Readers of _Daniel Deronda_ may remember that, in his search among the Jews of London for some one who could throw light on the sad story of Mirah, the hero of the novel was attracted one day to a second-hand book-shop, where his eye fell on "that wonderful bit of autobiography--the life of the Polish Jew, Solomon Maimon." There are few men so remarkable as Maimon who have met with so little recognition in English literature. Milman, in his _History of the Jews_, refers once[1] to the autobiography as "a curious and rare book," but apparently he knew it only from some quotations in Franck's _La Cabbale_. Among English metaphysical writers the only one who seems to have studied the speculations of Maimon is Dr. Hodgson.[2] Even the new edition of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ gives no place to Maimon among its biographies. And yet he is a prominent figure among the metaphysicians of the Kantian period. Kuno Fischer, in his _Geschichte der Neueren Philosophie_,[3] devotes a whole chapter to the life of Maimon, while the contemporary critics of Kant are dismissed with little or no biographical notice. Fischer's sketch is just sufficient to whet curiosity for fuller details; but, amid the dearth of rare literature in Colonial libraries, I certainly never expected to come, in a Canadian town, upon "a curious and rare book" of last century, which was known even to the learned Milman only through some quotations from a French author. One day, however, in Toronto, in order to while away an unoccupied hour, I was glancing, like Daniel Deronda, over the shelves of a second-hand bookseller, when I was attracted by a small volume, in a good state of preservation, with "S. Maimon's Lebensgeschichte" on the back; and on taking it down I found it to be the veritable autobiography which I had been curious to see.