Mr. Montenero spoke English with a foreign accent, and something of a foreign idiom; but his ideas and feelings forced their way regardless of grammatical precision, and I thought his foreign accent agreeable. To an Englishman, what accent that conveys the praise of Shakspeare can fail to be agreeable? The most certain method by which a foreigner an introduce himself at once to the good-will and good opinion of an Englishman, is by thus doing homage to this national object of idolatry. I perceived that Mr. Montenero’s was not a mere compliment--he spoke with real feeling. “In this instance,” resumed he, “we poor Jews have felt your Shakspeare’s power to our cost--too severely, and, considering all the circumstances, rather unjustly, you are aware.” “_Considering all the circumstances_,” I did not precisely understand; but I endeavoured, as well as I could, to make some general apology for Shakspeare’s severity, by adverting to the time when he wrote, and the prejudices which then prevailed. “True,” said he; “and as a dramatic poet, it was his business, I acknowledge, to take advantage of the popular prejudice as a _power_--as a means of dramatic pathos and effect; yet you will acknowledge that we Jews must feel it peculiarly hard, that the truth of the story on which the poet founded his plot should have been completely sacrificed to fiction, so that the characters were not only misrepresented, but reversed.” I did not know to what Mr. Montenero meant to allude: however, I endeavoured to pass it off with a slight bow of general acquiescence, and the hundred-times-quoted remark, that poets always succeed better in fiction than in truth. Mr. Montenero had quick penetration--he saw my evasion, and would not let me off so easily. He explained. “In the _true_ story, [Footnote: See Stevens’ Life of Sixtus V., and Malone’s Shakspeare.] from which Shakspeare took the plot of the Merchant of Venice, it was a Christian who acted the part of the Jew, and the Jew that of the Christian; it was a Christian who insisted upon having the pound of flesh from next the Jew’s heart. But,” as Mr. Montenero repeated, “Shakspeare was right, as a dramatic poet, in reversing the characters.” Seeing me struck, and a little confounded, by this statement, and even by his candour, Mr. Montenero said, that perhaps his was only the Jewish version of the story, and he quickly went on to another subject, one far more agreeable to me--to Berenice. He hoped that I did not suspect her of affectation from any thing that had passed; he was aware, little as he knew of fine ladies, that they sometimes were pleased to make themselves noticed, perhaps rather troublesome, by the display of their sensibility; but he assured me that his Berenice was not of this sort.