MEMOIRS

OF

MOSES MENDELSOHN, &c.

MOSES MENDELSOHN was born in September, 1729, at Dessau in Germany, where his father was a transcriber of the Pentateuch,* and kept a Hebrew day-school; both very humble and precarious professions every where, but at that time and in that town in particular, scarcely adequate to the support of their follower. Yet he managed to maintain his son until he left the parental roof, and, even then, would not part with him till he could no longer withstand his incessant entreaties.

According to the then prevailing system of educating Jew-boys, young Mendelsohn was

Sopher.

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sent to the public seminary, where children were taught to prattle mechanically the Mishna and Gemarra concerning laws of betrothing, divorce, legal damages, sacerdotal functions, and other similar matters above their comprehension, before they were able to read and understand a single text of Scripture correctly. Mr. David Friedlander, Moses Mendelsohn's bosom friend and excellent pupil, has heard him relate, that when he was only seven years old, and of a very delicate constitution, his father would make him rise at three or four o'clock on winter mornings, and after giving him a cup of tea, would carry him wrapped in a roquelaure to the Jewish seminary. Mendelsohn however was not like other children; already at that tender age, the spirit of inquiry stirred within him, and he apprehended that he was not pursuing the proper course to arrive at solid knowledge. Finding that without knowing the Hebrew language gram matically, it would be out of his power to see his way clearly through any Commentary, it being impossible to verify the rules and directions laid down by the later commentators,

without knowing how to trace the outlines marked by the primitive teachers; he therefore resolved to make Scripture his principal study, and to use himself to write Hebrew with purity and elegance; an accomplishment which he seems not to have been long in acquiring; for before his tenth year, he had composed Hebrew verses, which however, when he arrived at a riperage, so little pleased his taste as a critic, that he would never after compose another line of original poetry in that language. "I have no genius for poetry," he would say. "My mind is more disposed to penetrate into the deep recesses of the understanding, than to roam in the lighter regions of fancy." Nevertheless his metrical translations of the Psalms, and other scriptural books, are splendid proofs of his eminent knowledge of the art of poetry, although he himself had but a mean opinion of his powers in this respect; witness the letter he wrote to the celebrated bard, Professor Rammler, in which he requested the professor to let the Psalms: undergo the ordeal of his examination before they were published. Thus industrious, Men

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delsohn soon made himself master of the text of the Talmud, under the public tuition of Rabbi David Frankel, then chief rabbi at Dessau; and of Scripture, without any teacher at all. And it has been asserted by a creditable person, who associated with him in his youth, at Berlin, that he knew nearly the whole of the Law and the Prophets by heart.

At that time Maimonides More nebochim, i.e. the Guide of the Perplexed, fell into his hands. To discover its transcendent beauties, and to strain every nerve in studying it, was one and the same thing with him. He meditated on it by day and by night, till he had dived into the depth of its sublime thoughts; and, to his last moments, he acknowledged the benefit he had derived from this work. It was the fountain at which he slacked, for the first time, his thirst after wisdom and knowledge; it was the pedestal of his future glory.

Though soul and body are wedded together through life, though they conjugally share all the good and evil dispensations in this world, yet there are times when they assume the appearance of mutual hostility. The listless

son of indolence and comfort gets portly and strong, at the expense of the vigour and elasticity of his mind. He, on the contrary, who delights in study, regardless of health, and defying infirmities, falls away and becomes enfeebled. The latter could not fail to be the case with Mendelsohn. Incessant search after knowledge, and intense study of Maimonides, at length impaired his health, and brought on a nervous disorder, the neglect of which produced deformity of the spine, and made him a valetudinarian for the remainder of his life. 66 Maimonides," he once remarked facetiously, "is the cause of my deformity, he spoiled my figure, and ruined my constitution: but still I doat on him, for many hours of dejection which he has converted into those of rapture. And if he have, unwittingly, weakened my body, has he not made ample atonement, by invigorating my soul with his sublime instructions ?"

Rabbi D. Frankel removing about this time to Berlin, where he had been elected Chief of the Congregation, Mendelsohn found himself bereft of his only friend and teacher, and