Chapter Jericho to Jew of J by Brewer's Readers Handbook

dramatist (1739). Joe Miller himself never uttered a jest in his life, and it is a lucus a non lucendo to father them on such a taciturn, commonplace dullard.

Jesus Christ and the Clay Bird. The Korân says, “O Jesus, son of Mary, remember…when thou didst create of clay the figure of a bird…and didst breathe thereon, and it became a bird!”—Ch. v.

N.B.—The allusion is to a legend that Jesus was playing with other children who amused themselves with making clay birds, but when the child Jesus breathed on the one He had made, it instantly received life and flew away.—Hone: Apocryphal New Testament (1820).

Jew (The), a comedy by R. Cumberland (1776), written to disabuse the public mind of unjust prejudices against a people who have been long “scattered and peeled.” The Jew is Sheva, who was rescued at Cadiz from an auto da fe by don Carlos, and from a howling London mob by the son of don Carlos, called Charles Ratcliffe. His whole life is spent in unostentatious benevolence, but his modesty is equal to his philanthropy. He gives £10,000 as a marriage portion to Ratcliffe’s sister, who marries Frederick Bertram, and he makes Charles the heir of all his property.

Shylock the Jew. Of C. Macklin’s acting Pope said—

This is the Jew
That Shakespeare drew.

Jew (The Wandering).

1. Of Greek tradition. Aristeas, a poet, who continued to appear and disappear alternately for above 400 years, and who visited all the mythical nations of the earth.

2. Of Jewish story. Tradition says that Cartaphilos, the door-keeper of the judgment-hall in the service of Pontius Pilate, struck our Lord as he led Him forth, saying “Get on! Faster, Jesus!” Whereupon the Man of Sorrows replied, “I am going; but tarry thou till I come [again].” This man afterwards became a Christian, and was baptized by Ananias under the name of Joseph. Every hundred years he falls into a trance, out of which he rises again at the age of 30.

3. In German legend, the Wandering Jew is associated with John Buttadæus, seen at Antwerp in the thirteenth century, again in the fifteenth, and again in the sixteenth centuries. His last appearance was in 1774, at Brussels.

(Leonard Doldius, of Nürnberg, in his Praxis Alchymiæ (1604), says tha t the Jew Ahasuerus is sometimes called “Buttadæus.”)

4. The French legend. The French call the Wandering Jew Isaac Lakedion or Laquedem. (See Mitternacht: Dissertatio in Johan., xxi. 10,)

5. Of Dr. Croly’s novel. The name given to the Wandering Jew by Dr. Croly is Salathiel Ben Sadi, who appeared and disappeared towards the close of the sixteenth century at Venice, in so sudden a manner as to attract the attention of all Europe.

6. It is said in legend that Gipsies are doomed to be everlasting wanderers, because they refused the Virgin and Child hospitality in their flight into Egypt.—Aventinus: Annalium Boiorum, libriseptem, vii. (1554).

N.B.—The earliest account of the Wandering Jew is in the Book of the Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Alban’s, copied and continued by Matthew Paris (1228). In 1242 Philip Mouskes, afterwards bishop of Tournay, wrote the “rhymed chronicle.”

Cartaphilos, we are told, was baptized by Ananias (who baptized Paul), and received the name of Joseph. (See Book of the Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans.)