luded from the
pleasures of love and the hope of posterity." This
device of representing Potiphar as being what Byron
styles "a neutral personage" was, of course, adopted by
Muslim traditionists and poets in order to "white-wash"
the frail Zulaykha.--There are extant many Persian and
Turkish poems on the "loves" of _Yusuf wa Zulaykha_,
most of them having a mystical signification, and that
by the celebrated Persian poet Jami is universally
considered as by far the best.

_Joseph and his Brethren._

Wonderful stories are related of Joseph and his brethren. Simeon, if we
may credit the Talmudists, must have been quite a Hercules in strength.
The Biblical narrative of Simeon's detention by his brother Joseph is
brief but most expressive: "And he turned himself about from them and
wept; and returned to them again, and communed with them, and took from
them Simeon, and bound him before their eyes."[69] The Talmudists
condescend more minutely regarding this interesting incident: When
Joseph ordered seventy valiant men to put Simeon in chains, they had no
sooner approached him than he roared so loud that all the seventy fell
down at his feet and broke their teeth! Joseph then said to his son
Manasseh: "Chain thou him"; whereupon Manasseh dealt Simeon a single
blow and immediately overpowered him; upon which Simeon exclaimed:
"Surely this was the blow of a kinsman!"--When Joseph sent Benjamin to
prison, Judah cried so loud that Chushim, the son of Dan, heard him in
Canaan and responded. Joseph feared for his life, for Judah was so
enraged that he wept blood. Some say that Judah wore five garments, one
over the other; but when he was angry his heart swelled so much that his
five garments burst open. Joseph cried so terribly that one of the
pillars of his house fell in and was changed into sand. Then Judah said:
"He is valiant, like one of us."

[69] Gen. xlii, 24.--It does not appear from the sacred
narrative why Joseph selected his brother Simeon as
hostage. Possibly Simeon was most eager for his death,
before he was cast into the dry well and then sold to
the Ishmaelites; and indeed both he and his brother Levi
seem to have been "a bad lot," judging from the dying
Jacob's description of them, Gen. xlix, 5-7.

_Jacob's Sorrow._

But like a gem, among a heap of rubbish is the touching little story