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ideas of mortality and immortality, of finite and infinite, must challenge the ingenuity of the poet and urge him to descend into the deepest depths, and to clothe the history of the Universe and of nations with the imaginative enchantment of poetry.' But much of what modern authors have attributed to the Ahasuerus figure is not suited to its nature. Goethe had so much historical sense that he recognised the primitive character of the Ahasuerus figure, and wished to retain it, although in many variations. Prost, on the basis of careful research of some material left by Goethe, comes to the conclusion that 'For Goethe, the legend belonged to the region of religion and church, and revolved round the ideas of cursing, repentance, perdition, redemption, round the contrast between Judaism and Christianity' (p. 16). In later times other minds are not to seek which preserve the religious and historical point of view which was formerly comprised in the idea of the Wandering Jew.

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To this fourth group of modern authors who have carefully examined the religious origin of the Ahasuerus idea belongs Wilhelm Hauff. He writes in his Memoiren des Satan, The legend contains a deep moral, for the most abandoned of men is evidently he who vents his sorrow over his disappointed hopes on him who raised those hopes.' Historical truth is surely disregarded here, if it is meant that Jesus roused expectations of political and material wellbeing. Many of His contemporaries cherished such expectations, however much Jesus demonstrated the spiritual character of the true salvation of men which His real pioneer in the history of religion had already pointed out.

Schubart, in his well-known poem, Der ewige Jude (1783), has treated the Ahasuerus figure from the correct religious and historical point of view. The accuracy of his representation is not to be questioned because he throws his Ahasuerus from Mount Carmel into the sea, and causes him to be put to rest by an angel. For he is only to be regarded as a sleeper who is to be wrapped in unconsciousness until the Day of Judgment.

Among the later authors who have treated Ahasuerus from the correct historical standpoint we may note two, the French author Eugène Sue and the German author Gustav Renner.

The strong contrast between the indescribable suffering of Jesus and the cruel pitilessness practised by Ahasuerus has often of late been the point in his career on which men's judgment of Ahasuerus rests. Eugène Sue brings this out in his voluminous novel, Le Juif errant, and attempts to explain his conduct. His idea is that on a certain day the bearer of the cross went past the house of Ahasuerus when he was sitting at his work, filled with anxiety and hatred because, notwithstanding the hardest toil on his part, he could not keep bitter want from his family. Suffering himself, he refused pity to the Hempel'sche edition, p. 59.

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Sufferer. Such an explanation is unsatisfying. For the two cases of suffering cannot be compared either in kind or measure. The unpleasant taste left by the driving away of the bearer of the cross, who sets down His load for a moment, cannot possibly be removed in that way.

Gustav Renner has recently shown a specially acute feeling for the delicate contrast between the outward striving on the one side and the inward need on the other, which forms the main point of Christ's life-work. He puts it forward in his striking poem, Ahasver (1902), admirable for its skilful form, and even more for its choice imagery. He rightly takes the self-denial of Jesus, who turns aside His eyes from earthly splendour, and draws back His hand from worldly power, as the central point of his production. In those traits of the Master of masters he found the typical guidance for the most valuable achievement of the Man, and therefore announces as the loftiest standard for the Day of Judgment:

Only he who has forsaken himself
Will find himself for ever;

He whom no bond fetters,

He will be bound for ever.

Only he who conquers himself
Will be freed from his own will:
He has conquered the world
And it is his.

And, as Renner's Ahasver acknowledges at last :

What offered me hope vanished like froth,
Death became life, and life death;

so should I like, at the conclusion of this critical wandering on Ahasuerus's track, to express the two following reasons for my conviction, reasons which I have always found particularly consoling. On the one side, an historical and academic judgment on Christianity will not regard the verdict on the Ahasuerus figure as the last and only right verdict; and on the other, I should be greatly in error if I believed that the spirit of Judaism will always estimate the perfection to be hoped for in the future after this earthly fashion. Therefore the study of these ideas about Ahasuerus has always inclined me to think that a reconciling influence may lie in the Ahasuerus figure itself.

EDUARD KÖNIG.

REVIEWERS AND REVIEWED:
THE NEW CULTURE

WHEN, after three years of arduous labour and research, Mr. Peter Brown, a middle-aged gentleman of retired habits and scholarly tastes, published his biographical magnum opus, John Philips: the Cider Poet and his Age, he awaited its reception by the critical Press with the usual emotions of his kind. Why he should have selected for resuscitation the seventeenth-century bard of bibulous memory (or of bibulous suggestion, for the author of the effusion entitled Cyder seems to have been reasonably sober for his time, though much addicted to tobacco) cannot easily be understood; but he doubtless obeyed some mysterious mandate of the Zeitgeist. It is enough to say that the volume, whose appearance had been timed with psychological nicety by his publishers, came into his hands a thing of beauty and joy, of copious margins and enviable binding, and of definite and irreducible price-to be exact, 13s. 4d. net. Mention should also be made of the illustrations: every procurable likeness of the poet, his family, friends and connections, and every extant title-page of his works, had been reproduced by the best modern methods; while the resources of photography had been drained in supplying views of the places upon which he may be said to have impinged in the course of his short and harmless career. It was, in brief, a plum for the connoisseur in fine books; but what chiefly gratified him was its revelation of the unsuspected charms of his own literary style. What had seemed weak and turgid in manuscript, and at the best mediocre in proof, shone forth in the finished page a marvel of concisely brilliant statement and happily balanced phrase; and he perceived, with tremors of pleasure in his quiet and somewhat sensitive soul, that he was indeed a Classic, though a modest one.

Another cause for self-gratulation was the fact that his lines had not fallen in the age of the truculent reviewer, of the bludgeon, pickaxe, and crowbar, so to speak. On the contrary, he believed the critics of his time to be an erudite and discerning body of men, ready to praise, eager to detect merit in form or matter, and especially anxious to welcome a stylist of his peculiar and delicate powers. To reassure

himself, however (for he lived in the depths of the country, and his recent immersion in cider had somewhat withdrawn him from current affairs), he wrote to his old college friend Gray, who was himself an author and journalist in the British capital.

His answer was in every respect satisfactory.

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The reviewer of to-day [said his friend] is, as you surmise, a totally different being from the slaughterous animal of the past, and is, indeed, if I may use the language of one of my brothers of the pen, a God-fearing man of letters,' more anxious to discover good than to expose evil in the works submitted to his judgment. Many of them, like myself, are authors as well as critics; and the desire to do unto others as they would themselves be done by, is ever in their minds. They are, moreover, keenly sensitive to literary form, avid for bright and original ideas, and on the pounce, so to say, for felicities of diction. Therefore you may feel confident, if your work possesses the qualities foreshadowed by your early efforts when we were together at St. Swithin's, that they will be recognised and proclaimed. As an intermediary between the author and his future readers (and purchasers) the modern review, indeed, leaves nothing to be desired. Revealing by deft selection aided by judicious comment the exact nature of the book, whetting but not satisfying the peruser's appetite, and covertly suggesting the vaster stores from which its samples have been culled, its influence on the author's reputation and pocket cannot be overestimated. That the Press has, in late years, undergone a certain democratising process, you are perhaps aware; and the signed critique has doubtless penetrated even to your bucolic solitudes; but if you should have the luck to be personally conducted in this way by one of our younger lions, your fame and fortune would be secured.

Yes, my dear Brown [the letter concluded], you may dismiss all concern about your treatment by the Press. The old self-seeking, self-advertising reviewer, who made himself famous or infamous at the author's expense, is as dead as the knights of the cudgel and slime-pot who killed John Keats and besmeared Coventry Patmore. We have changed all that, and a good many things besides; but perhaps the greatest innovation of the age is the new creative criticism. The old critic was merely an artizan: the new critic is an artist. You give him your book-put it in the slot as it were-and he does all the rest; he creates your atmosphere, he creates your public, and he creates you.

Mr. Brown smiled. He was, of course, gratified at the prospect held out before him; but a vivid recollection of his friend's somewhat ebullient temperament in his youth caused him to accept his assertions with several spoonfuls of salt. The millennium can hardly have come yet, even in journalism,' he said. But we shall see,' he added,

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and proceeded to engage the services of a well-known agency for supplying authors with the unbiased opinions of their fellow-scribes upon themselves and their literary wares. Wishing, however, to see the relative prominence given to his work as compared with that of his more noted rivals, he stipulated that the different papers should be sent him uncut, enclosing larger fees for the purpose. Then, leaving his cause to his self-appointed champions, he resumed the duties of a country landowner and justice of the peace, with a placid though expectant mind.

The signal that, for the first time in his life, he had left the by-lane

of anonymity for the high-road of signed publication, was conveyed to him by a copy of The Proletarian, which he found on his library table after one of his judicial jaunts. For a moment the dread of seeing his name in the cold malignity of print stayed his hand; then, bracing himself for the ordeal, he burst open the wrapper. It was his first contact with journals of the kind; and his eye wandered in bewilderment over vague and misty photographs of men and women-admirals and actresses, cabinet ministers, newly engaged or wedded couples, and lately cured victims of gout or influenza-until the object of his quest was revealed. On the first page apparently that could be spared from the requirements of news and other information (chopped into small mouthfuls as if for infant consumption) he beheld a whole column headed 'Cider.' But the discovery was attended with a shock; for, under the double-depth caption and in equally heavy type, were the words, 'By Ben Bonsor'! A momentary conviction that, all unknown to him, another person had been engaged on his task, and had here forestalled him, took possession of his mind; but closer scrutiny discovered a small, badly blurred line between the heading and the text, announcing 'The Cider Poet and his Age. By P. Brown. Gabbitas & Groves. 13s. 4d. net.' Angry though he was at the optical deception, he began to read with eagerness. At the outset he was relieved to find that the subject was entirely congenial to Mr. Bonsor's mind; it seemed, indeed, to affect him much as the beverage itself might have done. He waxed facetious, as if the whole thing were a joke; he drew pictures of West Country apple-orchards, with bands of idyllic youths and maidens gathering the ruddy fruit to the accompaniment of laughter, song, and an occasional dance; and in describing the operations of extracting the precious juice, he positively smacked his lips! It was not until half-way down the column that the Cider Poet himself made his entry; and here the fact that his father and grandfather were both ecclesiastical dignitaries called forth a long diversion on the historical connection between the Church and the public-house. After this the poet's history was resumed, and Mr. Brown experienced another shock of surprise at the writer's familiarity with the theme; he seemed to have lived with the Christ Church student and his museful outpourings from his earliest infancy. Every schoolboy knows' was in effect his comment on the painfully acquired and carefully presented information which had cost Mr. Brown three of the most laborious years of his life. He quoted jauntily from the poet's verse, but never from Mr. Brown himself, although freely paraphrasing his most acute remarks; and at the end his hilarity again overcame him.

It is refreshing, in this dry and thirsty weather [he wrote], to stumble on a subject at once so moist and so exhilarating as cider. We have to thank Mr. Blenkinsop-no, Mr. Brown (we beg his pardon, we have just reviewed Blenkinsop on Bees)—for enabling us to bring this cooling beverage before the British

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