Ah! Jonathan, my brother! lorn And friendless I must look to be!-- That heart whose woe thou oft hast borne Is sore and stricken now for thee! Young bridegroom’s love on bridal morn, Oh! it was light to thine for me; Thy timeless lot I now must plain, Even on thine own high places slain! How lowly now the mighty are, How still the weapons of the war! We have got rather far from Landor. Yet I cannot but think that the best thought suggested by his _Alfieri and Salomon_ is just Alfieri’s _Saul_, to which the parties to the “imaginary conversation” make no allusion. PART V PART V BROWNING’S “BEN KARSHOOK” Two great literary forces, poets both yet both greater in what they said than in how they said it, expressed their most intimate beliefs on life and destiny under the guise of a Jewish personation. Nathan the Wise, the hero of Lessing’s drama, was Lessing, just as Rabbi Ben Ezra, the supposititious soliloquist of Browning’s poem, was Browning. Lessing, it is certain, had a living model in Moses Mendelssohn. Nathan was drawn from his friend. Had Browning any such model? Yes and no. Many a writer since Furnivall has identified the hero of Browning’s poem with Abraham Ibn Ezra. It is probable that the poet had him vaguely in mind. When, however, it is sought--as several have done--to work out the identity in detail, the effort fails. The poet clearly meant to prevent any such error. For in _Holy-Cross Day_, he introduces a Rabbi Ben Ezra as singing a “Song of Death” quite different in tone from the poem in which Rabbi Ben Ezra unfolds his scheme of life. Browning obviously meant us to infer that Ben Ezra was no one in particular. Browning’s Hebrew knowledge was probably good; like his wife he was apparently able to read the Bible in the original. He also had dipped into curious, out of the way books on Jewish lore. The Rev. Michael Adler cleverly detected that he owed some of the astonishing Hebrew words in his _Jocoseria_ to a little read edition of the Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela. Very bad Hebrew it is, but its author was not Browning but Baratier (see _Jewish Chronicle_, April 25, 1890). On the other hand, Dr. Joseph Jacobs records in the _Jewish Quarterly Review_ for April, 1890, an incident which shows that the poet was “shaky” in his use of Hebrew names. One of Browning’s most important “Jewish” poems was his _Johanan Hakkadosh_, Johanan the Holy. Dr. Jacobs tells us that the author was about to call this worthy “Hakkadosh Johanan.” But “through a common friend I pointed out the error to the poet, and the adjective was put in its proper position.” Another misconception of epithets will be noted below.