience; but the “Traveller,” who is the hero of Die Juden is no individual, having been drawn by Lessing out of his own good heart. Thirty years separate the two plays (written, respectively, in 1749 and 1779). But they are united in spirit.

Die Juden is a short composition, even though it includes twenty-three scenes. Some of these scenes are very brief. The plot is quite simple. A baron and his daughter are saved by a traveller from robbers; the impression made by the rescuer is so great, that the baron is inclined to find in him a son-in-law. Then the traveller reveals the fact that he is a Jew. Baron and Jew part with mutual esteem. Dramatically, the play is not of much merit. The “Traveller” is not so much a person as a personification. He is the type of virtue, honor, magnanimity. He leaves one cold, not because, as Michaelis objected in 1754, he is impossibly, or at least improbably, perfect, but because he is crudely and mechanically drawn. Mendelssohn completely rebutted the criticism of Michaelis; but, none the less, the “Traveller” possesses little of that human, personal quality which makes “Nathan” so convincing and interesting. On the other hand, the baron is admirably painted. He is not a bigoted Jew-hater; he is simply animated by a conventional dislike of Jews. Lessing, even in his student years, was too good an artist to daub on his colors too glaringly.

The importance of Die Juden is to be found, as we have seen, in its anticipation of Nathan der Weise. Sometimes the identity of thought is strikingly close. In the fourth act of Nathan occurs this dialogue:

Compare (as Niemeyer has done) the exchanges in Die Juden:

A Tsar is said to have repeated pretty much the baron’s speech to Sir Moses Montefiore. It is not recorded that the latter made the traveller’s reply.

Edmund Burke, in one of his speeches on America, protested that it was impossible to draw up “an indictment against a whole people.” He forgot the frequency with which such indictments are drawn up against the Jews. Now if there was one thing that more than the rest roused Lessing’s anger, it was just this tarring of all Jews with one brush. One can conceive the glee with which Lessing wrote the passage in which the baron commits this very offence, unconscious of his peculiarly unfortunate faux pas, for he has no notion yet that the traveller is a Jew:

These quotations will suffice to convey an idea of the aim of the dramatist and of the manner in which it is carried out. There is a certain amount of comic relief to the gravity of the main plot. The foot-pad and garroter, Martin Krumm, cuts an amusing figure as an assailant of the honesty of the Jews. “A Christian would have given me a kick in the ribs and not a snuff-box,” says Christopher, the traveller’s servant. Christopher is a funny rogue. When his master cannot find him, and naturally complains, the servant replies: “I can only be in one place at one time. Is it my fault that you did not go to that place? You say you have to search for me? Surely you’ll always find me where I am.”

There were a few attempts prior to Lessing to present the Jew in a favorable light on the stage, as Sir Sidney Lee has shown. But between Shylock and Nathan there stretches a lurid desert, broken only by the oasis of Die Juden. To some it may occur that the battle of tolerance fought by Lessing did not end in a permanent victory. Lessing himself would not have been disquieted at that result. As he expressed it, the search for truth rather than the possession of truth is the highest human good. A leading Viennese paper said some few years ago that if Nathan the Wise had been written now, it would have been hissed off the German stage. It is not unlikely. Fortunately, Lessing wrote before 1880! Nathan does not remain unacted. I saw Possart play the title-role in Munich in the nineties. His splendid elocution carried off Nathan’s long speeches with wonderful absence of monotony.

A thing of truth is a boon forever, because it makes further progress in truth-seeking certain. Because there has been one Lessing, there must be others. And if Nathan the Wise be thus a lasting inspiration, let us not forget that the poet was trying his hand, and maturing his powers, by writing the play which has served as the subject of this sketch.

ISAAC PINTO’S PRAYER-BOOK

It was in America that the first English translation of the Synagogue Prayer-Book appeared (1761 and 1766). Often has attention been drawn to the curiosity that this latter volume was published not in London but in New York. The 1761 edition has only recently been discovered by Dr. Pool; with the 1766 work we have long been familiar. According to the Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica (p. 174), “the Mahamad would not allow a translation to be printed in England.” If such a refusal was made, we must at least amend the last words, and read in English for in England. For it was in London, in 1740, that Isaac Nieto’s Spanish rendering of the prayers for New Year and Day of Atonement saw the light of publication.

Indeed, in Isaac Pinto’s preface the point is made quite clear. “In Europe,” he says, “the Spanish and Portuguese Jews have a translation in Spanish, which, as they generally understand, may be sufficient; but that not being the case in the British Dominions in America, has induced me to attempt a translation, not without hope that it may tend to the improvement of many of my brethren in their devotion.” Admittedly, then, Pinto designed his work for American use; at all events, the objection of the Mahamad must have been to the language used by Pinto. We know how resolutely Bevis Marks clung to Spanish, and how reluctantly it abandoned some of the quaint uses made of it in announcements and otherwise.

“Some crudities there are in this translation, but few mistakes, and the style has a genuine devotional ring,” says Mr. Singer. Pinto could not easily go wrong, seeing that he made use of Haham Nieto’s “elegant Spanish translation.” Dr. Gaster remarks that Pinto’s rendering “rests entirely,” as the author declares, on Nieto’s. Pinto’s exact words are: “In justice to the Learned and Reverend H. H. R. Ishac Nieto, I must acknowledge the very great advantage I derived” from Nieto’s work. Mr. G. A. Kohut shares Mr. Singer’s high opinion of Pinto’s style. “The translation,” he asserts, “seems to be totally free from foreign expressions, and is characterized throughout by a dignity and simplicity of diction which is on the whole admirable.” With this favorable judgment all readers of Pinto will unhesitatingly concur. A remarkable feature which Pinto shares with Nieto is this: the translation appears without the Hebrew text. Commenting on the absence of Hebrew, Mr. Singer observes: “This fact would seem to show that there must have been an appreciable number of persons, who, for purposes of private worship at least, and perhaps also while in attendance at synagogue, depended upon English alone in their devotions.” On the other hand, it is possible that, as Hebrew printing must have been costly in London and New York in the eighteenth century, the absence of the Hebrew may be merely due to the desire to avoid expenses. The translations may have been meant for use with copies of the Hebrew text printed in Amsterdam and elsewhere on the continent of Europe.

Pinto’s book was small quarto in shape; it contained 191 pages. There are some peculiarities on the title-page, of which a facsimile may be seen in the Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. x, page 55: “Prayers for Shabbath, Rosh-Hashanah, and Kippur, or the Sabbath, the Beginning of the Year, and the Day of Atonements; with the Amidah and Musaph of the Moadim, or solemn seasons. According to the Order of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Translated by Isaac Pinto. And for him printed by John Holt, in New York, A. M. 5526” (= 1766). It will be noted that Pinto indicates the ayin by the use of italics in the words Amidah and Moadim. Also, though he employs the ordinary Sephardic term for the Day of Atonement (Kippur without the prefix of Yom), he does not translate the singular, but the plural, for he renders it the “Day of Atonements,” which is not exactly a blunder (though the Hebrew Kippurim is, of course, really an abstract plural with a singular sense).

But who was Isaac Pinto? It is not at all clear. Some have hastily spoken of him as though he were identical with Joseph Jesurun Pinto, who was sent out by the London Sephardim to New York in 1758. The home authorities, at the request of the New York Congregation Shearith Israel, elected a Hazan, but the chosen candidate, “having since declined going for reasons unknown to us,” writes the London Mahamad, through its treasurer, H. Men. da Costa, “we this day (June 7, 1758) proceeded to a second election, and our chois fell on Mr. Joseph Jesurun Pinto, who was examined by our direction and found very well versed in the reading of the Pentateuch and in the functions of a Hazan.” This Hazan could do more: he was able, as Mr. Kohut shows, to write Hebrew, for in October, 1760, he composed a prayer for recitation on the “General Thanksgiving for the Reducing of Canada to His Majesty’s Dominions.” The prayer was written in Hebrew, but printed in English, being translated by a “Friend of Truth.” A note at the end of the booklet runs thus: “N. B. The foregoing prayer may be seen in Hebrew, at the Composer’s Lodgings.” Mr. Kohut adds: “Apparently original Hebrew scholarship was a curiosity in New York City in 1760.”

A year before, Joseph Jesurun Pinto instituted the keeping of records as to those “entitled to Ashcaboth” (memorial prayers), and drew up a still used table of the times for beginning the Sabbath for the meridian of New York; he must have been a man of various gifts and activities.

What relation Isaac Pinto was to the Hazan we have no means of telling. Joseph’s father was named Isaac, but this can scarcely have been our translator. An Isaac Pinto died in 1791, aged seventy; he may be (as Mr. Kohut suggests) the translator in question; in 1766 he would have been in his forty-fifth year. Steinschneider thought that he was identical with the author of a work against Voltaire (Amsterdam, 1762) and other treatises. “But,” as Mr. Kohut argues, “this versatile author lived at Bordeaux, while our translator was in all probability a resident of New York.” Mr. L. Hühner accepts this identification, and adds the possibility that this same Isaac Pinto was settled in Connecticut as early as 1748. More certain is it that Isaac Pinto is the same who appears in the earliest minute-book of the New York Congregation Shearith Israel as a contributing member and seat-holder (1740, 1747, and 1750).

Isaac Pinto was certainly living in New York in 1773. Ezra Stiles was president of Yale from 1778 till 1795, and in his diary he makes many references to Jews, as is well known from the publications of the American Jewish Historical Society. Under date June 14, 1773, Stiles has this entry: “In the forenoon I went to visit the Rabbi (Carigal)—discoursed on Ventriloquism and the Witch of Endor and the Reality of bringing up Samuel. He had not heard of Ventriloquism before and still doubted it. He showed me a Hebrew letter from Isaac Pinto to a Jew in New York, in which Mr. Pinto, who is now reading Aben Ezra, desires R. Carigal’s thoughts upon some Arabic in Aben Ezra.” Prof. Jastrow, from whose essay I cite the last sentence, adds: “As late as April 14, 1790, Stiles refers to a letter received from Pinto, whom he speaks of as ‘a learned Jew in New York,’ regarding a puzzling Hebrew inscription found by Stiles in Kent in the fall of 1789. Unfortunately there is no other reference to this supposed Hebrew inscription, on which Pinto was unable to throw any light.” Stiles does not seem to have provided sufficient data. We would fain know more of this Isaac Pinto. But the glimpses we get of him are enough to satisfy us that he was a man of uncommon personality.

MENDELSSOHN’S “JERUSALEM”

Of a hundred who discuss Moses Mendelssohn’s conception of Judaism, perhaps barely five have read Jerusalem, the book in which that conception is most lucidly expressed. It is a common fate with certain literary masterpieces that they are read in their own day and talked about by posterity. The fame of Mendelssohn, moreover, underwent something like an eclipse during the last generation. To paraphrase what Antony said of Cæsar, but yesterday his word might have stood against the world; now, none so poor as to do him reverence.

The depreciation of Mendelssohn was due to two opposite reasons. For some time, though most Jews were unconscious of it, it was becoming obvious that there were two, and only two, thorough-going solutions of the Jewish problem for the modern age. The one may be termed religious liberalism, the other territorial nationalism. Now, Mendelssohn’s views are in accord with neither of these tendencies. He was so far from being a territorialist—and I use that term in the widest sense—that he has been acclaimed and denounced as the father of assimilation. He was so remote from liberalism, that he has been acclaimed and denounced as the founder of neo-orthodoxy. His theory of life was that the emancipated Jew could and must go on obeying under the new environment the whole of the olden Jewish law. This is not possible! cry both the liberal and the nationalist. Hence the liberal asserts one-half, the nationalist the other half of the Mendelssohnian theory. The liberal would modify the law, the nationalist would change the environment. In other words, instead of holding Mendelssohn in low esteem, both sides ought to recognize that they each derive half their inspiration from him.

And it is fortunate that Jews are, at this juncture, coming to appreciate Mendelssohn all over again. Our German brethren have just initiated a capital series of little books which cost less than a shilling each. The first of these “Monuments of the Jewish Spirit” contains the Jerusalem, and much else of Mendelssohn’s work. Here one reads again the words first penned by the Berlin Socrates in 1783: Judaism knows nothing of a revealed religion, Israel possessed a divine legislation. “Thought is free,” we can hear Mendelssohn thundering—if so harsh a verb can be applied to so gentle a spirit—“let no Government interfere with men’s mode of conceiving God and truth.” State and religion are separated as wide as the poles. Israel has its own code, which in no way conflicts with the State; still less does Israel seek to impose that code on the State. Mendelssohn did not believe that all men were destined to attain to truth by the road of Judaism. “Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of immutable truths indispensable to salvation.” Hence, too, “Judaism has no articles of faith.” It follows that not unbelief was punished under the Jewish régime, but contumacious disobedience. The Jew was never commanded: believe this, disbelieve that; but do this, and leave that undone. Judaism is the Jew’s way of attaining goodness, other people can attain it in other ways. Not consonance but manifoldness is the design and end of Providence. “Religious union is not toleration, it is diametrically opposed to it.” Toleration consists rather in this: “Reward and punish no doctrine; hold out no allurement or bribe for the adoption of theological opinions.” How far in advance of his age Mendelssohn was! It took a full century after his Jerusalem for England to abolish theological tests at the universities, tests which indeed did “reward and punish” doctrines. Mendelssohn goes on: “Let everyone who does not disturb public happiness, who is obedient to the civil government, who acts righteously towards his fellow-man, be allowed to speak as he thinks, to pray to God after his own fashion, or after the fashion of his fathers, and to seek eternal salvation where he thinks he may find it.” No one, unless it be that earlier Jewish philosopher Spinoza, had ever put the case for toleration so cogently. Whether Mendelssohn’s own principles are consistent with his further conclusion that once a Jew always a Jew, will ever be doubted. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 44a) had said: An Israelite, though he sin, remains an Israelite. Mendelssohn rather said: An Israelite has no right to sin. True, the world need not accept Judaism, but the Jew may never reject it. “I do not see,” cries Mendelssohn, “how those who were born in the house of Jacob can, in any conscientious manner, disencumber themselves of the law. We are allowed to think about the law, to inquire into its spirit ... but all our fine reasoning cannot exonerate us from the strict obedience we owe to it.” I am not now criticising Mendelssohn. I am trying to expound him. To live under the law of the State and at the same time to remain loyal to the law of Judaism is hard. But Mendelssohn went on: Bear both burdens. That assuredly is a counsel which should be inscribed in golden letters over the portal of Judaism now, even though we may interpret the burdens differently in our different circumstances.

Mendelssohn’s masterpiece includes much else. But what precedes ought to be enough to whet readers’ appetites for the whole meal. On an occasion when I had a long talk with William James, I spoke to him of Mendelssohn, and he admitted that his own Pragmatic theories were paralleled by the Jerusalem. He promised to write on the subject, but death claimed him all too soon. Whether we agree with Mendelssohn or not, let us at least agree in appreciation of his genius. What he did, and what we do not do, is to face unflinchingly the discussion of fundamentals. Reading Mendelssohn is to breathe the fresh air. But there’s the rub! Read Mendelssohn? How, if we know no German? It is deplorable that the Jerusalem is no longer accessible in English. I say no longer, because once it was accessible. And not once only, but twice.

In 1852, Isaac Leeser published an English version in Philadelphia. No wonder our American brothers still hold Leeser in such reverent esteem. He deserved well of the Jewry of his land. But Leeser’s was not the first English translation of Jerusalem. In 1838, M. Samuels issued in two volumes an English version in London; it was dedicated to Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, and contained much besides the Jerusalem. I know nothing of the translator except one thing that he was not, and another thing that he was. He was not a native Englishman, and he was a good scholar. About a dozen years earlier (1825) he had produced a volume, entitled “Memoirs of Moses Mendelsohn” (what a pitfall that double s is to printers! Throughout M. Samuels’ earlier book an s is missing in the name; in the later publication it has been recovered). Samuels asserts himself a “disciple of the leading system of the work”; perhaps this accounts for his enthusiasm, shown in his conscientious annotations, which are fragrant with genuine Jewish thought. With very slight furbishing up, Samuels’ rendering could be reprinted to-day. One of the most urgent needs of our age in English-speaking lands is that Jews should once more become familiar with the thought of the eighteenth century, and particularly of Mendelssohn. Like many another of my generation, I was brought up rather to decry him. I have learned better now, and would fain urge others to a like reconsideration.

HERDER’S ANTHOLOGY

Johann Gottfried von Herder belonged to the school of Rousseau. The latter, from whom the French Revolution derived its philosophy, was enamored of the primitive and the ancient. Nature began far better than she became after man mis-handled her. Herder (1744-1803) plays on the word “simplicity.” He loved the Hebrew poetry because it was so spontaneous, so untainted by artificiality. Herder’s work on the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (1772-3) is fairly characterized by Graetz when he terms it epoch-making. Herder was among the first of the moderns to rouse interest in the Bible as literature. What his contemporary Lessing did in Germany for Shakespeare, Herder did for the Psalter.

Now Herder’s treatment of ancient literature rendered a lasting service despite his fundamental misconception. What James Sully calls Herder’s “excessive and sentimental interest in primitive human culture” prepared the way for the “genetic” theories of our time. He thoroughly realized the natural element in national poetry. He explained genius in terms of race. To him is due some part of the conception of a “Jewish culture,” as formulated by present-day Zionists of Ahad ha-‘Am’s school. It is rather curious that while, on the one hand, Herder’s theories helped national anti-Semitism, on the other hand, they gave suggestions to national Judaism. By laying undue stress on the natural, Herder exaggerated the national in the human spirit. In his early manhood Herder had thought of training as a physician. But he abandoned the idea because he could not endure the dissecting-room. When he came to discuss the world’s genius he used the scalpel freely enough. His gorge rose against cutting up the body, but he felt no reluctance to dissect the spirit.

Earlier writers had overlooked the national element in the Bible. Herder saw in the Old Testament nothing but national songs. The thought often led him right. He strongly opposed, for instance, the mystic and allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs. To him it was a love poem, the purest, most delicate love poem of antiquity (“den reinsten und zartesten Liebesdichtung des Altertums”). Hebrew literature was national, but it revealed its nationality under unique conditions, for it was marked by the “poetic consciousness of God.” In all this Herder was magnificently right. But he could not leave well alone. In one of his latest essays he summed up the Hebrew poetry as distinguished indeed by religiosity, but also by simplicity (“kindliche Naivetä, Religiosität, Einfalt”). No term could be worse chosen. Hebrew poetry shows consummate art. If it conveys the sense of simplicity, it is because the poet’s art so thoroughly conceals its workings. Herder made aesthetically the same mistake as Wellhausen perpetrated theologically. According to Wellhausen, the prophets of the eighth century before the Christian era suddenly appeared as an utterly new phenomenon on the Hebraic horizon, whereas, in truth, by the time we reach Amos we have got to a very advanced stage in the religious history of Israel. So, too, is it with the biblical poetry. It is, even in its earliest fragments, such as the Song of Deborah, a highly cultivated form. “Simplicity” is the last word to apply to it. It is powerful, it is sincere, but it is not naive. The Greek athlete who conquered at the Olympic games was robust, but he had gone through a long process of training. Vigor is not synonymous with artlessness. Trench wrote a charming book on the “use of words.” An equally entertaining book could be compiled on the “misuse of words.” In such a book, a front place would be assignable to Herder’s “simplicity.”

What distinguished Hebrew poetry was not that element which it derived from the narrowing fetters of locality and epoch. Why is the Bible the most translatable book? Why has it been found the easiest of the great classics to re-express in the manifold tongues of man? Because it is so independent of the very qualities by which Herder sought to explain it! The poetry of Israel was “natural” and “national” in the sense that it corresponded to human nature, and was susceptible of interpretation in terms of every nationality. Over Herder’s tomb was inscribed the legend “Licht, Liebe, Leben.” Herder might have inscribed these or similar words over certain of the gems of Hebrew literature. “Light, love, life” are a truer characterization than “naiveness, religiosity, simplicity.”

Graetz thought that, though Herder dreamed of the time when Jew and Gentile would understand and appreciate each other, he was ill-disposed to the Jews. He was, it is true, not one of those who fell under the spell of Moses Mendelssohn’s personality. He was disinclined to subject himself to the spell. When Mendelssohn sought Herder’s acquaintance, the latter received the proposal coldly. This was not necessarily due to unkindness. It seems to me that Herder, who much admired Lessing, was rather resentful of the close intimacy between the hero and the author of Nathan the Wise. Herder had no desire to form one of a ménage à trois. As Graetz adds, Mendelssohn and Herder did come closely together after Lessing’s death. Herder, in one of his essays, dated 1781, the very year in which Lessing passed away, pays Mendelssohn a pretty compliment, praising him as an exponent of Jewish ideals.

Herder’s essay was prefixed to his “Anthology from Eastern Poets” (Blumenlese aus morgenländische Dichtern). Few of us remember that the word Anthology corresponds exactly with Blumenlese; it means a “collection of flowers.” (Compare Graetz’s Leket Shoshannim.) Foremost among the floral graces of Herder’s Oriental garland are the famous selections made from the Talmud and Midrash. Here, as elsewhere, Herder was rather too inclined to treat the rabbinical legend and parable as “naive.” He was, moreover, a little patronizing to the Haggadists when he declared that “people laughed at what they did not understand”—referring to the supposed grotesqueness of some of the rabbinic modes of expression. But he was happier when he described vandals like Eisenmenger as men who “rough-handled the butterfly, and who, mangling the beauteous creature between their coarse fingers, wondered that all they found on their hands was a particle of dust.” No one has ever translated rabbinic parables so successfully as Herder. His very love for the unfamiliar stood him in good stead. He does not tell us whence he derived his knowledge of the originals. Probably it was in oral intercourse with Jews. Such a spelling of Lilit as Lilis looks as though he heard it pronounced by a German Jew.

Be that as it may, Herder enters into the spirit of the rabbinic apologues with rare understanding. He chose the subjects with judgment, and executed the renderings with felicity. There could have been nothing but love for Judaism in the man who thus selected and who thus translated. Graetz was unduly hard on him. It was quite possible for a man to be fond of Jews and yet not drawn to Mendelssohn. The last-named fascinated so many that he could afford to find one person antipathetic—if indeed he was so. Long before others took to a cult of the rabbinic wit and wisdom, long before Emanuel Deutsch startled the English world in October, 1867, by his question in the Quarterly Review: “What is the Talmud?”, Herder had introduced the German world to it, and had in part answered Deutsch’s question by anticipation. From several points of view, therefore, Herder is of import for the Jewish student of nineteenth century history.

WALKER’S “THEODORE CYPHON”

Cumberland’s play, The Jew, appeared in 1794, and two years later was published Theodore Cyphon. The author was George Walker, a book-seller of London and a prolific writer of novels. His works are a curious compound of wild melodramatic incident with comments, often shrewd enough, on social and political actualities.

Theodore Cyphon well represents Walker’s method. The main plot is a tiresome story, told in retrospect, of Theodore’s heroism and misfortunes in several walks of life, from the Minories to Arabia. He ends on the scaffold for an offence which was in truth his noblest act of chivalry. In between we have a quite able discussion on the cruelty of inflicting capital punishment in cases of mere robbery. The author concludes his Preface with the fear that readers may exclaim: “Well, it was very tragical; but I am glad the hero is settled at last.” That, at least, is the sentiment of a modern reader.

This novel of Walker’s, however, arrests attention by being set in a Jewish frame. The term frame is used advisedly, since the main narrative is independent of the setting.

The full title of the book is Theodore Cyphon, or the Benevolent Jew. There were two editions of it. The first came out in 1796, the second in 1823. Of the second edition the British Museum possesses a complete copy; of the first edition an imperfect example—consisting of the first of the three volumes—has recently been presented to the University Library, Cambridge. The “benevolent Jew” is one Shechem Bensadi, and he is drawn with more than sympathy. Shechem lends money at exorbitant rates to the improvident aristocracy, and devotes his gains to the relief of deserving unfortunates. Nay, his clients are not always deserving. When robbed, Shechem refuses to prosecute; he showers favors on those who treat him despitefully. His philanthropy is extended to Jew and Gentile alike. There is one remarkable scene in the fifth chapter, in which Shechem is shown in a large storehouse, surrounded by scores of poor Jews to whom he supplies goods, thus enabling them to earn a livelihood. In equally striking chapters Shechem plays the rôle of benefactor and friend to others than his own coreligionists.

The first edition of Theodore Cyphon was obviously suggested by Cumberland’s success. Curiously enough, the sub-title, The Benevolent Jew, is used in the sheet concerning Cumberland’s play printed in vol. vii of the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, p. 177. It is not improbable that the second edition of Theodore Cyphon was due to the popularity of Scott’s Ivanhoe, which was published in December, 1819. There are not wanting some superficial parallels between Scott’s masterpiece and Walker’s earlier and more moderate production. Eve, Shechem’s daughter, nurses Walker’s hero, just as Isaac’s daughter Rebecca nurses Scott’s hero. The most interesting parallel—perhaps the only real one—is presented in two scenes, one in Ivanhoe, the other in Theodore Cyphon. The first is the occasion on which Rebecca sings her famous hymn. Scott describes his poem as a “translation” of a hymn with which the evening ritual of the Synagogue concluded. It is really an original composition inspired by various scriptural texts, and in its turn may have suggested some great lines in Kipling’s Recessional. Is it possible that Scott’s idea of Rebecca’s hymn was suggested by Walker? For, in the second scene alluded to above, Eve, too, is overheard singing a song to “music wild, yet so soft.”

Walker gives us only the last stanza of Eve’s song, which runs thus (p. 46 of vol. i of the 1796 edition):

The wand’rers of Israel, through nations dispers’d,
Shall again dwell in safety, again rest in peace;
And the harp, that so plaintive our sorrows rehears’d,
Shall thrill with new pleasures, as pleasures increase;
The sweet, spicy shrubs, that wave over the hills,
Untouch’d by the simoom, eternally blow,
Frankincense and myrrh from their bosom distils,
And love shall attend on our path as we go.

Scott, of course, had other models beside Walker. Byron’s Hebrew Melodies came out both with and without Nathan’s musical accompaniment, in 1815, four years before Ivanhoe was written. It is curious, by the way, to note that Rudolf Eric Raspe, the original of the character whom Scott so mercilessly caricatures as Dousterswivel in his novel The Antiquary, was not only the author of Baron Münchausen, but was also the first translator into English of Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (London, 1781). Scott does not seem to have been acquainted with Lessing’s play, either in the original or in translation. Scott’s indebtedness to Marlowe, on the other hand, has already been pointed out by the present writer.

Having drawn attention to the parallel between Walker and Scott, it will be useful to note an equally striking contrast. On pages 110-112 of Theodore Cyphon occurs the passage:

“His chief concern was for Eve, whom he saw, notwithstanding Theodore’s supposed engagements, and the restrictions of religion, still encourage sentiments which sapped the foundation of her happiness, and which no expedient offered to remove, but by parting with its object, or suffering their marriage spite of religion and law.

“Though a Jew, skilled in the learning of the Talmud and Mosaic law, he was without those prejudices that attend on superstition. He saw clearly that, when those precepts were first instituted, they were designed as a prevention of communication between the Israelite and Heathen, lest by the influence and interchange of the softer sex, they might be led into the practice of idolatry. Yet now, taking up the argument in a religious way, the danger existed no longer; both Jew and Christian agreeing in the chief article of worship, though divided about what the understanding of neither can comprehend. In a civil light, man was created for the society of man. The distinction of kingdom and people were childish, and fit only to insult the understanding. But whilst he indulged himself in these speculations, he avoided hinting to Eve that there was a possibility she should ever become the wife of Theodore, that the unattainability of the object might blunt or destroy the ardour of hope: for however he might have wished for such a character (so far as observation could judge) as his son-in-law, under the present circumstances he could not have allowed it, had even the affections of Theodore been placed upon her, which he believed was far from the case, as the observation he had made when he entered his chamber abruptly, and the words, ‘O Eliza,’ which his daughter had heard, led him to conclude some prior engagement retained him.”

The sequel shows that Theodore is already married to Eliza. With Walker’s view, however, as to such a marriage, it is fruitful to compare the noble passage, on the same subject, with which Scott concludes the preface to the 1830 edition of Ivanhoe:

“The character of the fair Jewess found so much favour in the eyes of some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned the hand of Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than to the less interesting Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered such an union almost impossible, the author may, in passing, observe that he thinks a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such is not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit, and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, the most common readers of romance, that rectitude of conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly-formed or ill-assorted passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will be apt to say, Verily, virtue has had its reward. But a glance on the great picture of life will show, that the duties of self-denial, or the sacrifice of passion to principle, are seldom thus remunerated; and that the internal consciousness of their high-minded discharge of duty produces on their own reflections a more adequate recompense, in the form of that peace which the world cannot give or take away.”

From the artistic point of view, Walker’s novel has little merit. But it deserves to be better known from the historical point of view. It was another expression of the new attitude towards the Jew, which began to distinguish English letters in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

HORACE SMITH OF THE “REJECTED ADDRESSES”

Horace Smith and his brother James are famous as the joint authors of the most successful parody ever perpetrated. Drury Lane Theatre was re-opened on October 10, 1812, having been rebuilt after the fire which destroyed it some three years previously. The Committee advertised a competition for the best address to be spoken at the re-opening. It is easy to imagine what occurred. Masses of poems were sent in, and in despair all of them were rejected, and Byron was invited to write a prologue. It occurred to the Smiths to produce a series of parodies in the style of the poets of their day. They pretended that all, or most of them, had been candidates for the prize, and on the very day of the re-opening was published the volume of Rejected Addresses, which, conceived, executed, printed, and published within the space of six weeks, continues in the general judgment of critics the finest jeu d’esprit of its kind.

Interesting enough it would be to linger over the general aspects of this book. We must, nevertheless, resist the temptation to recall the marvellous imitations of that genial friend of ours, the author of Ivanhoe—or of that crabbed foe of Jewish emancipation, William Cobbett. Capital, too, is the skit on Thomas Moore. Eve and the apple come into that effusion as a matter of course. To Moore, Eve was as Charles’ head to Mr. Dick. One could compile a fair-sized volume out of the Irish sentimentalist’s allusions to the first pair in Paradise. Moore used the allusion seriously and humorously. In the Lives of the Angels, Adam is driven not from but into Paradise, for as Eve had to go, it would have been the reverse of bliss for him to be left behind in Eden. In another poem, Moore plays on the rabbinic suggestion that woman was made out of the man’s tail, and so, comments the poet, man ever after has followed the original plan, and leaves his wife behind him whenever he can. Again and again, Moore in his poems claims close acquaintance with rabbinic lore, of which, in fact, he knew only a few scraps from second-hand sources.

So we might continue to glean thoughts from Rejected Addresses. It needs gleaning, because the direct references to contemporary Jews are very few. This negative point is not without interest. A dramatic squib nowadays would almost certainly have its hits against Jews. The Smiths only once refer to a Jew—the unfortunate Lyon Levi or Levy, who committed suicide by flinging himself over the London Monument. He was a merchant of Haydon Square, and the newspapers of January 19, 1810, record the event as having occurred on the previous day. It is not surprising that the incident should be fresh in men’s minds when the Smiths wrote three years later. For after an interval of thirty-seven years, we again find an allusion to it in the Ingoldsby Legends. Levi was neither the first nor the last to precipitate himself from the summit of Wren’s column; eventually the top was encaged, to bar others from a similar temptation.

It was remarked above that the Rejected Addresses were absolutely free from anti-Jewish gibes. Impossible would it have been for the Smiths to have acted otherwise. Horace, in particular, was an ardent admirer of Richard Cumberland, writer of The Jew, which at the end of the eighteenth century did so much to rehabilitate the Jews in English good-will. We can see Horace Smith’s tendency, negatively, in one of his other poems. In the “Culprit and the Judge,” he deals with a case of coin-clipping in medieval France. As with all of Horace’s verses, it is full of good points. The judge denounced as profanation the crime of filing the similitude of good King Pepin, and ordered the offender to be punished with decapitation. This is the clever reply of the culprit:

“As to offending powers divine,”
The culprit cried,—“be nothing said:
Yours is a deeper guilt than mine.
I took a portion from the head
Of the King’s image; you, oh fearful odds!
Strike the whole head at once from God’s!”

One wonders whether the author had ever heard of the closely parallel idea of the ancient Rabbi, who denounced the murderer as one who diminished the divine image in which man had been made. Observe, however, how Horace Smith refrains from making cheap capital out of the joke by describing the offender as a Jew. Smith knew the truth too well. He knew that, though some Jews were given to coin-clipping, there were many offenders who were not Jews. It is absolutely characteristic of Horace Smith that he should have refrained from libelling all Jews for the sins of some.

Horace Smith was, as already suggested, actuated in his philo-Semitism by knowledge. And this is the reason why, though his brother James wrote some of the best of the parodies in Rejected Addresses, this present article deals less with him than with Horace. For that the latter knew and understood Judaism can be demonstrated by the clearest evidence. In 1831 he published a prose volume, which ought to be better known to English Jews than it is. The title is “Festivals, Games, and Amusements, Ancient and Modern.” The second chapter deals with the ancient Jews. It reveals an almost perfect insight into the Jewish conception of life. Only one or two passages require amendment to make it quite perfect. I need not expound, it will suffice to quote a single passage:

“It is worthy of remark that the government he (Moses) established, the only one claiming a divine author, was founded on the most democratical and even levelling principles. It was a theocratical commonwealth, having the Deity Himself for its King. Agriculture was the basis of the Mosaic polity; all the husbandsmen were on a footing of perfect equality; riches conferred no permanent preeminence; there was neither peasantry nor nobility, unless the Levites may be considered a sort of priestly aristocracy, for they were entitled by their birth to certain privileges. But this is foreign to our purpose. The most distinguishing features of the government were the vigilant, the most anxious provisions made for the interests, enjoyments, and festivals of the nation; and that enlarged wisdom and profound knowledge of human nature, which led the inspired founder of the Hebrew commonwealth to exalt and sanctify the pleasures of the people by uniting them with religion, while he confirmed and endeared religion by combining it with all the popular gratifications.”

When Sir Walter Scott saw the verses attributed to him in Rejected Addresses, he exclaimed: “I certainly must have written this myself, though I forget on what occasion.” Some of us might say the same of certain of the phrases in the passage just quoted. The joyousness of Judaism has not been asserted with more sureness of touch by any Jewish writer than it was by Horace Smith. In another part of his book, he misconceived the attitude of the Pentateuch to the non-Jew, but otherwise he well understood Moses and the Law.