s own history of the
Franco-Russian War of 1812, compiled from various sources, were, as far
as Russia is concerned, the first specimens of secular literature in
pure Hebrew, which boldly claimed their place side by side with rabbinic
and hasidic writings. In that juvenile stage of the Hebrew renaissance,
when the mere treatment of language and style was considered an
achievement, even the appearance of such elementary books was hailed as
epoch-making.

[Footnote 1: Zhmud, or Samogitia, is part of the present government of
Kovno. Compare Vol. I, p. 293, n. 1.]

The profoundest influence on the formation of the Neo-Hebraic style must
be ascribed to two other works by the same author, _Kiriai Sefer_, [1]
an epistolary manual containing specimens of personal, commercial, and
other forms of correspondence (Vilna, 1835, and many later editions),
and _Debir_, [2] a miscellaneous collection of essays, consisting for
the most part of translations and compilations (Vilna, 1844). Ginzburg's
premature death in 1846 was mourned by the Vilna Maskilim as the loss of
a leader in the struggle for the Neo-Hebraic renaissance, and they gave
expression to these sentiments in verse and prose. Ginzburg's
autobiography _(Abi-'ezer,_ 1863) and his letters _(Debir,_ Vol. II.,
1861) portray the milieu in which our author grew up and developed.

[Footnote 1: See next note.]

[Footnote 2: Both titles are derived from the message in Josh. 15. 15,
according to which _Debir_, a city in the territory of the tribe of
Judah, was originally called _Kiriat Sefer_, "Book City."]

Abraham Baer Lebensohn, [1] a native of Vilna, awakened the dormant
Hebrew lyre by the sonorous rhymes of his "Songs in the Sacred Tongue"
(_Shire Sefat Kodesh_, Vol. I., Leipsic, 1842). In this volume solemn
odes celebrating events of all kinds alternate with lyrical poems of a
philosophical content. The unaccustomed ear of the Jew of that period
was struck by these powerful sounds of rhymed biblical speech which
exhibited greater elegance and harmony than the Mosaid of Wessely, the
Jewish Klopstock. [2] His compositions, which are marked by thought
rather than by feeling, suited to perfection the taste of the
contemporary Jewish reader, who was ever on the lookout for
"intellectuality," even where poetry was concerned. Philosophic and
moralizing lyrics are a characteristic feature of Lebensohn's pen. The
general human sorrow, common to all individuals, stirs him more deepl