What distinguished Hebrew poetry was not that element which it derived from the narrowing fetters of locality and epoch. Why is the Bible the most translatable book? Why has it been found the easiest of the great classics to re-express in the manifold tongues of man? Because it is so independent of the very qualities by which Herder sought to explain it! The poetry of Israel was “natural” and “national” in the sense that it corresponded to human nature, and was susceptible of interpretation in terms of every nationality. Over Herder’s tomb was inscribed the legend “Licht, Liebe, Leben.” Herder might have inscribed these or similar words over certain of the gems of Hebrew literature. “Light, love, life” are a truer characterization than “naiveness, religiosity, simplicity.” Graetz thought that, though Herder dreamed of the time when Jew and Gentile would understand and appreciate each other, he was ill-disposed to the Jews. He was, it is true, not one of those who fell under the spell of Moses Mendelssohn’s personality. He was disinclined to subject himself to the spell. When Mendelssohn sought Herder’s acquaintance, the latter received the proposal coldly. This was not necessarily due to unkindness. It seems to me that Herder, who much admired Lessing, was rather resentful of the close intimacy between the hero and the author of _Nathan the Wise_. Herder had no desire to form one of a _ménage à trois_. As Graetz adds, Mendelssohn and Herder did come closely together after Lessing’s death. Herder, in one of his essays, dated 1781, the very year in which Lessing passed away, pays Mendelssohn a pretty compliment, praising him as an exponent of Jewish ideals. Herder’s essay was prefixed to his “Anthology from Eastern Poets” (_Blumenlese aus morgenländische Dichtern_). Few of us remember that the word _Anthology_ corresponds exactly with _Blumenlese_; it means a “collection of flowers.” (Compare Graetz’s _Leket Shoshannim_.) Foremost among the floral graces of Herder’s Oriental garland are the famous selections made from the Talmud and Midrash. Here, as elsewhere, Herder was rather too inclined to treat the rabbinical legend and parable as “naive.” He was, moreover, a little patronizing to the Haggadists when he declared that “people laughed at what they did not understand”--referring to the supposed grotesqueness of some of the rabbinic modes of expression. But he was happier when he described vandals like Eisenmenger as men who “rough-handled the butterfly, and who, mangling the beauteous creature between their coarse fingers, wondered that all they found on their hands was a particle of dust.” No one has ever translated rabbinic parables so successfully as Herder. His very love for the unfamiliar stood him in good stead. He does not tell us whence he derived his knowledge of the originals. Probably it was in oral intercourse with Jews. Such a spelling of _Lilit_ as _Lilis_ looks as though he heard it pronounced by a German Jew.