The Book of Delight and Other Papers by Abrahams, Israel, 1858-1925

How carefully George Eliot read! The pagination of 207 is printed wrongly as 160; she corrects it! She corrects _Kimesi_ into "Kimchi" on p. 48, _Rabasse_ into "R. Ashe" on p. 163. On p. 59 she writes, "According to the Talmud no one is eternally damned." Perhaps her statement needs some slight qualification. Again (p. 62), "Rashi, i.e. Rabbi Shelomoh ben Isaak, whom Buxtorf mistakenly called Jarchi." It was really to Raymund Martini that this error goes back. But George Eliot could not know it. On p. 140, Maimon begins, "Accordingly, I sought to explain all this in the following way," to which George Eliot appends the note, "But this is simply what the Cabbala teaches--not his own ingenious explanation."

It is interesting to find George Eliot occasionally defending Judaism against Maimon. On p. 165 he talks of the "abuse of Rabbinism," in that the Rabbis tacked on new laws to old texts. "Its origin," says George Eliot's pencilled jotting, "was the need for freedom to modify laws"--a fine remark. On p. 173, where Maimon again talks of the Rabbinical method of evolving all sorts of moral truths by the oddest exegesis, she writes, "The method has been constantly pursued in various forms by Christian Teachers." On p. 186 Maimon makes merry at the annulment of vows previous to the Day of Atonement. George Eliot writes, "These are religious vows--not engagements between man and man."

Furthermore, she makes some translations of the titles of Hebrew books cited, and enters a correction of an apparently erroneous statement of fact on p. 215. There Maimon writes as though the Zohar had been promulgated after Sabbatai Zebi. George Eliot notes: "Sabbatai Zebi lived long after the production of the Zohar. He was a contemporary of Spinoza. Moses de Leon belonged to the fourteenth century." This remark shows that George Eliot knew Graetz's History, for it is he who brought the names of Spinoza and Sabbatai Zebi together in two chapter headings in his work. Besides, Graetz's History was certainly in George Eliot's library; it was among the Lewes books now at Dr. Williams's. Again, on p. 265, Maimon speaks of the Jewish fast that falls in August. George Eliot jots on the margin, "July? Fast of Ninth Ab."

Throughout passages are pencilled, and at the end she gives an index to the parts that seem to have interested her particularly. This is her list:

It is a pleasure, indeed, to find a fresh confirmation, that George Eliot's favorable impression of Judaism was based on a very adequate acquaintance with its history. Sir Walter Scott's knowledge of it was, one cannot but feel, far less intimate than George Eliot's, but his poetic insight kept him marvellously straight in his appreciation of Jewish life and character.

II

HOW MILTON PRONOUNCED HEBREW