obtaining a coveted privilege, but for its own sake, became an
irresistible passion, and it was accompanied by an unquenchable desire
to disseminate knowledge among the masses, to make learning and wisdom
common property. The Hebrew language being the best vehicle for the
purpose, it was soon impressed into the service of Haskalah. The pioneer
Maskilim learned to handle it with ease and clearness that would do
credit to a modern writer in a much more developed European language.

From the middle of the fifteenth to the latter part of the eighteenth
century, Hebrew literature consisted, if a few scattered books on
philosophy, mostly translations from the Arabic, are excepted, mainly of
Talmudic disquisitions, written in the rabbinic dialect and in a
euphuistic style. Besides the great Maimuni, there were few able or
willing to write Hebrew "as she should be spoke." The early German
Maskilim, in trying to escape the Scylla of Rabbinism, fell victims to
the Charybdis of Germanism. They possessed originality neither of style
nor of sentiment, neither of rhyme nor of reason. Hebrew poetry was an
adaptation of current German poetry. The very best the period produced,
the _Mosaïde_ of Wessely, was influenced by and largely an imitation of
Klopstock and others. Like English classic poetry, it is pretty in form
but poor in spirit. The element of nationality, or distinctiveness, the
life-giving and soul-uplifting element in all poetry, as Delitzsch
justly maintains it to be, was lacking in the German Maskilim, anxious
for naturalization as they were. It was the Slavonic Maskilim who
mastered Hebrew in its purity, as it had not been mastered since the day
of Judah Halevi. In those days of transition the diligent student can
find, in germ, what was later to develop into the resplendent poetical
flowers produced by the Lebensohns, the Gordons, Dolitzky, Schapiro,
Mane, and Bialik.