_Die Juden_ is a short composition, even though it includes twenty-three scenes. Some of these scenes are very brief. The plot is quite simple. A baron and his daughter are saved by a traveller from robbers; the impression made by the rescuer is so great, that the baron is inclined to find in him a son-in-law. Then the traveller reveals the fact that he is a Jew. Baron and Jew part with mutual esteem. Dramatically, the play is not of much merit. The “Traveller” is not so much a person as a personification. He is the type of virtue, honor, magnanimity. He leaves one cold, not because, as Michaelis objected in 1754, he is impossibly, or at least improbably, perfect, but because he is crudely and mechanically drawn. Mendelssohn completely rebutted the criticism of Michaelis; but, none the less, the “Traveller” possesses little of that human, personal quality which makes “Nathan” so convincing and interesting. On the other hand, the baron is admirably painted. He is not a bigoted Jew-hater; he is simply animated by a conventional dislike of Jews. Lessing, even in his student years, was too good an artist to daub on his colors too glaringly. The importance of _Die Juden_ is to be found, as we have seen, in its anticipation of _Nathan der Weise_. Sometimes the identity of thought is strikingly close. In the fourth act of _Nathan_ occurs this dialogue: _Friar_: Nathan! Nathan! You are a Christian! By God, you are a Christian! There never was a better Christian! _Nathan_: We are of one mind! For that which makes me, in your eyes, a Christian, makes you, in my eyes, a Jew! Compare (as Niemeyer has done) the exchanges in _Die Juden_: _Baron_: How estimable would the Jews be if they were all like you! _Traveller_: And how admirable the Christians, if they all possessed your qualities! A Tsar is said to have repeated pretty much the baron’s speech to Sir Moses Montefiore. It is not recorded that the latter made the traveller’s reply. Edmund Burke, in one of his speeches on America, protested that it was impossible to draw up “an indictment against a whole people.” He forgot the frequency with which such indictments are drawn up against the Jews. Now if there was one thing that more than the rest roused Lessing’s anger, it was just this tarring of all Jews with one brush. One can conceive the glee with which Lessing wrote the passage in which the baron commits this very offence, unconscious of his peculiarly unfortunate _faux pas_, for he has no notion yet that the traveller is a Jew: _Baron_: It seems to me that the very faces of the Jews prejudice one against them. You can read in their eyes their maliciousness, deceit, perjury. Why do you turn away from me? _Traveller_: I see you are very learned in physiognomies--I am afraid, sir, that mine....