the wine-bibber. They laugh at him and with him. They turn again and again
to the subject, which shares the empire with women in the Jewish poets. Yet
we know well enough that the writers of these Hebrew Anacreontic lyrics
were sober men, who rarely indulged in overmuch strong drink. In short, the
medieval Jewish satirists were gifted with much of what a little time ago
was foolishly styled "the new humor." Joseph Zabara was a "new" humorist.
He has the quaint subtlety of the author of the "Ingoldsby Legends," and
revelled in the exaggeration of trifles that is the stock-in-trade of the
modern funny man. Woman plays the part with the former that the
mother-in-law played a generation ago with the latter. In Zabara, again,
there is a good deal of mere rudeness, which the author seems to mistake
for cutting repartee. This, I take it, is another characteristic of the
so-called new humor.

The probable explanation of the marked divergence between Zabara's stories
and the moral he draws from them lies, however, a little deeper. The
stories themselves are probably Indian in origin; hence they are marked by
the tone hostile to woman so characteristic of Indian folk-lore. On the
other hand, if Zabara himself was a friendly critic of woman, his own
moralizings in her favor are explained. This theory is not entirely upset
by the presence even of the additional stories, for these, too, are
translations, and Zabara cannot be held responsible for their contents. The
selection of good anecdotes was restricted in his day within very narrow
limits.

Yet Zabara's reading must have been extensive. He knew something of
astronomy, philosophy, the science of physiognomy, music, mathematics, and
physics, and a good deal of medicine. He was familiar with Arabian
collections of proverbs and tales, for he informs his readers several times
that he is drawing on Arabic sources. He knew the "Choice of Pearls," the