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.