In the long centuries since Jerusalem fell there has been time and to spare for the green grass to wither into dusty weeds above those desolate dead whose ‘place knows them no more.’ That Halevi with his ‘poetic heart,’ which is a something different from the most metrical of poetic imaginations, cherished a closer ideal of patriotism than some of his brethren may not be denied. ‘Israel among the nations,’ he writes, ‘is as the heart among the limbs.’ He was the loyalest of Spanish subjects, yet Jerusalem was ever to him, in sober fact, ‘the city of the world.’ In these learned latter days, the tiniest crumbs of tradition have been so eagerly pounced upon by historians to analyse and argue over, that we are almost left in doubt whether the very A B C of our own history may still be writ in old English characters. The process which has bereft the bogy uncle of our youthful belief of his hump, and all but transformed the Bluebeard of the British throne into a model monarch, has not spared to set its puzzling impress on the few details which have come down to us concerning Halevi. Whether the love-poems, some eight hundred in number, were all written to his wife, is now questioned; whether 1086 or 1105 is the date of his birth, and if Toledo or Old Castille be his birthplace, is contested. Whether he came to a peaceful end, or was murdered by wandering Arabs, is left doubtful, since both the year of his death[7] and the manner of it are stated in different ways by different authorities, among whom it is hard to choose. Whether, indeed, he ever visited the Holy City, whether he beheld it with ‘actual sight or sight of faith,’ is greatly and gravely debated; but amidst all this bewildering dust of doubt that the researches of wise commentators have raised, the central fact of his life is left to us undisputed. The realities they meddle with, but the ideals, happily, they leave to us undimmed. All at least agree, that ‘she whom the Rabbi loved was a poor woe-begone darling, a moving picture of desolation, and her name was Jerusalem.’ There is a consensus of opinion among the critics that this often-quoted saying of Heine’s was only a poetical way of putting a literal and undoubted truth. On this subject, indeed, our poet has only to speak for himself. ‘Oh! city of the world, most chastely fair; In the far west, behold I sigh for thee. And in my yearning love I do bethink me, Of bygone ages; of thy ruined fane, Thy vanish’d splendour of a vanish’d day. Oh! had I eagles’ wings I’d fly to thee, And with my falling tears make moist thine earth. I long for thee; what though indeed thy kings Have passed for ever; that where once uprose Sweet balsam-trees the serpent makes his nest. O that I might embrace thy dust, the sod Were sweet as honey to my fond desire!’(1)