The profoundest influence on the formation of the Neo-Hebraic style must be ascribed to two other works by the same author, _Kiriai Sefer_, [1] an epistolary manual containing specimens of personal, commercial, and other forms of correspondence (Vilna, 1835, and many later editions), and _Debir_, [2] a miscellaneous collection of essays, consisting for the most part of translations and compilations (Vilna, 1844). Ginzburg's premature death in 1846 was mourned by the Vilna Maskilim as the loss of a leader in the struggle for the Neo-Hebraic renaissance, and they gave expression to these sentiments in verse and prose. Ginzburg's autobiography _(Abi-'ezer,_ 1863) and his letters _(Debir,_ Vol. II., 1861) portray the milieu in which our author grew up and developed. [Footnote 1: See next note.] [Footnote 2: Both titles are derived from the message in Josh. 15. 15, according to which _Debir_, a city in the territory of the tribe of Judah, was originally called _Kiriat Sefer_, "Book City."] Abraham Baer Lebensohn, [1] a native of Vilna, awakened the dormant Hebrew lyre by the sonorous rhymes of his "Songs in the Sacred Tongue" (_Shire Sefat Kodesh_, Vol. I., Leipsic, 1842). In this volume solemn odes celebrating events of all kinds alternate with lyrical poems of a philosophical content. The unaccustomed ear of the Jew of that period was struck by these powerful sounds of rhymed biblical speech which exhibited greater elegance and harmony than the Mosaid of Wessely, the Jewish Klopstock. [2] His compositions, which are marked by thought rather than by feeling, suited to perfection the taste of the contemporary Jewish reader, who was ever on the lookout for "intellectuality," even where poetry was concerned. Philosophic and moralizing lyrics are a characteristic feature of Lebensohn's pen. The general human sorrow, common to all individuals, stirs him more deeply than national grief. His only composition of a nationalistic character, "The Wailing of the Daughter of Judah," seems strangely out of harmony with the accompanying odes which celebrate the coronation of Nicholas I. and similar patriotic occasions, although the "Wailing" is shrewdly prefaced by a note, evidently meant for the censor, to the effect that the poem refers to the Middle Ages. At any rate, the principal merit of the "Songs in the Sacred Tongue" is not to be sought in their poetry but rather in their style, for it was this style which became the basis of Neo-Hebraic poetic diction, perfected more and more by the poets of the succeeding generations. [Footnote 1: He assumed the pen-name "Adam," the initials of Abraham Dob (Hebrew equivalent for Baer) Mikhailishker (from the town of Mikhailishok, in the government of Vilna, where he resided for a number of years). See later, p. 226.]