knees, yet without cease, and in the name of God, she slaughters
her victims. This world, when the Lord created it in a fit of
anger, He cast it far away from Him in wrath. Then Death threw
herself upon it, scattering terror everywhere. She holds this
world in her talons. Misery also precipitates herself upon it,
gnashing her teeth in beast-like rage. She clutches man like a
beast of prey, she torments him without reprieve...."

This posthumous collection of poems contains also love poems and Zionist
lamentations, all bearing the impress of the deep melancholy and the
sadness that characterized the last years of the poet's short life. A
cruel malady carried him off at the age of twenty-four, and the friends
of Hebrew poetry were left mourning in despair.

Romantic fiction in Hebrew, which the strait-laced life and the
austerity of the educated had rendered impossible up to this time, now
made its first appearance in the form of translations of modern
romances. They were received with acclaim by a well-disposed public
greedy for novelties. The creators of original romances were not long in
coming. The first master in the department, the father of Hebrew
romance, was Abraham Mapu (1808-1867).

Mapu was born at Slobodka, a suburb of Kowno, a sad town inhabited
almost entirely by Jews. The whole of the population vegetates there
amid the most deplorable conditions, economic and sanitary. The father
of Mapu was a poor, melancholy _Melammed_, a teacher of Hebrew and
the Talmud, simple in his outlook upon life, yet not without a certain
degree of education. He loved and cultivated knowledge as taught by the
Hebrew masters of the Middle Ages. Mapu's mother was gentle and sweet.
With resignation and fortitude she endured the physical suffering that