9* s. xii. AUG. s, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
103
epigram which Burton would have quoted
had it been printed in his day, I exclaim :
Dieu me garde d'etre savant
D'une science si prof on de :
Les plus doctes le plus souvent
Sont les plus sottes gens du nionde.
About all such matters we may say in the words of St. Austin :
"Quid enim opus est, ut hsec atque huiusmodi adfirmentur vel negentur vel definiantur cum dis- crimine, quando sine crimine nesciuntur ? 'En- chiridion ad Laurentium,' cap. lix.
In conclusion, I must confess that these quotations have to do with matters which are vastly more difficult of solution than the one I have mentioned. To discover the exact number of lines in the ' Poly-Olbion ' is a task which can be accomplished. I leave the counting of them to others, being satisfied with having read them, which I have shown to be a less formidable operation than was commonly supposed. But for either purpose let me recommend the student to procure a copy printed in larger type than the one given in Southey's 'Early British Poets,' which I have had to use.
JOHN T. CUKKY.
HEINE'S 'PRINCESS SABBATH.'
I LAY down E. A. Bowring's rendering of
this poem with mingled feelings of exultation
and sadness. At this time of day one can
hardly be expected to say anything fresh
about Heine ; but as a fellow Hebre\y I may
add one or two notes worth considering.
For the Jew his coming and the date of
his advent were priceless events. It _would
take me too far to elaborate this point. I
will keep closely to the intellectual side of
Heine, which for every educated Jew is a
storehouse of pearls and rubies. Spenser has
been called the poet's poet : in precisely the
same sense I may call Heine the Jew's
poet. He is the poet of the Jews of modern
times, albeit not in the sense that Alcharisi,
Gabirol, and Hale'vi are. Yet in a political
sense his labours for his brethren were more
fruitful and permanent, owing to his fortu-
nately not aspiring to rival the poets I have
named. Nor do I believe that he ever
specifically regarded himself as the champion
of Jewry. Subconsciously, as the soldier
fighting the battles of humanity, Heine may
sometimes have plumed himself on his
varying success in that warfare on their
behalf. It may have settled in his mind as
a remote and ultimate by-product. I said,
however, that Heine is the Jew's poet. In
his writing Jeshurun once more can breathe
his natural atmosphere, freed from the
mephitic poisons of Ghetto life. In those airy
spaces he can sport, expand, and discover
that he has more than a local habitation and
a name. He becomes an articulate being stand-
ing, for the first, time possibly in his life, self-
revealed in the full panoply of manhood.
That is a joy which he can taste in
excess of his English confrere, who has long
enjoyed the sweets of liberty. Nevertheless,
English Jews owe a debt of gratitude to Mr.
Bowring for his rendering of the ' Hebrew
Melodies' of Heine; and English literature
is the richer by a translation of one whose
original metres gleam and flash like a Toledo
blade. All the varied glow and glitter, all
the rollicksomeness and the melancholy, the
spontaneity or the deeper notes, all the fun
and all the fury of those inimitable Hebrew
poems all these excellences and not a few of
the blemishes Bowring has caught with rare
finesse and accuracy. The twin character-
istics of Heine's genius, which are in fact the
characteristics of the Jewish mind, native or
cultured, and which have won for him the
name of the modern Aristophanes, are his
irrepressible spirit of diablerie and his keen
unrivalled sense of that Weltschmerz, of which
Jewry has borne its full share the outcome
of which is the Jew's rich chine (fun) and richer
rachmonous (womanly tenderness). These
characteristics find ample scope for illus-
tration in the ' Hebrew Melodies,' even
as they reached the highest state of frui-
tion in Heine's mind. It is to be re-
gretted that Bowring did not assist the
reader by a few foot-notes explanatory of the
Hebrew idioms introduced by the poet with
force and grace. For example, Heine, terribly
" kicked " by the "feet" of the Egyptians-
poetical justice was possibly being done after
thousands of years to a scandalous descendant
of a scandalous race saves the situation " by
his own hands " alone, pairing off yadayim
(hands) with mizrayim (Egyptians). Perhaps
the reader of the * Princess Sabbath ' remem-
bers the uncouth line " Lecho Doudi, Likras
Kallo," which is the refrain of a love song com-
posed by Solomon Halevi, and not by Jehuda,
as Heine avers on p. 468. Apart from the
indisputable fact that the author's name is
acrostically inwoven in his verses, always
the birth-mark of the minor poet, the work
itself discloses its origin by its scholarly
coldness and theological bias. It emanates
from the school of our northern pietanim
(poets), of whom the choicest Hower was
Kaiir. Gabirol and Jehuda Halevi belong to
a nest of singing birds whose tunefulness,
warmth, and passions are the offspring of
