Page:Chapters on Jewish literature (IA chaptersonjewish00abra).pdf/188

184 piety of some of Immanuel’s prayers,—some of them to be found in the Machberoth themselves—proves that Immanuel’s licentiousness and levity were due, not to lack of reverence, but to the attempt to reconcile the ideals of Italian society of the period of the Renaissance with the ideals of Judaism.

Immanuel owed his rhymed prose to Charizi, but again he shows his devotion to two masters by writing Hebrew sonnets. The sonnet was new then to Italian verse, and Immanuel’s Hebrew specimens thus belong to the earliest sonnets written in any literature. It is, indeed, impossible to convey a just sense of the variety of subject and form in the Machberoth. “Serious and frivolous topics trip each other by the heels; all metrical forms, prayers, elegies, passages in unmetrical rhymes, all are mingled together.” The last chapter is, however, of a different character, and it has often been printed as a separate work. It