larity--were thinly veiled
representations of Disraeli's own contemporaries, who were easily
recognizable by the reading public. Take, for instance, the admirable
burlesque entitled _Ixion in Heaven_, where the author tells how
Ixion, king of Thessaly, having fallen into disrepute on earth, was
taken up into heaven by Jupiter and feasted by the gods. Here Jupiter
is really George the Fourth and Apollo is the poet Byron. The latter's
pose of gloomy misanthropy, as well as his habit of fasting to keep
from growing fat, are admirably satirized in the following dialogue:

"You eat nothing, Apollo," said Ceres.

"Nor drink," said Neptune.

"To eat, to drink, what is it but to live; and what is life but
death. . . . I refresh myself now only with soda-water and biscuits.
Ganymede, bring some."

Now this fondness for veiled allusion is distinctly a Hebrew
characteristic. The Arabs today have a saying, "as fond of a veiled
allusion as a Hebrew." This has always been a Hebrew trait. I suppose
no literature of any people consists so largely of allegory, in
proportion to its bulk, as does the Hebrew. In proof of this
assertion, one needs but to allude to the vogue in post-exilic Judaism
of the Apocalypse, in which contemporary history was presented in the
form of allegory, and to the Rabbinical fondness for the allegorical
interpretation of the Scriptures. So it would not be difficult to show
that not only these qualities I have mentioned, but all the qualities
that made Disraeli admired or feared were his by virtue of his Jewish
inheritance.

_Zangwill's Prophetic Spirit in "The War God"_

Israel Zangwill knows the Jews, not as George Eliot did, through a
process of philosophic induction, but at first hand, because he is a
Jew by birth and breeding. He, unlike Heine, has never tried to
conceal the fact that he is a Jew. In Israel Zangwill all the
tenderness and sympathy, all the tenacity, the suppleness and
adaptability, and it may be added, the baffling inconsistencies of his
race appear.

Inconsistent he certainly is. He has been an ardent Zionist, and in
his story "Transitional" (from _They That Walk in Darkness_) he seems
to hold that assimilation will never solve the Jewish problem; yet in
_The Melting Pot_ he obviously regards assimilation as the inevitable
and desirable end of Judaism.

In spite of his inconsistencies, Zangwill is one in whom the ancient
ideals of Israel live again. It is in the spirit of the