invective, directed against the practitioners rather than the science of
medicine, is not more curious as coming from a medical man, than are the
attacks on women perpetrated by some Jewish poets (Zabara among them), who
themselves amply experienced, in their own and their community's life, the
tender and beautiful relations that subsist between Jewish mother and son,
Jewish wife and husband.

The life of Joseph ben Meir Zabara was not happy. He left Barcelona in
search of learning and comfort. He found the former, but the latter eluded
him. It is hard to say from the "Book of Delight" whether he was a
woman-hater, or not. On the one hand, he says many pretty things about
women. The moral of the first section of the romance is: Put your trust in
women; and the moral of the second section of the poem is: A good woman is
the best part of man. But, though this is so, Zabara does undoubtedly quote
a large number of stories full of point and sting, stories that tell of
women's wickedness and infidelity, of their weakness of intellect and
fickleness of will. His philogynist tags hardly compensate for his
misogynist satires. He runs with the hare, but hunts energetically with the
hounds.

It is this characteristic of Zabara's method that makes it open to doubt,
whether the additional stories referred to as printed with the
Constantinople edition did really emanate from our author's pen. These
additions are sharply misogynist; the poet does not even attempt to blunt
their point. They include "The Widow's Vow" (the widow, protesting undying
constancy to her first love, eagerly weds another) and "Woman's
Contentions." In the latter, a wicked woman is denounced with the wildest
invective. She has demoniac traits; her touch is fatal. A condemned
criminal is offered his life if he will wed a wicked woman. "O King," he
cried, "slay me; for rather would I die once, than suffer many deaths every