lime. Compassion for a fallen faith will endow it with those attributes of poetry which are still more affecting; and there are few, except those who are unwittingly actuated by the spirit they impute, exclusively, to the Romish creed, who cannot sympathize at present with the filial expressions of the poet-more beautiful than any hymn of his church; in which he pours out his devotion to her declining age and dishonoured fortune;

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Thy rival was honour'd, while thou wert wrong'd and scorn'd; Thy crown was of briers, while gold her brows adorn'd:

She wooed me to temples, while thou layest hid in caves ;

Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas! were slaves :
Yet cold in the earth, at thy feet I would rather be,
Than wed what I lov'd not, or turn one thought from thee!"

ART. V.-A short Account of the Conversion to Christianity of Solomon Duitsch, lately a learned Rabbin and Teacher of several Synagogues. Extracted from the original, published in the Dutch Language by Himself, and improved with a Preface and Remarks, by the Reverend Mr. Burgmann, Minister of the Protestant Lutheran Chapel in the Savoy. Now first translated into English. London, 1771.

The Jews are the most extraordinary people, and their history is the most interesting history, in the world. For ages out of number, they have not possessed one square mile of territory, and they still look forward to universal dominion ;-for generation after generation they have run a troubled stream in the greater stream of the population of all nations, without once assimilating with any;-every where they live separate and alone, sojourners rather than home-dwellers. They have at all times possessed great wealth, and, at times, great power; once, they had among them the greatest general information, in comparison with their numbers, and the most learned men, without comparison, that Europe could then boast of; they have been also the most ignorant as a body, and had fewer men of eminence among them; they were at one time, in Spain particularly, indirectly possessed of great, civil power; and at other times, and for long intervals together, they have been the most abject and miserable race throughout all Europe; their persecutions have been fearful even to remember, and dreadful beyond all precedent; and yet they are one, and still a people.

Of late years indeed, at least in this country, the current

has set the opposite way to persecution. Cumberland's Jew is quite another man from Shakspeare's Jew, or the Jew of Malta; and who can believe that Rebecca is a lineal descendant of the "Ebraike peple," that slew young "Hew of Lincoln!" But so it is! and, thanks to the genius of our countrymen, the feeling of the ages in which they severally lived has had permanency given to it in their immortal works: for, when the Lady Prioress talked of

"the serpent, Sathanas,

That hath in Jewe's herte his waspe's nest,"

we may be quite sure that Chaucer had the authority of many such ladies for such sentiments; and for the purity of conduct and beautiful humanity of Rebecca, the modern poet had the voucher for its possible truth in the agreement of all men of sense; and both facts, as far as the philosophy of mind is concerned, prove only that poets as well as Jews, and Jews as well as poets, (a much more important point to establish,) are very much the children of circumstances. When lady prioresses talked after this fashion, and other ladies and gentlemen too agreed with her in opinion; when the Jews were every where persecuted, despised, or hated-spit on, trampled on, and bearded;

their sufferings made a jest, and the law made an instrument of infliction; was it not in human nature that "the serpent, Sathanas," should dwell in their hearts? But the progress of knowledge has been accompanied with progressive liberality, and this feeling is much more distinctly to be traced in our poets than our historians. In the lady prioress's tale, there is not one redeeming circumstance for the poor Jews; they are isolated beings, cut off from human society; in the want of all human sympathy, they stand out naked and bare for universal hate and detestation.

But in Shakspeare and in Marlowe, the Jews have not much the worst of it. They act, indeed, and suffer, agreeable to the expectation of "the grounded understanders ;" but, in both poets, there is a "still small voice" of truth, shewing that their actions are not a mere voluntary played off by a nature different from ordinary humanity, but one of ordinary humanity warped, strained, and tortured into distortion and hideousness, by the cruelty and injustice of others. This has been well shewn of Shakspeare's Jew, but justice has never been done to the inimitable truth of his predecessor. We know not how it may dove-tail with the rest of this article; but as the work under review has somewhat disappointed us, we feel very much disposed to say a word or two on old Kit Marlowe's" play, or rather of Barabbas; a Jew drawn with as perfect a Hebrew

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spirit as the Sampson of Milton; and the more especially, as we think Mr. Lamb, the very best of living dramatic critics, has certainly mistaken the character. Neither is it altogether beside the purpose, when speaking of the past and present condition of the Jews.

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He

"Shylock," says Mr. Lamb, "in the midst of his savage purpose, is a man; his motives, feelings, resentments, have something human in them. Barabbas is a mere monster, brought in with a large painted nose to please the rabble. kills in sport, poisons whole nunneries, invents infernal machines." Now, but we speak with becoming deference, this judgment seems to us altogether erroneous. Barabbas is anything but a monster. He is just one of those subjects on which a philosopher might read a lecture on human nature;he is an evidence of the entire moulding of the desires, affections, and even of the will, by the prejudices and persecutions of society. If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" might be as truly spoken by Barabbas as by Shylock; and his motives, feelings, and resentments had "something human in them," while his wrongs were within human bearing, or his revenge within human compass. If the inhumanity of Barabbas be the more extravagant and indiscriminate, he is less a volunteer in wickedness. The nature of Barabbas, before he is despoiled of his property, and his character afterwards, are distinct things. There is to the full as much humanity in Barabbas as in Shylock, and more, while there was any proportion in their sufferings. If we may take his daughter's word, Shylock's house, even in his prosperity, was no very pleasant place, and his conduct had_raised no very passionate affection in the daughter. Not so Barabbas. Abigail never deserted him, till he deserted himself, made mad with wrongs ;-in the depth of their misery, what says she?—

"Not for myself, but aged Barabbas,

Father, for thee lamenteth Abigail."

And, indeed, if we may believe the men themselves, which has the more humanity? Barabbas, in all the triumphs of his prosperity and success, never forgets his daughter among his blessings

"I have no charge, nor many children,

But one sole daughter, whom I hold as dear

As Agamemnon did his Iphigene."

So much for the "monster." But the "man" would have his daughter "dead at his feet," so his "jewels were in her ear"

"hearsed, so the ducats were in her coffin." Barabbas loved his daughter; he loved his riches; he loved himself ;

"Let them combat, conquer, and kill all,

So they spare me, my daughter, and my wealth;"

there was nothing else left for him to love. If his affections were thus limited, it was because he could find nothing else in the world that sympathised with him. As to "cozening, extorting, and tricks belonging unto brokery," 'twas his vocation, and " 'tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation." Besides, the world had left him no other. It had directed his ambition, as it had confined his feeling and humanity;-" Jews come not to be kings."

This was Barabbas to the hour of his gross wrongs; to the hour that he was despoiled of every thing, and left houseless and friendless; and not by the savage and brute violence of one man, but by the want of common sympathy in all men. To insults offered in common to Shylock, and his whole tribe, he had learned to "duck" and "kiss his hand;" as his sufferings were common, so was his revenge limited to ill-wishing; but here his injuries were exclusive, and his own. Let me be used as my brethren are," was asked and was refused him ; he then felt with the Duke of Gloucester, "I have no brother, I am like no brother," and might and did add, in his heart, let

"love, which grey beards call divine,

Be resident in men like one another,

And not in me."

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All men, in opinion, justified the wrong done to him, without which it could not have been done, and they equally shared his hatred; even his revenge was not more desolating than his enemies were universal.

There is nothing throughout to contradict the supposition that the active malignity of Barabbas was then, and not till then, engrafted on him; and in the mad relation of his atrocities to Ithamore, and the scene where he receives his concealed gold from Abigail, there is much in support of it. From that hour, the whole aim and purpose of his life was changed his ruling passions,-his love of his daughter, and his love of wealth,-were swallowed up in hate: he was cut off by one frightful wrong from all humanity, even the humanity in his own heart. When he exclaims, before he was assured of Abigail's success, "here lives my soul's sole hope," he was too poor to hate, too impotent to dream of revenge; he speaks of his money, therefore, as of that on which his actual exis

tence was depending, and with an enthusiasm that his poverty still left as a master-passion; but once possessed of it, even in the first transport of possession, it is not only "strength to my soul," but "death to mine enemies;" from that hour, he neither thought nor cared for money, but as a powerful instrument to redress his wrongs; the loss of " a hundred tuns of wine," he dismisses with the snap of a finger :

"I have wealth enough;

For now, by this, has he kiss'd Abigail."

Ludowick was now within his grasp. As to his extravagant relation to Ithamore,-his "killing sick people groaning under walls, his poisonings, his practices in Germany and Italy," it is the mere trickery of the imagination; he joys in what he would do, as in what he had done. Perhaps, too, he had some secret purpose in familiarising Ithamore to such an employment. Neither does he reject the first slave for the avowed reason that "a stone of beef" would not maintain those chops," but because he was somewhat of Cæsar's judgment, and wanted not men that "sleep o' nights." Even the lean Ithamore he questions as to his breeding and bringing up; but, being satisfied of this, he has no scruples about a stone of beef; he is as generous as an emperor :- "be true and secret, thou shalt want no gold;" nor is it clear that he afterwards gives Borza the money so reluctantly, but that it might excite suspicion to be more liberal to a slave.

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:

Thus much for Barabbas. But the history of Barabbas is the history of the whole tribe; and more may be learned from this single fiction of the poet's, of the long and obstinate maintaining, and the possible ultimate conversion of this extraordinary people, than from the dull reality of all the Solomon Duitsch's that ever existed. The Jews are, and ever have been, a separate and distinct people, because they were ever treated as such; their very birth-place was to them no home; with their countrymen they were allowed no fellowship; they were separated from others, for none would associate with them; they intermarried from necessity, for who would intermarry with them? they were not drawn together by their own prejudices, so much as shut in by the prejudices of others; their bond of union, and that never strong, was but the persecution and contempt they suffered. But the spell is broken. The rigour and injustice of the law is done away, and even the more bitter and more painful law of opinion,

"Far worse to bear

Than violence,"