spite the examples set by Satanov and
Levin, Hebrew was stamped with the hallmark of medievalism. Like the
Spanish entertainment in Dryden's _Mock Astrologer_, at which everything
at the table tasted of nothing but red pepper, so the literature of that
day was dominated by the style and spirit of the Talmud and saturated
with its subtleties. Astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, and poetry
swarmed with puns, alliterations, pedantic allusions; they were
overladen with irrelevant notes and interwoven with quaint and strained
interpretations. Guenzburg was the first, with the exception of Erter
perhaps, to try to remedy the evil. "Every writer," he maintained,
"should guard himself against the fastidiousness or stiffness which
results from pedantry, and take great pains not only with the content of
his thoughts, but with the language in which these thoughts are
couched." Simplicity, perspicuity, and conciseness, these he taught by
precept and example, and though he was accused of "Germanizing" the
Hebrew language, he persisted in his labor until he attained the
foremost rank among the neo-Hebraic litterateurs.

In Guenzburg we find the artistic temperament developed to a degree rare
among Hebraists of even more recent years. He wrote only in moments of
inspiration. At times he passed weeks and months without penning a line,
but when once aroused he wrote unceasingly until he finished what he had
begun. He was careful in the choice of his words, careful in the choice
of his books, and would recommend nothing but the best. "I may not have
genius enough," he would say, "to distinguish between better and best,
but I do not lack common sense, to differentiate tares from weeds."
Above all, he possessed a sense of honor, the greatest stimulus, as he
maintained, to noble endeavors. "For as marriage is necessary to
perpetuate the race, and food to sustain the individual, so is honor to
the existence of the superior man."

Of the fifty years of his active life more than one-half was spent in
literary labor. His books obtained a wide circulation, and, though they
were rather expensive, became rare soon after their publication. Yet,
strange to say, this eminent Hebraist seldom, if ever, lauds the
beauties of the "daughter of Eber" (Hebrew) like his fellow-Maskilim
since the days of the Meassefim, nor does he even think it incumbent on
a Jew to be conversant with it.

Three periods have passed over me--he writes to a friend--since