Among the most distinguished of the contributors to _Ha-Meassef_ is the second writer acclaimed poet by popular consent. David Franco Mendes (1713-1792) was born at Amsterdam, of a family escaped from the Inquisition. Like most Jews of Spanish origin, his family clung to the Spanish language. He was the friend and disciple, and likewise the imitator, of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto. What was true of Eastern Europe, that the Hebrew language prevailed in the ghetto, and had to be resorted to by all who would reach the Jewish masses, did not apply to the countries of the Romance languages. Here Hebrew had little by little been supplanted by the vernacular. Mendes, who paid veritable worship to Hebrew literature, was distressed to see the object of his devotion scorned by his co-religionists and the productions of the classic age of France preferred to it. In the preface to his tragedy, "Athaliah's Recompense" (_Gemul Athaliah_, Amsterdam, 1770), he set himself the task of demonstrating the superiority of the sacred language to the profane languages. Yet this very tragedy, in spite of its author's protestations, is nothing more than a _rifacimento_ of Racine's drama, and rather infelicitous at that, though it must be admitted that Mendes' style is of classic purity, and some of his scenes are in a measure characterized by vivacity of action. His other drama, "Judith", also published at Amsterdam, has no greater merit than "Athaliah's Recompense." Besides these dramas, Mendes wrote several biographical sketches of the learned men of the Middle Ages for _Ha-Meassef_. It were far from the truth to say that Mendes succeeded in rivalling the French and Italian authors whom he set up as models for himself. Nevertheless he was endorsed and admired by the literary men of his time as the heir of Luzzatto. * * * * * An enumeration of all the writers and all the scholars who, directly or indirectly, contributed to the work of _Ha-Meassef_, would be wearisome. Only those who are distinguished by some degree of originality will be set down by name. Rabbi Solomon Pappenheim (1776-1814), of Breslau, was the author of a sentimental elegy, _Arba' Kosot_ ("The Four Cups", Berlin, 1790). The poem, inspired by Young's "Night Thoughts," is remarkable for its personal note. In his plaints recalling Job's, this Hebrew Werther mourns the loss, not of his mistress--that would not have been in consonance with the spirit of the ghetto--but of his wife and his three children. The elegy came near being a popular poem. Its vapid sentimentality and its affected and exaggerated style were to exercise a baneful influence upon the following generations. It is the tribute paid by Hebrew literature to the diseased spirit of the age. Pappenheim wrote, besides, on Hebrew philology. His work, _Yeri'ot Shelomoh_ ("The Curtains of Solomon"), is an important contribution to the subject.