The impress Guenzburg left upon Hebrew literature is of special importance.  Until his time, despite the examples set by Satanov and Levin, Hebrew was stamped with the hallmark of medievalism.  Like the Spanish entertainment in Dryden’s Mock Astrologer, at which everything at the table tasted of nothing but red pepper, so the literature of that day was dominated by the style and spirit of the Talmud and saturated with its subtleties.  Astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, and poetry swarmed with puns, alliterations, pedantic allusions; they were overladen with irrelevant notes and interwoven with quaint and strained interpretations.  Guenzburg was the first, with the exception of Erter perhaps, to try to remedy the evil.  “Every writer,” he maintained, “should guard himself against the fastidiousness or stiffness which results from pedantry, and take great pains not only with the content of his thoughts, but with the language in which these thoughts are couched.”  Simplicity, perspicuity, and conciseness, these he taught by precept and example, and though he was accused of “Germanizing” the Hebrew language, he persisted in his labor until he attained the foremost rank among the neo-Hebraic litterateurs.

In Guenzburg we find the artistic temperament developed to a degree rare among Hebraists of even more recent years.  He wrote only in moments of inspiration.  At times he passed weeks and months without penning a line, but when once aroused he wrote unceasingly until he finished what he had begun.  He was careful in the choice of his words, careful in the choice of his books, and would recommend nothing but the best.  “I may not have genius enough,” he would say, “to distinguish between better and best, but I do not lack common sense, to differentiate tares from weeds.”  Above all, he possessed a sense of honor, the greatest stimulus, as he maintained, to noble endeavors.  “For as marriage is necessary to perpetuate the race, and food to sustain the individual, so is honor to the existence of the superior man.”

Of the fifty years of his active life more than one-half was spent in literary labor.  His books obtained a wide circulation, and, though they were rather expensive, became rare soon after their publication.  Yet, strange to say, this eminent Hebraist seldom, if ever, lauds the beauties of the “daughter of Eber” (Hebrew) like his fellow-Maskilim since the days of the Meassefim, nor does he even think it incumbent on a Jew to be conversant with it.

Three periods have passed over me—­he writes to a friend—­since I dedicated myself to Hebrew.  As a youth I loved it as a Jewish lad loves his betrothed, not because he is enamored of her charms, but because his parents have chosen her for him; as I grew older, I continued to love it as a Jewish man loves his wife, not because of real affection, but because she is the only one he knows; now that I am old, I still love her, as an elderly Jew loves his helpmate:  he is aware