to the Tossafists—did not blind him to its defects. “They try to force an elephant through the eye of a needle,” he sarcastically said of some of the French casuists. Nachmanides thus possessed some of the independence characteristic of the Spanish Jews. He also shared the poetic spirit of Spain, and his hymn for the Day of Atonement is one of the finest products of the new-Hebrew musc. The last stanzas run thus:
Thine is the love, O God, and thine the grace,
That holds the sinner in its mild embrace;
Thine the forgiveness, bridging o'er the space
’Twixt man’s works and the task set by the King.
Unheeding all my sins, I cling to thee!
I know that mercy shall thy footstool be:
Before I call, O do thou answer me.
For nothing dare I claim of thee, my King!
O thou, who makest guilt to disappear.
My help, my hope, my rock, I will not fear;
Though thou the body hold in dungeon drear,
The soul has found the palace of the King!
Everything that Nachmanides wrote is warm with tender love. He was an enthu-
