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.”