Abraham Bar Lebensohn (Adam ha-Kohen, 1794-1880), surnamed the "father
of poetry", was born at Wilna. He spent a sad childhood. Left motherless
early, he was deprived of the love and the care that are the only
consolations known to a child of the ghetto. At the age of three, he was
sent to the _Heder_, at seven he was a student of the Talmud, then
casuistry occupied his mind, and, finally, the Kabbalah. The last had
but feeble attractions for the future poet. His mental mould was
determined by his thorough study of the Bible and Hebrew grammar, which
was good form in Wilna as early as his day, and the works of Wessely,
for whom he always professed warm admiration, had a decided influence
upon his poetic bias.

In his first attempts at poetry, Lebensohn did not depart greatly from
the achievements of the many Rabbinical students whose favorite pastime
was to discuss the events of the day in Hebrew verse. An elegy to the
memory of a Rabbi, an ode celebrating the equivocal glory of a Polish
nobleman, and similar subjects, were the natural choice of the muse of
the era, and the early flights of our author were not different. There
was nothing in them to betray the future poet of merit. A little later
he took up the study of German, but his knowledge of the language was
never more than superficial. Haunted by the fame of Schiller, he devoted
himself to poetry, and imitated the German poets, or tried to imitate
them, for he never succeeded in grasping the true meaning of German
poetry, nor in understanding erotic literature. To the Rabbinical
student, with his puritanic spirit and austere manners, it was a
collocation of poetic figures of speech and symbolic expressions.

His life differed in no wise from that of the poor Jews of the ghetto.
Given in marriage early by his father, he suddenly found himself deep in
the bitter struggle for existence, before he had known the transport of