which gives the soul its bent, tries it, and turns it forth
a cup for the Master's lips, sufficiently impressed.

"So take and use Thy work!
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same."

The following account of Rabbi Ben Ezra, I take from
Dr. F. J. Furnivall's `Bibliography of Rober Browning'
(`Browning Soc. Papers', Part II., p. 162):--

"Rabbi Ben Ezra, or Ibn Ezra, was a learned Jew, 1092-1167 A.D.
Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, whom he is said to have visited in Egypt,
were two of the four great Philosophers or Lights of the Jews
in the Middle Ages. Ibn Ezra was born at Toledo in Spain,
about 1092 or 1093 A.D., or in 1088 according to Graetz,
`Geschichte der Juden', vi. 198. He was poor, but studied hard,
composed poems wherewith to `Adorn my own, my Hebrew nation',
married, had a son Isaac (a poet too), travelled to Africa,
the Holy Land, Rome in 1140, Persia, India, Italy, France, England.
He wrote many treatises on Hebrew Grammar, astronomy, mathematics,
&c., commentaries on the books of the Bible, &c.--many of them
in Rome--and two pamphlets in England `for a certain Salomon
of London'. Joseph of Maudeville was one of his English pupils.
He died in 1167, at the age of 75, either in Kalahorra,
on the frontier of Navarre, or in Rome. His commentary on Isaiah
has been englished by M. Friedlaender, and published by
the Society of Hebrew Literature, Truebner, 1873.
From the Introduction to that book I take these details.
Ibn Ezra believed in a future life. In his commentary on Isaiah 55:3,
`AND YOUR SOUL SHALL LIVE', he says, `That is, your soul shall live
forever after the death of the body, or you will receive new life
through Messiah, when you will return to the Divine Law.'
See also on Isaiah 39:18. Of the potter's clay passage, Isaiah 29:16,
he has only a translation, `Shall man be esteemed as the potter's clay',
and no comment that could ever have given Browning a hint
for his use of the metaphor in his poem, even if he had ever seen
Ibn Ezra's commentary. See Rabbi Ben Ezra's fine `Song of Death'
in stanzas 12-20 of the grimly humorous Holy-Cross Day."

A Grammarian's Funeral.

--
* "Grammarian" mustn't be understood here in its restricted
modern sense; it means rather one devoted to learning, or
l