Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 29.djvu/23

1860.] are now no longer to be mapped out by the historian. Nor can we trace the course which any particular apologue took, as it found its way from land to land; too often it acts per saltum in its prOgress, and its intermediate history is concealed betWeen its two appearances in two diﬁ'erent epochs and c0untries. The stream rises to the sur- face in the far East and the far West, but its main current runs underground.

The ﬁrst instance which I shall oﬁ‘er is one too well known to be dwelt upon at length, but it is one too remarkable to be wholly omit— ted in the present sketch,—I refer to the story of Abraham and the Fireworshipper, which Jeremy Taylor subjoined as a colophon to his Liberty of prophesying,* expressly adding that he found it “in old Jewish books.” I am not aware, however, that it has ever yet been traced to the Rabbinical writings, and its spirit of toleration is wide- ly diﬂ'erent from the usual bigotry of the Talmud; and Bishop Heber has very plausibly suggested that Jeremy Taylor’s memory deceived him and that he had really seen it as a quotation from Sédi’s Bostén. It is thus quoted by Gentius in his preface to a translation of a Hebrew History of the Jews published at Amsterdam in 1651 ; and it is singular that it was added to the second edition of the ‘ Liberty of Prophesying’ published in 1653—the ﬁrst, published six years be- fore, and therefore earlier than Gentius’ work, not containing any allusion to itil'

Still any one who has seen the voluminous stores of mediaaval Jewish writings, which ﬁll the shelves of the Bodleian Library, can- not but feel a lingering suspicion that Taylor in his omnivorous read- ing may have met with the story as he states,——and that it may yet be found by the Rabbinical student in some mediaeval Jewish book. Bishop Heber in his note remarks that a learned Jew, Mr. J. D’Alle- Inand, professes to have a strong impression 011 his mind that he has seen it in a Jewish commentary on Genesis xviii. 1. It is a favourite story in the East,—it Occurs in the Subhat ul Abrzir of Jami as well as the Bostén of Sédi,—-and it may very probably be found in Arabic, whence the Rabbis may have derived it as they derived the

it without acknowledgment.
 * It was here no doubt that Benjamin Franklin found it, though he borrowed

1' See Bishop Heber’e edition of Jeremy Taylor’s works, vol. i. note xx.