Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/221

 NOTES BY THE WAY. 151

of Hebrew Printing.' He stated that in 1467 the first book was printed in Italy, and within the next few years at least a hundred books were known to have been printed by Jews, some seventy of them being now preserved in the British Museum. There were thirteen cities in Europe in which the first books printed of any kind were produced by Jewish typographers, and it was established that before 1540 there were 530 books printed in Hebrew characters by Jewish printers. A very notable volume was the polyglot Psalter of Genoa, which contained an account of the achievements of Columbus.

It has been left to America to gather hi to the compass of one T _.' The work all that concerns the Hebrew people. The Funk & Wagnalls Company of New York have now completed the publication of the ' Jewish Encyclopaedia,' edited by Isidore Singer, Ph.D. This work gives a history of the Hebrews from legendary times down to the present.

The Jews and their history have hitherto occupied but a small Rebecca in place in our general literature, and the Jew, with three notable 'Ivanhoe.' exceptions, has found little place in fiction. Sir Walter Scott makes Rebecca, the beautiful daughter of Isaac of York, one of the most important figures in ' Ivanhoe,' and represents her as singing that glorious hymn

When Israel, of the Lord beloved, Out of the land of bondage came, Her father's God before her moved,

An awful guide, in smoke and flame. By day along the astonished lands

The cloudy pillar glided slow ; By night, Arabia's crimson' d sands

Return' d the fiery column's glow.

Our harps we left by Babel's streams,

The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn ; No censer round our altar beams,

And mute our timbrel, trump, and horn. But thou hast said " The blood of goat,

The flesh of rams, I will not prize ; A contrite heart, an humble thought,

Are Mine accepted sacrifice."

The original of the heroine of ' Ivanhoe ' was, as Mr. Frank Warren Hackett of Washington pointed out in Notes and Queries on September 3rd, 1904, Rebecca Gratz, a Jewess of Philadelphia. He quoted from Anne Hollingsworth Wharton's ' Colonial Days and Dames ' (Philadelphia, Lippincott), 1895, in which the author recites the story of Washington Irving's visit to Abbotsford in 1817. Irving told Sir Walter of the charms of this Jewess :

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