Scott endeavours to engage the reader’s sympathy for his Jew by dwelling at great length on these causes of moral degradation: “except perhaps the flying fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such an unremitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period.” “The obstinacy and avarice of the Jews being thus in a measure placed in opposition to the fanaticism and tyranny of those under whom they lived, seemed to increase in proportion to the persecution with which they were visited.” “On these terms they lived; and their character, influenced accordingly, was watchful, suspicious, and timid--yet obstinate, uncomplying, and skilful in evading the dangers to which they were exposed.” Thus we are led to the conclusion that the Jew’s vices have grown, thanks to his treatment, his virtues in spite of it. For Isaac is not altogether impervious to gratitude and pity. He handsomely rewards the Christian who saves his life, and he himself saves a Christian’s life by receiving him into his house and allowing his daughter to doctor him. But, just as he is to the father, Scott is more than just to the daughter.[141] While Isaac is at the best a reformed Barabas or Shylock, Rebecca is the jewel of the story. The author exhausts his conventional colours in painting her beauty, and his vocabulary in singing the praises of her character. “Her form was exquisitely symmetrical,” “the brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed, aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearls, and the profusion of her sable tresses,” made up a figure which “might have compared with the proudest beauties of England.” She is indeed “the very Bride of the Canticles,” as Prince John remarks; “the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley,” as the Prior’s warmer imagination suggests. Immeasurably superior to Abigail in beauty and to Jessica in virtue, she equals Portia in wisdom--a perfect heroine of romance. Withal there is in Rebecca a power of quiet self-sacrifice that raises her almost to the level of a saint. Altogether as noble an example of womanhood as there is to be found in a literature rich in noble women. To sum up, in contrast to Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s creations, there is a great deal of the tragic, and little, if anything, of the comic in Scott’s Jew. It would, however, be an error to suppose that Scott was the spokesman of a unanimous public. His _Ivanhoe_ appeared in 1819. Four years later we find the writer who with Scott shared the applause of the age, giving an entirely different character to the Jew. The _Age of Bronze_, written in 1823, carries on the _Merchant of Venice_ tradition. To Byron the Jew is simply a symbol of relentless and unprincipled rapacity. Referring to the Royal Exchange, “the New Symplegades--the crushing stocks,”