We must now make a great stride through the ages. Between the author of the Song of Songs and the next writer of inspired Hebrew love songs there stretches an interval of at least fourteen centuries. It is an oft-told story, how, with the destruction of the Temple, the Jewish desire for song temporarily ceased. The sorrow-laden heart could not sing of love. The disuse of a faculty leads to its loss; and so, with the cessation of the desire for song, the gift of singing became atrophied. But the decay was not quite complete. It is commonly assumed that post-Biblical Hebrew poetry revived for sacred ends; first hymns were written, then secular songs. But Dr. Brody has proved that this assumption is erroneous. In point of fact, the first Hebrew poetry after the Bible was secular not religious. We find in the pages of Talmud and Midrash relics and fragments of secular poetry, snatches of bridal songs, riddles, elegies, but less evidence of a religious poetry. True, when once the medieval burst of Hebrew melody established itself, the Hebrew hymns surpassed the secular Hebrew poems in originality and inspiration. But the secular verses, whether on ordinary subjects, or as addresses to famous men, and invocations on documents, at times far exceed the religious poems in range and number. And in many ways the secular poetry deserves very close attention. A language is not living when it is merely ecclesiastical. No one calls Sanskrit a living language because some Indian sects still pray in Sanskrit. But when Jewish poets took to using Hebrew again--if, indeed, they ever ceased to use it--as the language of daily life, as the medium for expressing their human emotions, then one can see that the sacred tongue was on the way to becoming once more what it is to-day in many parts of Palestine--the living tongue of men. It must not be thought that in the Middle Ages there were two classes of Hebrew poets: those who wrote hymns and those who wrote love songs. With the exception of Solomon ibn Gabirol--a big exception, I admit--the best love songs were written by the best hymn writers. Even Ibn Gabirol, who, so far as we know, wrote no love songs, composed other kinds of secular poetry. One of the favorite poetical forms of the Middle Ages consisted of metrical letters to friends--one may almost assert that the best Hebrew love poetry is of this type--epistles of affection between man and man, expressing a love passing the love of woman. Ibn Gabirol wrote such epistles, but the fact remains that we know of no love verses from his hand; perhaps this confirms the tradition that he was the victim of an unrequited affection.