Chapter 3: Certainly those who have beheld the heavens on an Oriental

night can conceive nothing more glorious than the spectacle, nor recall aught more wonderful than the Psalmist’s description of it.

It was left to the theologian Blanco White to combine the two thoughts of fear and illumination, expressed in the Midrash quoted above and in Psalm 8, into an exquisite Sonnet. The author’s name is queer enough. But though Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841) was born in Seville, he was an Irishman by descent. When the family settled in Spain, they translated the patronymic White into Blanco. On his coming to England, the theologian simply retained both forms of the name. As the writer in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ recalls, Blanco White applied to himself the lines which occur in _Richard II_, Act i, scene 3. Norfolk, doomed to exile in a foreign land, thus laments his fate:

The language I have learn’d these forty years,
My native English, now I must forgo;
And now my tongue’s use is to me no more
Than an unstringèd viol or a harp.

Strange that this passage, of which only a small part has been here quoted, has never been turned into Hebrew, with a change in one single word of the second line, by a Zionist. Yet more strange that Blanco White, who thus deplored the fact that his paternal English was not his native speech, has given us one of the greatest poems in the English language!

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely Frame,
This glorious canopy of Light and Blue?
Yet ’neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting Flame,
Hesperus with the Host of Heaven came,
And lo! Creation widened in Man’s view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless Orbs thou mad’st us blind?
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

It is indeed an exquisite thought. First we have Adam’s fears as night falls. Then we have the reply, the antidote. The sun really conceals. Day shows us indeed insect and plant, but not the vast system of worlds which fill the heavens. It is night that brings to view the amazing extent of the stars, and unfolds the universe which the day had hidden. So death may reveal much that life conceals.

Coleridge pronounced this “the finest and most grandly conceived Sonnet in our language.” The praise is not exaggerated. Yet it was written by one whose native tongue was Spanish, and who, though his career was extraordinary enough, never wrote another line in prose or verse that has lived. Single-speech Hamilton is joined in the realm of immortality by Single-Sonnet White. Written about a century ago, it lives and will go on living. As the writer from whom I drew the allusion to Shakespeare remarks: “Probably Blanco White will continue to be known by this Sonnet, when his other works, in spite of the real interest of his views, have been forgotten.”

Great as the Sonnet is, it fails, however, to express the full significance of the eighth Psalm. The mazes and the wonders of the starry heaven above, unfolded as the sun sets by night, raise the question “What is man?” that he should be of account when compared to these stupendous forces of nature. Yet, crowned with glory and honor, man is master of these forces. “The splendour of God set above the heavens is reflected in His image, man, whom He has crowned as His representative to rule over the earth” (Briggs). Contrasted though the glories be, the glory of man as creature is related to the glory of God as Creator.

DISRAELI’S “ALROY”

Benjamin Disraeli was one of the most truthful authors of the nineteenth century. To confuse his bombast with pose is to misunderstand him. When, therefore, he said of _Alroy_ that it expressed his “ideal ambition,” there is no reason to doubt his sincerity. Mr. Monypenny, whose judgment cannot be trusted in general, was right when he fully accepted Disraeli’s statement on this point. Mr. Lucien Wolf had previously shown (in the splendid preface to his centenary edition of _Vivian Grey_) that “from start to finish, Lord Beaconsfield’s novels are so many echoes and glimpses of the Greater Romance of his own life.” Would that Mr. Wolf would give us an equally fine edition of _Alroy_.

For _Alroy_ is a novel that deserves to live, and probably will live. From the first it has been better liked by the public than by the professional critics. Soon after the book first appeared in 1833, Disraeli wrote to his sister that he heard good reports as to the popularity of _Alroy_, and with characteristic “conceit,” some may term it, though to others it appears more like “insight,” he added: “I hear no complaints of its style, _except from the critics_.” Mr. Monypenny has repeated the same critical objections to the style. But such objections have no real basis. _Alroy_ often falls into rhythms and even into rhymes. Why is this a defect in a prose work? Dickens frequently followed the same method, and in sundry impressive passages his sentences scan faultlessly. Are prose and verse so absolutely divided from one another? If Molière’s bourgeois gentleman found that he had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it, so do we sometimes speak verse without being conscious of the fact. Do we not all “drop into poetry” on occasion, in our ordinary speech in moments of elevation? Moreover, the Oriental writers had created a form in which prose and verse merge; and Disraeli, treating an Eastern theme, might easily have justified his choice of this very form, beloved first of the medieval Arabs, and then adopted by Hebrew contemporaries.

Then, as to the character of Alroy himself, Disraeli’s latest biographer says: “The real David Alroy appears to have been little better than a vulgar impostor, but Disraeli has idealised him into a figure worthy to be compared with Judas Maccabæus.” Mr. Monypenny borrowed this judgment (without acknowledgment) from the Rev. Michael Adler’s able article in the _Jewish Encyclopedia_. I cannot myself assent to this verdict, though I appreciate the grounds on which it was reached. The whole thing turns on the application of the term “Pseudo-Messiah” to such characters. Why call them _false_? There would be sufficient reason for applying the epithet if we had the clearest evidence that they were conscious rogues, exploiting their people’s faith, and using their hope as a ladder towards personal ambition. We do not know enough of Alroy to assert this of him. Was Disraeli himself an impostor because he thought of himself as another redeemer of Israel? There is little doubt that Alroy is drawn from Disraeli himself, just as the Miriam of the story is modelled on the author’s own sister. It is bad psychology to dub men of the Alroy type as impostors. Mr. Zangwill, in his _Dreamers of the Ghetto_--to my mind his most wonderful book--refuses to explain Sabbatai Zevi in this easy fashion. Graetz naturally so explained him, but it was precisely in such matters that Graetz was an unsafe guide. Are we to judge Messianic claims on the same principles as men judge political upheavals?

Treason never prospers, and for this reason:
That when it prospers no one calls it treason.

Is an enthusiastic believer in himself, as the instrument of a great emancipation, “pseudo” because he fails? Such explanations explain nothing.

Whatever be the truth as to the original Alroy--and I repeat that the historical sources give us inadequate information as to his inner personality--there is no room for doubting the character of Disraeli’s fictitious hero. Alroy is a thoroughly sincere portraiture. Mr. Monypenny thought that the story “never really grips us.” It depends on who the “us” are. A good many readers find George Eliot’s _Daniel Deronda_ uninteresting. Yet _Daniel Deronda_ in Hebrew had a considerable success. Despite its queer mixture of ill-digested lore and of genuine material derived from what Disraeli termed the “erratic” Talmud, _Alroy_ has a good deal of Jewish spirit in it. In the many references to the poetical elements of Jewish life, the sentiment rings true. This fact works backward. Whence did the novelist derive this feeling for the beautiful in Judaism except from his father? Isaac Disraeli presents himself to us as a rather unsympathetic student of Judaism. In his books he shows knowledge, but no feeling for the synagogue. It almost seems as though we do not see the real man in his books, and yet, after all, it may be doubted whether Benjamin inherited his Jewish idealism from his father. The latter did not at all approve of his son’s Eastern journey. But Benjamin was consumed with the desire to visit Jerusalem, and he realized this passionate longing in 1830-1. In later life he said that he had begun _Alroy_ before he left England. In the preface to _Alroy_ he writes: “Being at Jerusalem in the year 1831, and visiting the traditionary tombs of the Kings of Israel, my thoughts recurred to a personage whose marvellous career had, even in boyhood, attracted my attention, as one fraught with the richest materials of poetic fiction. And I then commenced these pages that should commemorate the name of ‘Alroy.’” I do not think that this statement contradicts his later assertion. When he says: “I _then_ commenced,” he may well be referring to his “boyhood.”

Disraeli thoroughly enjoyed his stay in the Holy Land. He refused to admit that Athens was more impressive than Jerusalem. “I will not place this spectacle,” he exclaims of the site of the ancient temple, “below the city of Minerva.” Perhaps the most arresting detail in _Alroy_ is the thirty-fifth note--the notes to the book, after the manner of Sir Walter Scott, are full of curious learning. He discusses the origin of coffee, the habits of the marten-cat, the art and furniture of the Orient, the sunset songs of Eastern maidens, the “Daughter of the Voice,” the Persian hurling of the jerreeds (javelins) into the air, the practice of the bastinado, the “golden wine” of Mount Lebanon, the alleged playing of chess before the date of the Trojan War, screens and fans made of the feathers of the roc, and the “tremulous aigrettes of brilliants” worn by persons of the highest rank. In all these directions Disraeli’s learning and fancy run riot, and the result, sometimes as grotesque as a nightmare, is often successful in producing the required effect. But this thirty-fifth entry strikes a more personal note. Let us read it in his own words, remembering, however, that the Mosque of Omar was certainly in existence in Alroy’s day: “The finest view of Jerusalem is from the Mount of Olives. It is little altered since the period when David Alroy is supposed to have gazed upon it; but it is enriched by the splendid Mosque of Omar, built by the Moslem conquerors on the supposed site of the Temple, and which, with its gardens, and arcades, and courts, and fountains, may fairly be described as the most imposing of Moslem fanes. _I endeavored to enter it at the hazard of my life._ I was detected and surrounded by a crowd of turbaned fanatics, and escaped with difficulty; but I saw enough to feel that minute inspection would not belie the general character I formed from it from the Mount of Olives. I caught a glorious glimpse of splendid courts, and light airy gates of Saracenic triumph, flights of noble steps, long arcades, and interior gardens, where silver fountains spouted their tall streams amid the taller cypresses.”

Here we, too, have a “glorious glimpse” into one-half of the real Disraeli--here and in _Tancred_; for the other half we must study his political novels. _Vivian Grey_, so Disraeli himself said, expressed his “practical,” as _Alroy_ expressed his “ideal,” ambition. And one final word. I have said nothing of the plot of _Alroy_. I assume it to be familiar to my readers. If it be not, they can easily make good the omission. I have no fear that this story of a twelfth century--shall I call him “hero” or “impostor”?--will fail to grip. For it is more than a story, it is--to use that over-worked phrase--also a “human document.”

ROBERT GRANT’S “SACRED POEMS”

When Gibbon wrote the famous fiftieth chapter of the _Decline and Fall_, he was suspected of being a Mohammedan, because he dealt leniently with the Arab religion. Edwin Arnold was half believed to be a Buddhist, because his _Light of Asia_ idealized the saint of India. But Robert Grant was never called a Jew, despite the fact that he was the champion of Jewish rights in Parliament. Grant was too genuine a Christian for anyone to doubt his orthodoxy. The same man who brought in the 1830 Bill to remove Jewish political disabilities was the author of some of the most popular hymns of the Church.

Yet, as though to show the Hebrew spirit of this non-Hebraic friend of the Hebrews, the best of his poems were written on Hebrew themes. Sir Robert Grant died in India in 1838; he had gone out as governor of Bombay. In the following year, his brother, Lord Glenelg, published Grant’s _Sacred Poems_. It was a small book, containing in all only a dozen items. But it had a great vogue, and some of the poems found a place “in almost every collection of devotional verse,” as the children of the author proudly claim in the preface to the 1868 edition. Grant would have been especially gratified, one may feel certain, had he been able to anticipate that his translation of parts of Psalm 104 would be adopted in such Jewish compilations as the Services for Children drawn up for use in the New West End Synagogue, London.

A charming poem did Grant write on the text: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee” (Psalm 73. 25). Earth is beautiful with its “woods that wave,” its “hills that tower,” and “Ocean rolling in his power”; human friendship is a “gem transcending price,” while love is a “flower from Paradise,”

Yet, amidst this scene so fair,
Should I cease Thy smile to share,
What were all its joys to me?
Whom have I on earth but Thee?

And so with heaven, where “beyond our sight,” there “rolls a world of purer light,” with its unclouded bliss, its union of severed hearts, where “immortal music rings” from “unnumbered seraph strings.”

O! that world is passing fair;
Yet if Thou wert absent there,
What were all its joys to me?
Whom have I in heaven but Thee?

The poem might have closed there, perhaps a stronger writer would have suppressed the thin stanza. But while it detracts from the virility of the verses, it adds measurably to their tenderness.

Lord of earth and heaven! my breast
Seeks in Thee its only rest;
I was lost, Thy accents mild
Homeward lur’d Thy wandering child;
I was blind; Thy healing ray
Charm’d the long eclipse away;
Source of every joy I know,
Solace of my every woe,
O if once Thy smile divine
Ceas’d upon my soul to shine,
What were earth or heaven to me?
What have I in each but Thee?

Almost as good in idea, though not so perfect in form, is Grant’s set of verses on Psalm 94. 12: “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest.”

Enchanted with all that was dazzling and fair,
I followed the rainbow--I caught at the toy;
And still in displeasure Thy goodness was there,
Disappointing the hope, and defeating the joy.

The divine goodness is seen in man’s disappointments, when the fulfilment of hope would have been loss, not gain.

On the whole, however, Grant is less successful when writing to a text than when paraphrasing a context. His renderings of certain Psalms are among the best attempts of the kind. This praise applies to his version of Psalm 49; less unreservedly to his adaptation of Psalm 2. In rendering Psalm 71, Grant gave sentiment too loose a rein. Addison had translated the opening verses of Psalm 19, beginning “The spacious firmament on high.” Grant composed what he called “a sequel or counterpart” to Addison’s hymn, corresponding to the latter portion of Psalm 19 as Addison’s fragment corresponds to the earlier portion. Grant’s supplement ends thus:

Almighty Lord! the sun shall fail,
The moon forget her nightly tale,
And deepest silence hush on high
The radiant chorus of the sky;
But, fixed for everlasting years,
Unmoved amid the wreck of spheres,
Thy word shall shine in cloudless day,
When heaven and earth have passed away.

This is fine, but Grant here hardly bears comparison with Addison: it is the fate of sequels to prove inferior to their forerunners. There is nothing in Grant’s version to equal Addison’s close, where the sun, moon, and stars are

Forever singing as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”

On the other hand, Grant falls very little below Milton in his imitation of part of Psalm 84. I must find room to quote it in full.

How deep the joy, Almighty Lord,
Thy altars to the heart afford!
With envying eyes I see
The swallow fly to nestle there,
And find within the house of prayer
A bliss denied to me!

Compelled by day to roam for food
Where scorching suns or tempests rude
Their angry influence fling,
O, gladly in that sheltered nest
She smooths, at eve, her ruffled breast,
And folds her weary wing.

Thrice happy wand’rer! fain would I,
Like thee, from ruder climates fly,
That seat of rest to share;
Opprest with tumult, sick with wrongs,
How oft my fainting spirit longs
To lay its sorrows there!

Oh! ever on that holy ground
The cov’ring cherub Peace is found,
With brooding wings serene;
And Charity’s seraphic glow,
And gleams of glory that foreshow
A higher, brighter scene.

For even that refuge but bestows
A transient tho’ a sweet repose,
For one short hour allowed;--
Then upwards we shall take our flight
To hail a spring without a blight,
A heaven without a cloud!

Had Grant ever studied rabbinic commentaries? For this is the very use made of the eighty-fourth Psalm in the Midrash. The earthly pilgrimage leads to the heavenly Zion.

I have used for this poem space which some readers may have expected me to reserve for the best of all of Grant’s renderings, that of portions of Psalm 104. In this Grant not only does not fall below the greatest of his predecessors--Henry Vaughan--but he transcends even that master’s work. It is true that Vaughan renders the whole of this long Psalm literally, whereas Grant merely paraphrases a few verses. But none the less, Grant’s “O Worship the King” is a superb reproduction of the Psalmist’s spirit. As not uncommonly happens with Grant, he falls off towards the end, and his sixth verse is nowadays justly deleted when the rendering is used liturgically. Nothing, however, could be more exquisite than these stanzas:

The earth with its store
Of wonders untold,
Almighty! Thy power
Hath founded of old:
Hath ’stablished it fast
By a changeless decree,
And round it hath cast,
Like a mantle, the sea.

Thy bountiful care
What tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air,
It shines in the light;
It streams from the hills,
It descends to the plains,
And sweetly distils
In the dew and the rain.

One wonders at his versatility. He could draft a bill for parliament deftly, and then indite such verses as those quoted. There is, indeed, something akin to the Hebrew genius in the English. For David, too, could govern, and in the intervals of ruling meditate the Psalms which make so eternal an appeal. On Robert Grant, the advocate of Jewish rights, there had, indeed, fallen a portion of the Davidic spirit.

GUTZKOW’S “URIEL ACOSTA”

Twice within my recollection there were hopes of the production of _Uriel Acosta_ on the English stage. Soon after Sir Hall Caine published the _Scapegoat_--that noblest of recent tales with a “Jewish” plot--Sir Herbert Tree was present with the novelist at a Maccabean banquet. On that occasion Sir Herbert, adopting a suggestion of my own, announced that he had proposed to Mr. Zangwill the office of preparing _Uriel Acosta_ for His Majesty’s Theatre. Nothing has come of it. Some years before, that competent actor, Mr. A. Bandmann, was lessee of the Lyceum for a time. He had often played the part of Uriel in Germany with success, and he had an English version made. It was not performed, but the plan was so far fruitful that Mr. H. Spicer’s adaptation was published.

It is a workmanlike but undistinguished rendering. It introduces mistakes for which Gutzkow is guiltless (such as the barbarism _Sanhedrim_), and it omits points which make up Gutzkow’s merit. Curious, for instance, is it that the English version should obscure the line which so lingers in the mind of the reader of the original, the line in fact most often quoted of everything that Gutzkow wrote. I refer, of course, to the old Rabbi’s constant comment on Uriel’s heresies. These, urged the Rabbi, are as old as old; it has all happened before (“Alles ist schon einmal dagewesen”). It is a striking variant on Solomon’s epigram, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes I. 9), and it drones through the recantation scene with fine dramatic effect. Far superior to this English version is the Hebrew rendering published by Salomo Rubin in 1856.

The actual facts about Uriel Acosta are soon told. His was an arresting personality, but his importance has been much overrated. Acosta would have been deservedly forgotten but for the similarity between his career and that of another Amsterdam Jew of the same period--Baruch Spinoza. Both came into conflict with the synagogue, both were excommunicated. But there the resemblance ends. In Gutzkow’s play, Uriel proclaims himself sufficient unto himself (“Mir selber bin ich eine ganze Welt”). This is just what Spinoza was, just what Uriel was not. Gutzkow represents Uriel as a youth at the time of his suicide. But he was certainly over fifty, and more probably was nearer sixty. He shot himself in 1647; and as it appears that he was born in Oporto in 1590, he must have been fifty-seven at the moment of his tragic end. Uriel (or Gabriel as he was then named) was the scion of a Marano family, and in 1617 contrived to escape to Holland, where he resumed Judaism. But he was no more contented with his ancestral religion than he had been with the creed to which he had compulsorily conformed. He advocated a purely deistic philosophy, was excommunicated by the synagogue, recanted, again defied the authorities, was again excommunicated, and finally underwent the degradation of a public penance, after which he put an end to his troubled life. Uriel’s misfortune was that, though, like Spinoza, he was unable to go with the mass in its beliefs, yet unlike Spinoza, he was unable to stand alone.

Gutzkow was attracted to the subject by his own devotion to freedom. In the stormy movements which culminated in the outbreaks of 1848, Gutzkow was directly implicated. He was born in 1811, and, when barely twenty, suffered imprisonment as a leader of the “Young Germany” party. Besides, Gutzkow had many close Jewish friends, among them Berthold Auerbach, who, perhaps, introduced Uriel Acosta to his notice. When Gutzkow wrote his play on the subject, Europe was on the eve of revolution. It is significant, in face of the anti-Semitism which really originated on the failure of the Liberals, that Gutzkow selected, in 1847, a Jewish _mis-en-scène_, in order to depict the struggle between the old order and the new. And it is impossible to refuse admiration to the insight and skill which enable the author, while obviously sympathizing with the new, to treat the old with justice and even with tenderness. The characters are all types. Menasseh, father of Judith, is the fair-dealing merchant, accepting the current religion of his people without enthusiasm for or against its demands. Judith, the heroine, more or less betrothed to Jochai, the villain of the piece, is vaguely susceptible to the newer ideas of her tutor and lover Uriel. Jochai is a rather conventionally drawn rascal. But the strength of the play is the contrast, on the one hand, between Uriel and the Rabbis, and, on the other, between the various schools of Rabbis among themselves. Da Silva has the tolerance of uncertainty as to his own position, Akiba has the broad generosity which comes from confidence in his old-world loyalty. The scenes between Uriel and Silva, and between the former and Akiba would make a success on any stage. “May you never repent of this repentance,” cries Da Silva to Akiba when there is talk of Uriel’s recantation. There is strong emotional interest in this recantation. Shall Uriel recant for Judith’s sake? Hardly. But he cannot resist the appeal of his blind mother. “I tremble before thy sightless eyes; shut thine eyes, mother! Yea, I will do it.”

The close is tragic. Both Judith and Uriel perish at their own hands. But the tragedy did not end there. Mention has been made of Da Silva. If Uriel is the counterpart of the talmudic arch-heretic, Elisha ben Abuyah, then is Da Silva the reincarnation of Elisha’s contemporary Meir. Who has not wept over the heart friendship but mind estrangement of these two men? Da Silva stands in the same relation to Uriel. He hates the heresy, but loves the heretic. Uriel himself uses words which sum up the situation. “Love or Truth? What if the heart be wiser than the mind?” Spinoza (who was really fifteen years of age when Uriel died) flits across the scene as a little boy, strewing flowers and wondering why people wonder at his childish thoughts. Uriel bids him “Keep thy soul’s secret and so find peace.” This is perhaps the most tragic incident in the play, though the dramatist contrives to relieve the tension by the simple beauty of the Spinoza interlude.

Still, however, the whole of the tragedy has not yet been told. For Hermann Jellinek has not yet been named. Indeed, _three_ remarkable Jellinek brothers now come on the scene. In 1847 two little works appeared on Gutzkow’s _Uriel_. The one (_Elischa ben Abuya_) was written by Adolf Jellinek, then the youthful preacher of Leipzig, afterwards the famous pulpit orator of Vienna. The other was _Uriel Acosta’s Leben und Lehre_, and its author was Hermann Jellinek (younger than Adolf by a couple of years). The booklet was inscribed to a third brother, Moritz. Now Hermann Jellinek was roused to a heated indignation by Gutzkow’s “fictions” about Uriel. Uriel was no lovelorn boy, but a middle-aged philosopher; he died not for loss of Judith, but as a martyr to truth. Hermann Jellinek in so many words sees his own prototype in Acosta; less than a year later he at all events shared his hero’s tragic end; but under more dignified circumstances. What the historical Uriel Acosta lacked, Hermann Jellinek possessed in over measure--the quality of determination. Hermann was a revolutionary, and took part in the Viennese rising of 1848, being twenty-six at the time. He does not seem to have actually resisted the troops, but he was court-martialled, and sentenced to death. His friends made every effort to save him, but he was relentless. Nothing could move him to present a conciliatory front to the authorities. In this at least he could be no Uriel! Recant? No! “Shoot me,” he cried, “but ideas cannot be shot.” They shot him, and his ideas may be found in two or three volumes, of which dusty copies occur in a few libraries. I have some of them on my table as I write. It is not easy to say which is the greater tragedy, Acosta’s or Jellinek’s; but for the moment at least let Jellinek have his way. For an hour we have resurrected, if not his ideas, at all events his name.

GRACE AGUILAR’S “SPIRIT OF JUDAISM”

Known to the many for her novels, Grace Aguilar is known to the few for her _Spirit of Judaism_. The book passed through a real adventure, quite as exciting as the fictional fortunes of any of her romantic heroes. Somewhat before 1840, Miss Aguilar wrote to Isaac Leeser, of Philadelphia. She had, in 1839, read the Rabbi’s first published sermons--his Bible was yet to come. She asked him “to undertake the editorial supervision of her manuscript work on the _Spirit_ of our religion.” Leeser courteously responded to the request. “I shall readily be believed,” he wrote in 1842, “that I felt truly happy that such a demand had been made upon me; and I accordingly offered my services to do as I was desired.” Miss Aguilar completed the book, but chance decreed that it was not to reach its goal. She sent it out to America “through a private channel,” and it never came to Leeser’s hands. Such a mishap did not thwart so ardent and industrious a girl--she was not much over twenty at the time. She accordingly proceeded to re-write it “from her original sketches,” made in 1837. On the second occasion fortune was more kind, though the book encountered some further delays before it appeared, in 1842, in America.

A second edition--much inferior from the point of view of “get-up”--was published in 1849, again in Philadelphia. The second issue was No. xiii of the _Jewish Miscellany_ of the original Jewish Publication Society. The book was never printed in England. My own introduction to it was curiously made. Being deeply interested in the new plans for teaching Hebrew, I wrote (in 1903), a preface to a book on the Yellin method. I showed the proof of my essay to the late Rev. S. Singer, whereupon he remarked: “Grace Aguilar said much the same thing more than half a century ago.” And so, indeed, she did. She saw that Hebrew must be taught naturally, that the language must be made to “engage a child’s fancy,” by first of all introducing to it familiar Hebrew words from the child’s every-day life. Glad was I to find this anticipation of modern opinion, and I cited it fully.

From that time I have, for other reasons, grown very fond of the book--of which I possess the 1849 reprint. It is so delightfully fresh and young, so confident and enthusiastic. Moreover, there is something entertaining in Leeser’s conception of his editorial function. Not that he could well help himself. He was almost compelled to apply a wet blanket to her fire. She had expressly invited him to confine himself to removing obscurities and appending the necessary notes. “The chief point of difference between Miss Aguilar and myself,” says Leeser, “are her seeming aversion to the _tradition_, and her idea that the mere teaching of formal religion opens the door to the admission of Christianity.” On the second point, Leeser’s answer is effective. If, through unintelligent teaching, ceremonial religion degenerates into a burden, then the outcome is more likely to be disregard for the old than regard for a new faith. “Indifference is a far greater enemy to us than conversion,” said Leeser in 1842, and assuredly we can use identical words now. It is not so clear, however, that Leeser was equally successful in meeting Miss Aguilar on the problem of tradition. She was very emphatic in her desire to base Judaism on the Bible, but she was only verbally, not spiritually, a Karaite. She often uses the very language of tradition, and in one place says: “The religion of no Hebrew is perfect, unless the form be hallowed by the spirit, the spirit quickened by the form. The heart must be wholly given to the Lord, yet still the instituted form must be obeyed.” Miss Aguilar probably objected to the minutiae of pietism--in the ritual sense--when she spoke of tradition; she had no philosophical conception of it. Leeser could hardly be expected to set her right; he was as little of a mystic as she was.

No doubt, however, she was to this extent an anti-traditionalist that she thought the Bible in itself an all-sufficient basis for Judaism. Her book is cast in the form of a commentary on the Shema--in fact, it is called “Shema Israel, the Spirit of Judaism.” She begins by expounding the unity of God; she shows that it is the real difference between Synagogue and Church; and then ends her chapter with a passionate plea for friendly intercourse between Jew and Christian on the basis of frank and unashamed profession of Judaism by the former. She was absolutely right. It is not merely the only honest, it is also the only stable basis for such intercourse.

To Grace Aguilar, Moses was “the mouth of God” (that is her own phrase). There is nothing between a theory of verbal inspiration and the belief that Moses “invented” and “presumed on the ignorance and superstition of the rescued nation.” With a feminine love of italics she contends that “we _must_ believe God framed _every law_ mentioned in the Mosaic books or _none_.” How crude this sounds! On the one hand, it cuts off all thought of inspiration before Moses, on the other, all thought of it after the close of the scriptural canon. It would have seemed to her almost blasphemous to regard Hillel as animated with the same spirit of God that moved Haggai. She dismisses the “Oral Law” in an aside. “The Bible is the foundation of religion.” Miss Aguilar goes on to complain that English Bibles were not found in Jewish homes. But the explanation is easy. In those days it was impossible to find an acceptable English Bible for Jewish use. The Authorized Version was marred not only by Christological renderings, but also by the Christological insertions of the headings to the chapters. Before the publication of the Revised Version it had become possible to obtain an Anglican edition without the headings. But I doubt whether that was the case so early as 1842. Moreover, Jews have always been slow to acknowledge that the _Hebrew_ Bible was insufficient. There was much that is creditable in this reluctance to face facts; though there was also much that was dangerous.

It is impossible to do justice in a brief article to the intense love of Judaism shown in Miss Aguilar’s book. She pleads for the religion with persuasive eloquence; it must appeal to the heart and the reason; it must permeate the home; it must regulate life. She would have family prayers daily. To this topic she returns over and over again. “The youthful members of a little domestic congregation would look back with warm emotion, in after years, to that period when, with their brothers and sisters, they thronged around their parents to listen to the word of God, and made known their common wants together.” But the thought that dominates her whole book is the perfect truth and sufficiency of Judaism. It only needs to be known to be preferred to every possible alternative. No Jew can ever become lukewarm if he understands his religion. But he must understand its spirit. “We know that they who depart from the faith of their fathers are ever those reared in the severest obedience to mere forms.” Whereupon Leeser in his note comments: “This is certainly a sweeping clause though there is a great deal of truth in it.” He adds that the fault “does not lie in the _forms_, but in the absence of _spiritual_ education.” That is clearly the reason why Miss Aguilar called her book “The Spirit of Judaism.” She was no foe to forms as such. She strongly defends the dietary laws, in the very chapter whence the last quotation was taken. _Obedience_ is the term writ large on every page; but so is _belief_. When Judaism is believed in and obeyed, then will redemption be nigh, release from captivity at hand, and the advent of the Messiah approaching. But how movingly she says it in her own fiery words!

ISAAC LEESER’S BIBLE

The twenty years around the middle of the nineteenth century witnessed the preparation of several Jewish translations of the Bible. Moses Mendelssohn had shown the way in the previous century; he did not, however, produce a _complete_ German Bible. This was done with success by a body of scholars led by Zunz (Berlin, 1838). Ludwig Philippson, in the very next year, began an enterprise the accomplishment of which occupied him till 1856. His edition was not only annotated; it was also adorned with illustrations. In 1875 the Philippson Bible came out anew with the Doré pictures.

(From a Painting by Solomon Nunez de Carvalho)]

As for English versions by Jews, David Levi edited the Pentateuch in 1787. But, to pass over certain publications of separate books, no complete Bible appeared in England from a Jewish hand until the issue of Benisch’s version (1851-56). This was a melancholy affair. Real and original scholarship is shown in every page. He claimed for his rendering “fidelity, uniformity and independence.” But he had no sense for English style. He unnecessarily and grotesquely altered the familiar words of the Authorized Version. Hence, one is bound to speak of this monument of learning and earnestness as “melancholy”; it might so easily have been acceptable. His corrections of the Authorized were often necessary. Thus, in the Ten Commandments he rightly put “Thou shalt not murder” for the current “Thou shalt not kill.” The Revised Version made the same correction. So, too, he was right when, for historical reasons, he made a change in Leviticus 23. 15. In the Authorized Version this runs: “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath.” But by the Jewish tradition the Feast of Weeks is not counted from a Saturday but from the first day of Passover--on whatever day that happens to fall. Hence Benisch substituted: “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after _the day of rest_.” Naturally, too, he corrected certain dogmatic prejudices of the Anglican Version.

Curiously enough, Isaac Leeser leaves “Thou shalt not kill” uncorrected. But he was vigilant with “the morrow after the Sabbath,” for which he substitutes “the morrow after the holy day.” On the other hand, he retained the word “Sabbath” (where the Hebrew has _Shabbaton_) applied to the first and eighth days of Tabernacle, _e. g._, Leviticus 23. 39. This, however, he altered in his later editions to _a rest_; Benisch has _strict rest_. The Revised Version has a similar correction: _solemn rest_.

It is not my purpose to compare Leeser’s Version with others. From the hour when his “Law of God” appeared in Philadelphia, in 1845, Leeser’s Pentateuch won the affectionate regard of American Jews. The Pentateuch was issued in octavo, in Hebrew and English; the whole of the Bible came out in quarto, in English alone, towards the end of 1853. From that time it has been often reprinted in varying forms, simply and in editions _de luxe_. But it is not the printers who made the book popular, though I must remark that, despite the small public support the enterprise secured, the 1845 Leeser Pentateuch is a beautiful specimen of the printer’s art. What made the book was the people’s growing love for Leeser. Can higher praise be given, can a finer fate be wished, than that a man’s book shall live in his brethren’s hearts because of him?

This is not the time to criticise Leeser’s work. Like Benisch, he had no feeling for English style. He could, in the twenty-third Psalm, alter the wonderful melody of “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,” into “In pastures of tender grass he causeth me to lie down.” He could take the haunting rhythm of Job’s “There the wicked cease from troubling, there the weary are at rest,” and give us “and where the exhausted weary are at rest,” which is no nearer the literal Hebrew (“the wearied in strength”), and is incomparably farther from its beauty. Or again, the felicitous opening lines of the nineteenth Psalm, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork,” become in Leeser “The heavens relate the glory of God; and the expanse telleth of the works of his hands.” It is this more than anything else that made it impossible for English Jews to use Leeser’s Bible. Revision of Leeser on scholarly grounds was also necessary, no doubt. Thus, in his rendering of Esther 6. 8, where Haman suggests the details of the pageant in behalf of the man whom the king delighteth (why did Leeser substitute _desireth_?) to honor, Leeser has: “Let them bring a royal apparel which the king hath worn, and a horse on which the king hath ridden, and let there be placed a royal crown on his head.” But, as Ibn Ezra had in part already pointed out (as Leeser notes), and as we know to be almost certainly the case, the crown was for the _horse’s_ head. In the Revised Version the passage runs: “Let royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and on the head of which a royal crown is set.”

Naturally, in what precedes I have turned to familiar passages. My comments only touch the fringe of the problem of Bible revision. In one important particular, Leeser anticipated the Revised Version: he arranged the English in paragraphs and not in verses. Since Leeser’s day, however, not only have we learned more as to the precise meaning of words, but we have won a closer insight into the idiomatic use of the Hebrew tenses. The American revision, now issued under the auspices of the American Jewish Publication Society, has given us at once a scholarly translation, and one which remains true to the English excellences of the version made in the reign of King James.

Leeser’s Bible, therefore, is more or less doomed, It cannot but pass out of general use. But it can never pass out of our esteem and affection. Leeser, though he indignantly repudiated sectarian bias, did not translate the Bible as an exercise in scholarship. He belonged to those who believed in the Bible. Quite naively he tells us in his Preface (dated September 20, 1853) that he is “an Israelite in faith, in the full sense of the word; he believes in the Scriptures as they have been handed down to us; in the truth and authenticity of prophecies and their ultimate literal fulfilment.” Nor did he think that the age of miracles was past. He admitted that there were sources of information which he had not consulted when preparing his Bible. But he had done his best, and felt that he was therefore working with a hand stronger than his own. “I thought, in all due humility, that I might safely go to the task, confidently relying upon that superior aid which is never withheld from the inquirer after truth.” What a combination of sophistication and simplicity we have here! In the mid-nineteenth century such a union of rationalism and faith was rare; it is growing rarer every day. We shall soon be thinking of putting Isaac Leeser’s memory in a museum of Jewish antiquities as a specimen of a lost type.

LANDOR’S “ALFIERI AND SALOMON”

There is only one Jew in Landor’s long series of _Imaginary Conversations_, and he was, most probably, an invention of the author’s. “Salomon the Florentine Jew,” who discourses in Landor’s pages with Count Vittorio Alfieri, never existed; at all events he is not identifiable. There is no mention of such a person in Alfieri’s autobiography; so Landor’s editor--Mr. C. G. Crump--is careful to point out. Still, Landor (1775-1864) spent several years in Florence, and it is possible that he heard of some Jewish worthy whom he used for the purpose of his dialogue.

Landor treats his solitary Jewish character with courtesy. “You are the only man in Florence with whom I would willingly exchange a salutation,” says Alfieri at the opening of the conversation. Salomon expresses himself as highly flattered. The actual dialogue is not one of Landor’s best, unless it be for its recognition of the sterling quality of the English middle-class. “It is among those who stand between the peerage and the people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of wisdom than in the rest of Europe.” The historical Alfieri found himself out of sympathy both with kings and with the French Revolution which destroyed kingship. It was a happy touch of Landor’s, therefore, to put into Alfieri’s mouth the praise of the class which stood between royalty and the masses.

But _Alfieri and Salomon_ is hardly a successful work of art. It has neither the romantic beauty of Landor’s _Aesop and Rhodope_, nor the dramatic interest of his _Hannibal and Marcellus_. Naturally, however, it has some good epigrams. “A poet can never be an atheist,” says Landor’s Alfieri. He calls on God to confound the fools who always eulogize the least praiseworthy of princes because, he complains, “the rascals have ruined my physiognomy; I wear an habitual sneer upon my face.” How many a genius has been made similarly disagreeable because he could not suffer fools gladly! Very true again is Alfieri’s paradox that the gravest people are the wittiest. “Few men have been graver than Pascal, few have been wittier.” Had Landor’s Florentine Salomon been a real Jew, he could have capped Alfieri’s citation of Pascal by referring to many a Jewish instance, among them Abraham Ibn Ezra. On the contrary, Salomon disputes the truth of Alfieri’s statement. Landor is fond of national generalizations. “Not a single man of genius hath ever appeared in the whole extent of Austria,” he makes Salomon say; while Alfieri asserts that “the Spaniards have no palate, the Italians no scent, the French no ear.” Fortunately it did not occur to Landor to sum up the Jews in an epigram. He retained, however, the eighteenth century tolerance, and might have been lenient. The only thing he thoroughly detested was priest-craft, fanaticism. His Salomon confesses that “theology is without attraction” for him, and the saying came from Landor’s heart.

There is not much of the Jew in Salomon. He might have been any cultured contemporary of Alfieri. At one point, however, he refuses to hazard a word as to certain clerics, while Alfieri freely judges and condemns them. “The people who would laugh with you, would stone me,” says Salomon. Was this really true of the end of the eighteenth century in Italy? I doubt it. Landor is no true guide to the opinions of his age. To continue. Landor’s Salomon speaks of Florence as his native city; he knows it and its extraordinary story in every detail; he discusses its men of genius, though he admits: “My ignorance of Greek forbids me to compare our Dante with Homer.” Salomon is through and through Italian. Perhaps Landor meant to depict him as a Jew by putting into his mouth a good anecdote:

A sailor found upon the shore a piece of amber; he carried it home, and, as he was fond of fiddling, began to rub it across the strings of his violin. It would not answer. He then broke some pieces off, boiled them in blacking, and found to his surprise and disquiet that it gave no fresh lustre to the shoe-leather. ‘What are you about?’ cried a messmate. ‘Smell it, man; it is amber.’ ‘The devil take it,’ cried the finder, ‘I fancied it was resin’; and he threw it into the sea. We despise what we cannot use.

There is one touch in _Alfieri and Salomon_ which makes it look as though the latter were a real personage. Salomon urges Alfieri to ignore his detractors and inferiors, and to be assured that, though his contemporaries might belittle him, posterity would be more appreciative.

_Salomon_: All the present race of them, all the creatures in the world which excite your indignation, will lie in the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or beating their bosoms at your _Bruto Primo_....

_Alfieri_: I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my tragedies.

_Salomon_: He who first praises a good book becomingly is next in merit to the author.

That sentence, “you were the first in commending my tragedies,” has a genuine ring, it is life-like. Had Landor any real ground for believing that a certain Florentine Jew named Salomon or Solomon was the first to recognize Alfieri’s genius for tragedy? It is an interesting fact, if it be a fact. Even so, it has its curious side. Alfieri (1749-1803) was a prolific writer of plays, but the best of his tragedies--and his tragedies as a whole were superior to his comedies--was not his _Brutus_. It is queer that the Jew should forget which was the best. It was certainly Alfieri’s _Saul_, published in October, 1784. It won more success than any other of his dramas. His “severe and unadorned manner” was peculiarly adapted to the rugged simplicity of the characters which are presented in _Saul_. The drama deals with the last day of the king, the scene being laid in the Israelite camp on mount Gilboa. There are only six characters: Saul, Gionata (Jonathan), David, Micol, Abner, Achimelech, with stage armies of “soldati israeliti” and “soldati filistei.” Apart from the subtle contrasts between David the warrior and David the minstrel, the finest thing in the play is the management of Saul’s insanity. Indeed, it has been truly said of Alfieri: “In the representation of that species of mental alienation, where the judgment has perished but traces of character still remain, he is peculiarly happy.”

Another poet who was in Florence with Landor also chose the subject of Saul for one of his most dramatic efforts. I refer to Robert Browning, who had intellectually much in common with Landor, though his temperament and philosophy of life were quite other. Landor ignored Alfieri’s _Saul_, Browning imitated it. Earlier, in 1820, Joseph Ephrathi, no doubt instigated by Alfieri’s success, produced a Hebrew drama with Saul as hero. Gutzkow later on wrote a tragedy on the subject. Another who treated of the topic was Byron. He had no likeness to Landor, but was not dissimilar to Alfieri; both were aristocrats, both pretended to cynicism, both were versatile authors, both squanderers of a great opportunity. It is strange that it was left to Alfieri to detect the dramatic possibilities in the tragedy of Saul. Handel’s exploitation of the theme was, naturally, musical rather than dramatic. In the new freedom of the English stage we shall, no doubt, soon have plays and to spare on the subject. Landor, as we have seen, makes no use whatever of biblical personages for his dialogues. But English poetry has not done ill with Saul’s memory. Sir Philip Sydney, or one of his age, gave us as beautiful a rendering as we need wish of David’s elegy over Saul and Jonathan. What could be more lovely than

Pleasant they were in life, and fair,
Nor yet did death their love divide.

or than

Ah! Jonathan, my brother! lorn
And friendless I must look to be!--
That heart whose woe thou oft hast borne
Is sore and stricken now for thee!
Young bridegroom’s love on bridal morn,
Oh! it was light to thine for me;
Thy timeless lot I now must plain,
Even on thine own high places slain!
How lowly now the mighty are,
How still the weapons of the war!

We have got rather far from Landor. Yet I cannot but think that the best thought suggested by his _Alfieri and Salomon_ is just Alfieri’s _Saul_, to which the parties to the “imaginary conversation” make no allusion.

PART V