Like Santob, Süsskind was poor; like him, he denounced the rich, was proud and generous. With intrepid candor, he taught knights the meaning of true nobility--of the nobility of soul transcending nobility of birth--and of freedom of thought--freedom fettered by neither stone, nor steel, nor iron; and in the midst of their rioting and feasting, he ventured to put before them the solemn thought of death. His last production as a minnesinger was a prescription for a "virtue-electuary." Then he went to dwell among his brethren, whom, indeed, he had not deserted in the pride of his youth: "Why should I wander sadly, My harp within my hand, O'er mountain, hill, and valley? What praise do I command? Full well they know the singer Belongs to race accursed; Sweet _Minne_ doth no longer Reward me as at first. Be silent, then, my lyre, We sing 'fore lords in vain. I'll leave the minstrels' choir, And roam a Jew again. My staff and hat I'll grasp, then, And on my breast full low, By Jewish custom olden My grizzled beard shall grow. My days I'll pass in quiet,-- Those left to me on earth-- Nor sing for those who not yet Have learned a poet's worth." Thus spake the Jewish poet, and dropped his lyre into the stream--in song and in life, a worthy son of his time, the disciple of Walther von der Vogelweide, the friend of Wolfram von Eschenbach--disciple and friend of the first to give utterance, in German song, to the idea of the brotherhood of man. Centuries ago, he found the longed-for quiet in Franconia, but no wreath lies on his grave, no stone marks the wanderer's resting-place. His poems have found an abiding home in the memory of posterity, and in the circle of the German minnesingers the Jew Süsskind forms a distinct link. In a time when the idea of universal human brotherhood seems to be fading from the hearts of men, when they manifest a proneness to forget the share which, despite hatred and persecution, the Jew of every generation has had in German literature, in its romances of chivalry and its national epics, and in all the spiritual achievements of German genius, we may with just pride revive Süsskind's memory.--