Nathan the Wise; a dramatic poem in five acts

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Nathan the Wise; a dramatic poem in five acts

INTRODUCTION

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born on the 22nd of January, 1729, eldest of ten sons of a pious and learned minister of Camenz in the Oberlausitz, who had two daughters also.  As a child Lessing delighted in books, and had knowledge beyond his years when he went to school, in Meissen, at the age of twelve.  As a school-boy he read much Greek and Latin that formed no part of the school course; read also the German poets of his time, wrote a “History of Ancient Mathematics,” and began a poem of his own on the “Plurality of Worlds.”

In 1746, at the age of seventeen, Lessing was sent to the University of Leipsic.  There he studied with energy, and was attracted strongly by the theatre.  His artistic interest in the drama caused him to be put on the free list of the theatre, in exchange for some translations of French pieces.  Then he produced, also for the Leipsic stage, many slight pieces of his own, and he had serious thought of turning actor, which excited alarm in the parsonage at Camenz and caused his recall home in January, 1747.  It was found, however, that although he could not be trained to follow his father’s profession, he had been studying to such good purpose, and developing, in purity of life, such worth of character, that after Easter he was sent back to Leipsic, with leave to transfer his studies from theology to medicine.

Lessing went back, continued to work hard, but still also gave all his leisure to the players.  For the debts of some of them he had incautiously become surety, and when the company removed to Vienna, there were left behind them unpaid debts for which young Lessing was answerable.  The creditors pressed, and Lessing moved to Wittenberg; but he fell ill, and was made so miserable by pressure for impossible payments, that he resolved to break off his studies, go to Berlin, and begin earning by his pen, his first earnings being for the satisfaction of these Leipsic creditors.  Lessing went first to Berlin to seek his fortune in December, 1748, when he was nineteen years old.  He was without money, without decent clothes, and with but one friend in Berlin, Mylius, who was then editing a small journal, the Rudigersche Zeitung.  Much correspondence brought him a little money from the overburdened home, and with addition of some small earning from translations, this enabled him to obtain a suit of clothes, in which he might venture to present himself to strangers in his search for fortune.  A new venture with Mylius, a quarterly record of the history of the theatre, was not successful; but having charge committed to him of the library part of Mylius’s journal, Lessing had an opportunity of showing his great critical power.  Gottsched, at Leipsic, was then leader of the war on behalf of classicism in German literature.  Lessing fought on the National side, and opposed also the beginning of a new French influence then rising, which was to have its chief apostle in Rousseau.

In 1752 Lessing went back to Wittenberg for another year, that he might complete the work for graduation; graduated in December of that year as Master of Arts, and then returned to his work in Berlin.  He worked industriously, not only as critic, but also in translation from the classics, from French, English, and Italian; and he was soon able to send help towards providing education for the youngest of the household of twelve children in the Camenz parsonage.  In 1753 he gave himself eight weeks of withdrawal from other work to write, in a garden-house at Potsdam, his tragedy of “Miss Sarah Sampson.”  It was produced with great success at Frankfort on the Oder, and Lessing’s ruling passion for dramatic literature became the stronger for this first experience of what he might be able to achieve.  In literature, Frederick the Great cared only for what was French.  A National drama, therefore, could not live in Berlin.  In the autumn of 1755, Lessing suddenly moved to Leipsic, where an actor whom he had befriended was establishing a theatre.  Here he was again abandoning himself to the cause of a National drama, when a rich young gentleman of Leipsic invited his companionship upon a tour in Europe.  Terms were settled, and they set out together.  They saw much of Holland, and were passing into England, when King Frederick’s attack on Saxony recalled the young Leipsiger, and caused breach of what had been a contract for a three years’ travelling companionship.  In May, 1758, Lessing, aged twenty-nine, returned to his old work in Berlin.  Again he translated, edited, criticised.  He wrote a tragedy, “Philotas,” and began a “Faust.”  He especially employed his critical power in “Letters upon the Latest Literature,” known as his Literatur briefe.  Dissertations upon fable, led also to Lessing’s “Fables,” produced in this period of his life.

In 1760 Lessing was tempted by scarcity of income to serve as a Government secretary at Breslau.  He held that office for five years, and then again returned to his old work in Berlin.  During the five years in Breslau, Lessing had completed his play of “Minna von Barnhelm,” and the greatest of his critical works, “Laocoon,” a treatise on the “Boundary Lines of Painting and Poetry.”  All that he might then have saved from his earnings went to the buying of books and to the relief of the burdens in the Camenz parsonage.  At Berlin the office of Royal Librarian became vacant.  The claims of Lessing were urged, but Frederick appointed an insignificant Frenchman.  In 1767 Lessing was called to aid an unsuccessful attempt to establish a National Theatre in Hamburg.

Other troubles followed.  Lessing gave his heart to a widow, Eva König, and was betrothed to her.  But the involvements of her worldly affairs, and of his, delayed the marriage for six years.  To secure fixed income he took a poor office as Librarian at Wolfenbüttel.  In his first year at Wolfenbüttel, he wrote his play of “Emilia Galotti.”  Then came a long-desired journey to Italy; but it came in inconvenient form, for it had to be made with Prince Leopold, of Brunswick, hurriedly, for the sake of money, at the time when Lessing was at last able to marry.

The wife, long waited for, and deeply loved, died at the birth of her first child.  This was in January, 1778, when Lessing’s age was 49.  Very soon afterwards he was attacked by a Pastor Goeze, in Hamburg, and other narrow theologians, for having edited papers that contained an attack on Christianity, which Lessing himself had said that he wished to see answered before he died.  The uncharitable bitterness of these attacks, felt by a mind that had been touched to the quick by the deepest of sorrows, helped to the shaping of Lessing’s calm, beautiful lesson of charity, this noblest of his plays—“Nathan the Wise.”  But Lessing’s health was shattered, and he survived his wife only three years.  He died in 1781, leaving imperishable influence for good upon the minds of men, but so poor in what the world calls wealth, that his funeral had to be paid for by a Duke of Brunswick.

William Taylor, the translator of Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise;” was born in 1765, the son of a rich merchant at Norwich, from whose business he was drawn away by his strong bent towards literature.  His father yielded to his wishes, after long visits to France and to Germany, in days astir with the new movements of thought, that preceded and followed the French Revolution.  He formed a close friendship with Southey, edited for a little time a “Norwich Iris,” and in his later years became known especially for his Historic Survey of German Poetry, which included his translations, and among them this of “Nathan the Wise.”  It was published in 1830, Taylor died in 1836.  Thomas Carlyle, in reviewing William Taylor’s Survey of German Poetry, said of the author’s own translations in it “compared with the average of British translations, they may be pronounced of almost ideal excellence; compared with the best translations extant, for example, the German Shakespeare, Homer, Calderon, they may still be called better than indifferent.  One great merit Mr. Taylor has: rigorous adherence to his original; he endeavours at least to copy with all possible fidelity the term of praise, the tone, the very metre, whatever stands written for him.”

H. M.

“Introite nam et heic Dii sunt!”—Apud Gellium.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Saladin, the Sultan.

Sittah, his Sister.

Nathan, a rich Jew.

Recha, his adopted Daughter.

Daya, a Christian Woman dwelling with the Jew a companion to Recha.

Conrade, a young Templar.

Hafi, a Dervis.

Athanasios, the Patriarch of Palestine.

Bonafides, a Friar.

An Emir, sundry Mamalukes, Slaves, &c.

The Scene is at Jerusalem

ACT I

Scene.—A Hall in Nathan’s House

Nathan, in a travelling dress, Daya meeting himDAYA’Tis he, ’tis Nathan!  Thanks to the Almighty,That you’re at last returned.NATHAN   Yes, Daya, thanks,That I have reached Jerusalem in safety.But wherefore this at last?  Did I intend,Or was it possible to come back sooner?As I was forced to travel, out and in,’Tis a long hundred leagues to Babylon;And to get in one’s debts is no employment,That speeds a traveller.DAYA   O Nathan, Nathan,How miserable you had nigh becomeDuring this little absence; for your house—NATHANWell, ’twas on fire; I have already heard it.God grant I may have heard the whole, that chanced!DAYA’Twas on the point of burning to the ground.NATHANThen we’d have built another, and a better.DAYATrue!—But thy Recha too was on the pointOf perishing amid the flames.NATHAN   Of perishing?My Recha, saidst thou?  She?  I heard not that.I then should not have needed any house.Upon the point of perishing—perchanceShe’s gone?—Speak out then—out—torment me notWith this suspense.—Come, tell me, tell me all.DAYAWere she no more, from me you would not hear it.NATHANWhy then alarm me?—Recha, O my Recha!DAYAYour Recha?  Yours?NATHAN   What if I ever wereDoomed to unlearn to call this child, my child,DAYAIs all you own yours by an equal title?NATHANNought by a better.  What I else enjoyNature and Fortune gave—this treasure, Virtue.DAYAHow dear you make me pay for all your goodness!—If goodness, exercised with such a view,Deserves the name.—NATHANWith such a view?  With what?DAYAMy conscience—NATHANDaya, let me tell you first—DAYAI say, my conscience—NATHAN   What a charming silkI bought for you in Babylon!  ’Tis rich,Yet elegantly rich.  I almost doubtIf I have brought a prettier for Recha.DAYAAnd what of that—I tell you that my conscienceWill no be longer hushed.NATHAN   And I have bracelets,And earrings, and a necklace, which will charm you.I chose them at Damascus.DAYA   That’s your way:—If you can but make presents—but make presents.—NATHANTake you as freely as I give—and cease.DAYAAnd cease?—Who questions, Nathan, but that you areHonour and generosity in person;—Yet—NATHAN   Yet I’m but a Jew.—That was your meaning.DAYAYou better know what was my meaning, Nathan.NATHANWell, well, no more of this,DAYA   I shall be silent;But what of sinful in the eye of heavenSprings out of it—not I, not I could help;It falls upon thy head.NATHAN   So let it, Daya.Where is she then?  What stays her?  Surely, surely,You’re not amusing me—And does she knowThat I’m arrived?DAYA   That you yourself must speak to,Terror still vibrates in her every nerve.Her fancy mingles fire with all she thinks of.Asleep, her soul seems busy; but awake,Absent: now less than brute, now more than angel.NATHANPoor thing!  What are we mortals—DAYA   As she layThis morning sleeping, all at once she startedAnd cried: “list, list! there come my father’s camels!”And then she drooped again upon her pillowAnd I withdrew—when, lo! you really came.Her thoughts have only been with you—and him.NATHANAnd him?  What him?DAYA   With him, who from the firePreserved her life,NATHAN   Who was it?  Where is he,That saved my Recha for me?DAYA   A young templar,Brought hither captive a few days ago,And pardoned by the Sultan.NATHAN   How, a templarDismissed with life by Saladin.  In truth,Not a less miracle was to preserve her,God!—God!—DAYA   Without this man, who risked afreshThe Sultan’s unexpected boon, we’d lost her.NATHANWhere is he, Daya, where’s this noble youth?Do, lead me to his feet.  Sure, sure you gave himWhat treasures I had left you—gave him all,Promised him more—much more?DAYA   How could we?NATHAN   Not?DAYAHe came, he went, we know not whence, or whither.Quite unacquainted with the house, unguidedBut by his ear, he prest through smoke and flame,His mantle spread before him, to the roomWhence pierced the shrieks for help; and we beganTo think him lost—and her; when, all at once,Bursting from flame and smoke, he stood before us,She in his arm upheld.  Cold and unmovedBy our loud warmth of thanks, he left his booty,Struggled into the crowd, and disappeared.NATHANBut not for ever, Daya, I would hope.DAYAFor some days after, underneath you palms,That shade his grave who rose again from death,We saw him wandering up and down.  I went,With transport went to thank him.  I conjured,Intreated him to visit once againThe dear sweet girl he saved, who longed to shedAt her preserver’s feet the grateful tear—NATHANWell?DAYA   But in vain.  Deaf to our warmest prayers,On me he flung such bitter mockery—NATHANThat hence rebuffed—DAYA   Oh, no, oh, no, indeed not,Daily I forced myself upon him, dailyAfresh encountered his dry taunting speeches.Much I have borne, and would have borne much more:But he of late forbears his lonely walkUnder the scattered palms, which stand aboutOur holy sepulchre: nor have I learntWhere he now is.  You seem astonished—thoughtful—NATHANI was imagining what strange impressionsThis conduct makes on such a mind as Recha’s.Disdained by one whom she must feel compelledTo venerate and to esteem so highly.At once attracted and repelled—the combatBetween her head and heart must yet endure,Regret, Resentment, in unusual struggle.Neither, perhaps, obtains the upper hand,And busy fancy, meddling in the fray,Weaves wild enthusiasms to her dazzled spirit,Now clothing Passion in the garb of Reason,And Reason now in Passion’s—do I err?This last is Recha’s fate—Romantic notions—DAYAAye; but such pious, lovely, sweet, illusions.NATHANIllusions though.DAYA   Yes: and the one, her bosomClings to most fondly, is, that the brave templarWas but a transient inmate of the earth,A guardian angel, such as from her childhoodShe loved to fancy kindly hovering round her,Who from his veiling cloud amid the fireStepped forth in her preserver’s form.  You smile—Who knows?  At least beware of banishingSo pleasing an illusion—if deceitfulChristian, Jew, Mussulman, agree to own it,And ’tis—at least to her—a dear illusion.NATHANAlso to me.  Go, my good Daya, go,See what she’s after.  Can’t I speak with her?Then I’ll find out our untamed guardian angel,Bring him to sojourn here awhile among us—We’ll pinion his wild wing, when once he’s taken.DAYAYou undertake too much.NATHAN   And when, my Daya,This sweet illusion yields to sweeter truth,(For to a man a man is ever dearerThan any angel) you must not be angryTo see our loved enthusiast exercised.DAYAYou are so good—and yet so sly.  I’ll seek her,But listen,—yes! she’s coming of herself.Nathan, Daya, and RechaRECHAAnd you are here, your very self, my father,I thought you’d only sent your voice before you.Where are you then?  What mountains, deserts, torrents,Divide us now?  You see me, face to face,And do not hasten to embrace your Recha.Poor Recha! she was almost burnt alive,But only—only—almost.  Do not shudder!O ’tis a horrid end to die in fire!NATHAN (embracing her)My child, my darling child!RECHA   You had to crossThe Jordan, Tigris, and Euphrates, andWho knows what rivers else.  I used to trembleAnd quake for you, till the fire came so nigh me;Since then, methinks ’twere comfort, balm, refreshment,To die by water.  But you are not drowned—I am not burnt alive.—We will rejoice—We will praise God—the kind good God, who bore thee,Upon the buoyant wings of unseen angels,Across the treacherous stream—the God who badeMy angel visibly on his white wingAthwart the roaring flame—NATHAN (aside)   White wing?—oh, ayeThe broad white fluttering mantle of the templar.RECHAYes, visibly he bore me through the fire,O’ershadowed by his pinions.—Face to faceI’ve seen an angel, father, my own angel.NATHANRecha deserves it, and would see in himNo fairer form than he beheld in her,RECHAWhom are you flattering, father—tell me now—The angel, or yourself?NATHAN   Yet had a man,A man of those whom Nature daily fashions,Done you this service, he to you had seemed,Had been an angel.RECHA   No, not such a one.Indeed it was a true and real angel.And have not you yourself instructed meHow possible it is there may be angels;That God for those who love him can work miracles—And I do love him, father—NATHAN   And he thee;And both for thee, and all like thee, my child,Works daily wonders, from eternityHas wrought them for you.RECHA   That I like to hear.NATHANWell, and although it sounds quite natural,An every day event, a simple story,That you was by a real templar saved,Is it the less a miracle?  The greatestOf all is this, that true and real wondersShould happen so perpetually, so daily.Without this universal miracleA thinking man had scarcely called those such,Which only children, Recha, ought to name so,Who love to gape and stare at the unusualAnd hunt for novelty—DAYA   Why will you thenWith such vain subtleties, confuse her brainAlready overheated?NATHAN   Let me manage.—And is it not enough then for my RechaTo owe her preservation to a man,Whom no small miracle preserved himself.For whoe’er heard before that SaladinLet go a templar; that a templar wished it,Hoped it, or for his ransom offered moreThan taunts, his leathern sword-belt, or his dagger?RECHAThat makes for me; these are so many reasonsHe was no real knight, but only seemed it.If in Jerusalem no captive templar,Appears alive, or freely wanders round,How could I find one, in the night, to save me?NATHANIngenious! dextrous!  Daya, come in aid.It was from you I learnt he was a prisoner;Doubtless you know still more about him, speak.DAYA’Tis but report indeed, but it is saidThat Saladin bestowed upon this youthHis gracious pardon for the strong resemblanceHe bore a favourite brother—dead, I thinkThese twenty years—his name, I know it not—He fell, I don’t know where—and all the storySounds so incredible, that very likelyThe whole is mere invention, talk, romance.NATHANAnd why incredible?  Would you rejectThis story, tho’ indeed, it’s often done,To fix on something more incredible,And give that faith?  Why should not Saladin,Who loves so singularly all his kindred,Have loved in early youth with warmer fondnessA brother now no more.  Do we not seeFaces alike, and is an old impressionTherefore a lost one?  Do resembling featuresNot call up like emotions.  Where’s th’ incredible?Surely, sage Daya, this can be to theeNo miracle, or do thy wonders onlyDemand—I should have said deserve belief?DAYAYou’re on the bite.NATHAN   Were you quite fair with me?Yet even so, my Recha, thy escapeRemains a wonder, only possibleTo Him, who of the proud pursuits of princesMakes sport—or if not sport—at least delightsTo head and manage them by slender threads.RECHAIf I do err, it is not wilfully,My father.NATHAN   No, you have been always docile.See now, a forehead vaulted thus, or thus—A nose bow’d one way rather than another—Eye-brows with straiter, or with sharper curve—A line, a mole, a wrinkle, a mere nothingI’ th’ countenance of an European savage—And thou—art saved, in Asia, from the fire.Ask ye for signs and wonders after that?What need of calling angels into play?DAYABut Nathan, where’s the harm, if I may speak,Of fancying one’s self by an angel saved,Rather than by a man?  Methinks it brings usJust so much the nearer the incomprehensiveFirst cause of preservation.NATHAN   Pride, rank pride!The iron pot would with a silver prongBe lifted from the furnace—to imagineItself a silver vase.  Paha!  Where’s the harm?Thou askest.  Where’s the good?  I might reply.For thy it brings us nearer to the GodheadIs nonsense, Daya, if not blasphemy.But it does harm: yes, yes, it does indeed.Attend now.  To the being, who preserved you,Be he an angel or a man, you both,And thou especially wouldst gladly showSubstantial services in just requital.Now to an angel what great servicesHave ye the power to do?  To sing his praise—Melt in transporting contemplation o’er him—Fast on his holiday—and squander alms—What nothingness of use!  To me at leastIt seems your neighbour gains much more than heBy all this pious glow.  Not by your fastingIs he made fat; not by your squandering, rich;Nor by your transports is his glory exalted;Nor by your faith his might.  But to a man—DAYAWhy yes; a man indeed had furnished usWith more occasions to be useful to him.God knows how readily we should have seized them.But then he would have nothing—wanted nothing—Was in himself wrapped up, and self-sufficient,As angels are.RECHA   And when at last he vanished—NATHANVanished?  How vanished?  Underneath the palmsEscaped your view, and has returned no more.Or have you really sought for him elsewhere?DAYANo, that indeed we’ve not.NATHAN   Not, Daya, not?See it does harm, hard-hearted, cold enthusiasts,What if this angel on a bed of illness—RECHAIllness?DAYA   Ill! sure he is not.RECHA   A cold shudderCreeps over me; O Daya, feel my forehead,It was so warm, ’tis now as chill as ice.NATHANHe is a Frank, unused to this hot climate,Is young, and to the labours of his calling,To fasting, watching, quite unused—RECHA   Ill—ill!DAYAThy father only means ’twere possible.NATHANAnd there he lies, without a friend, or moneyTo buy him friends—RECHA   Alas! my father.NATHAN   LiesWithout advice, attendance, converse, pity,The prey of agony, of death—RECHA   Where—where?NATHANHe, who, for one he never knew, or saw—It is enough for him he is a man—Plunged into fire.DAYA   O Nathan, Nathan, spare her.NATHANWho cared not to know aught of her he saved,Declined her presence to escape her thanks—DAYADo, spare her!NATHAN   Did not wish to see her moreUnless it were a second time to save her—Enough for him he is a man—DAYA   Stop, look!NATHANHe—he, in death, has nothing to console him,But the remembrance of this deed.DAYA   You kill her!NATHANAnd you kill him—or might have done at least—Recha ’tis medicine I give, not poison.He lives—come to thyself—may not be ill—Not even ill—RECHA   Surely not dead, not dead.NATHANDead surely not—for God rewards the goodDone here below, here too.  Go; but rememberHow easier far devout enthusiasm isThan a good action; and how willinglyOur indolence takes up with pious rapture,Tho’ at the time unconscious of its end,Only to save the toil of useful deeds.RECHAOh never leave again thy child alone!—But can he not be only gone a journey?NATHANYes, very likely.  There’s a MussulmanNumbering with curious eye my laden camels,Do you know who he is?DAYA   Oh, your old dervis.NATHANWho—who?DAYA   Your chess companion.NATHAN      That, Al-Hafi?DAYAAnd now the treasurer of Saladin.NATHANAl-Hafi?  Are you dreaming?  How was this?In fact it is so.  He seems coming hither.In with you quick.—What now am I to hear?Nathan and HafiHAFIAye, lift thine eyes in wonder.NATHAN   Is it you?A dervis so magnificent!—HAFI   Why not?Can nothing then be made out of a dervis?NATHANYes, surely; but I have been wont to thinkA dervis, that’s to say a thorough dervis,Will allow nothing to be made of him.HAFIMay-be ’tis true that I’m no thorough dervis;But by the prophet, when we must—NATHAN   Must, Hafi?Needs must—belongs to no man: and a dervis—HAFIWhen he is much besought, and thinks it right,A dervis must.NATHAN   Well spoken, by our God!Embrace me, man, you’re still, I trust, my friend.HAFIWhy not ask first what has been made of me?NATHANAsk climbers to look back!HAFI   And may I notHave grown to such a creature in the stateThat my old friendship is no longer welcome?NATHANIf you still bear your dervis-heart about youI’ll run the risk of that.  Th’ official robeIs but your cloak.HAFI   A cloak, that claims some honour.What think’st thou?  At a court of thine how greatHad been Al-Hafi?NATHAN   Nothing but a dervis.If more, perhaps—what shall I say—my cook.HAFIIn order to unlearn my native trade.Thy cook—why not thy butler too?  The Sultan,He knows me better, I’m his treasurer.NATHANYou, you?HAFI   Mistake not—of the lesser purse—His father manages the greater still—The purser of his household.NATHAN   That’s not small.HAFI’Tis larger than thou think’st; for every beggarIs of his household.NATHAN   He’s so much their foe—HAFIThat he’d fain root them out—with food and raiment—Tho’ he turn beggar in the enterprize.NATHANBravo, I meant so.HAFI   And he’s almost such.His treasury is every day, ere sun-set,Poorer than empty; and how high so e’erFlows in the morning tide, ’tis ebb by noon.NATHANBecause it circulates through such canalsAs can be neither stopped, nor filled.HAFI   Thou hast it.NATHANI know it well.HAFI   Nathan, ’tis woeful doingWhen kings are vultures amid caresses:But when they’re caresses amid the vultures’Tis ten times worse.NATHAN   No, dervis, no, no, no.HAFIThou mayst well talk so.  Now then, let me hearWhat wouldst thou give me to resign my office?NATHANWhat does it bring you in?HAFI   To me, not much;But thee, it might indeed enrich: for when,As often happens, money is at ebb,Thou couldst unlock thy sluices, make advances,And take in form of interest all thou wilt.NATHANAnd interest upon interest of the interest—HAFICertainly.NATHAN   Till my capital becomesAll interest.HAFI   How—that does not take with thee?Then write a finis to our book of friendship;For I have reckoned on thee.NATHAN   How so, Hafi?HAFIThat thou wouldst help me to go thro’ my officeWith credit, grant me open chest with thee—Dost shake thy head?NATHAN   Let’s understand each other.Here’s a distinction to be made.  To you,To dervis Hafi, all I have is open;But to the defterdar of Saladin,To that Al-Hafi—HAFI   Spoken like thyself!Thou hast been ever no less kind than cautious.The two Al-Hafis thou distinguishestShall soon be parted.  See this coat of honour,Which Saladin bestowed—before ’tis wornTo rags, and suited to a dervis’ back,—Will in Jerusalem hang upon the hook;While I along the Ganges scorching strand,Amid my teachers shall be wandering barefoot.NATHANThat’s like you.HAFI   Or be playing chess among them.NATHANYour sovereign good.HAFI   What dost thou think seduced me.The wish of having not to beg in future—The pride of acting the rich man to beggars—Would these have metamorphosed a rich beggarSo suddenly into a poor rich man?NATHANNo, I think not.HAFI   A sillier, sillier weakness,For the first time my vanity was tempter,Flattered by Saladin’s good-hearted notion—NATHANWhich was?HAFI   That all a beggar’s wants are onlyKnown to a beggar: such alone can tellHow to relieve them usefully and wisely.“Thy predecessor was too cold for me,(He said) and when he gave, he gave unkindly;Informed himself with too precautious strictnessConcerning the receiver, not contentTo leant the want, unless he knew its cause,And measuring out by that his niggard bounty.Thou wilt not thus bestow.  So harshly kindShall Saladin not seem in thee.  Thou art notLike the choked pipe, whence sullied and by spurtsFlow the pure waters it absorbs in silence.Al-Hafi thinks and feels like me.”  So nicelyThe fowler whistled, that at last the quailRan to his net.  Cheated, and by a cheat—NATHANTush! dervis, gently.HAFI   What! and is’t not cheating,Thus to oppress mankind by hundred thousands,To squeeze, grind, plunder, butcher, and torment,And act philanthropy to individuals?—Not cheating—thus to ape from the Most HighThe bounty, which alike on mead and desert,Upon the just and the unrighteous, fallsIn sunshine or in showers, and not possessThe never-empty hand of the Most High?—Not cheating—NATHAN   Cease!HAFI   Of my own cheating sureIt is allowed to speak.  Were it not cheatingTo look for the fair side of these impostures,In order, under colour of its fairness,To gain advantage from them—ha?NATHAN   Al-Hafi,Go to your desert quickly.  Among menI fear you’ll soon unlearn to be a man.HAFIAnd so do I—farewell.NATHAN   What, so abruptly?Stay, stay, Al-Hafi; has the desert wings?Man, ’twill not run away, I warrant you—Hear, hear, I want you—want to talk with you—He’s gone.  I could have liked to question himAbout our templar.  He will likely know him.Nathan and DayaDaya (bursting in)O Nathan, Nathan!NATHAN   Well, what now?DAYA      He’s there.He shows himself again.NATHAN   Who, Daya, who?DAYAHe! he!NATHAN   When cannot He be seen?  IndeedYour He is only one; that should not be,Were he an angel even.DAYA   ’Neath the palmsHe wanders up and down, and gathers dates.NATHANAnd eats?—and as a templar?DAYA   How you tease us!Her eager eye espied him long ago,While he scarce gleamed between the further stems,And follows him most punctually.  Go,She begs, conjures you, go without delay;And from the window will make signs to youWhich way his rovings bend.  Do, do make haste.NATHANWhat! thus, as I alighted from my camel,Would that be decent?  Swift, do you accost him,Tell him of my return.  I do not doubt,His delicacy in the master’s absenceForbore my house; but gladly will acceptThe father’s invitation.  Say, I ask him,Most heartily request him—DAYA   All in vain!In short, he will not visit any Jew.NATHANThen do thy best endeavours to detain him,Or with thine eyes to watch his further haunt,Till I rejoin you.  I shall not be long.