oetry, and to this familiarity a new department of Jewish literature
owed its rise and development. It is said that a Hebrew version of the
Arthurian cycle was made as early as the thirteenth century, and at the
end of the period we run across epic poems on Bible characters, composed
in the _Nibelungen_ metre, in imitation of old German legend lore and
national poetry.

If German Jews found heart for literary interests, it may be assumed as
a matter of course that Spanish and Provencal Jews participated in the
advancement of their respective national literatures and in Troubadour
poetry. In these countries, too, the new taste for popular literature,
especially in the form of fables, was made to serve moral ends. A Jew,
Berachya ben Natronai, was the precursor of Marie de France, the famous
French fabulist, and La Fontaine and Lessing are indebted to him for
some of their material. As in the case of Aristotelian philosophy and of
Greek and Arabic medical science, Jews assumed the role of mediators in
the transmission of fables. Indian fables reached their Arabic guise
either directly or by way of Persian and Greek; thence they passed into
Hebrew and Latin translations, and through these last forms became the
property of the European languages. For instance, the Hebrew translation
of the old Sanskrit fox fables was the one of greatest service in
literary evolution. The translator of the fox fables is credited also
with the translation of the romance of "The Seven Wise Masters," under
the title _Mishle Sandabar_. These two works gave the impetus to a great
series in Occidental literature, and it seems altogether probable that
Europe's first acquaintance with them dates from their Hebrew
translation.

In Arabic poetry, too, many a Jew deservedly attained to celebrity.
Abraham ibn Sahl won such renown that the Arabs, notorious for
parsimony, gave ten gold pieces for one of his songs. Other poets have
come down to us by name, and Joseph Ezobi, whom Reuchlin calls _Judaeorum
poeta dulcissimus_, went so far as to extol Arabic beyond Hebrew poetry.
He was the first to pronounce the dictum famous in Buffon's repetition:
"The style is the man himself." Provence, the land of song, produced
Kalonymos ben Kalonymos (Maestro Calo), known to his brethren in faith
not only as a poet, but also as a scholar, whose Hebrew translations
from the Arabic are of most important works on philosophy, medicine, and
mathematics. As Anatoli had work