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The few words in which George Eliot dismisses the book in her novel would hardly lead one to gather how carefully and conscientiously she had read the volume, which has since been translated into English by Dr. J. Clark Murray. She, of course, bought and read the original German. The book is Solomon Maimon's Autobiography, a fascinating piece of self-revelation and of history.
Mendelssohn's philosophy, if he had an original system, has long since passed into oblivion; Maimon's will be studied as long as Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Kant are in vogue.
Over and above this, he is the prototype of his unfortunate countrymen during the days of transition. He embodied the aspiration, courage, and disappointments of them all, and if, as Carlyle said, "the history of the world is the history of its great men," Maimon's life should be studied by all interested in the Kulturkampf of the Russo-Polish and of the German Jews in the eighteenth century.
Kant continued to be the favorite guide of Maimon's countrymen, and in their love for him they interpreted the initials of his name to mean "For my soul panteth after thee." But more efficacious than all other agencies was Mendelssohn's German translation of the Bible, and the Biur commentary published therewith.
This is his first meeting with Deronda, who, after an intensely dramatic interval, "paid his half-crown and carried off his 'Salomon Maimon's Lebensgeschichte' with a mere 'Good Morning." Milton's transliterations are printed in several editions of his poems; the version used in this book is that given in D. Masson's "Poetical Works of Milton," in, pp. 5-11.
And this, exaggerated though it may be, must be seen to contain a kernel of the truth, when we recall that among Maimon's intimate friends was the rabbi of Kletzk, Lithuania; that in the humble dwelling of his father there were works on historical, astronomical, and philosophical subjects; that the chief rabbi of a neighboring town, Rabbi Samson of Slonim, who, according to Fünn, "had in his youth lived for a while in Germany, learned the German language there, and made himself acquainted in some measure with the sciences," continued his study of the sciences, and soon collected a fair library of German books.
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