The Times of Wednesday publishes, in a way which indicates
special authority, the statement that "Lord Beaconsfield has recommended that a special grant of 2200 should be made towards defraying the expenses of Dr. Ginsburg's work on the Massorah,' now publishing at Vienna." The " Massorah " is the analysis by the Jewish grammarians of the seventh century of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. There one sees the very best side of the Premier. It is like him to care about the perfect doing of a bit of old scholarship like that, and like him, too, to dare the obvious comment that only a Jew would have selected scholarship of that particular kind for a State grant. We recommend the incident to the notice of the flunkeys who will have it that in describing the Premier as "a Syrian" his opponents intend to insult him. No man is insulted by the acceptance of his own description of himself. Lord Beaconsfield should place a proposal for translating the Cabalistic books on the Estimates. They will never be translated without a grant, and the money would be voted without a word, and with a secret feeling that in the work his spell might be revealed. If he had freed the Holy Land and restored the Jews, as he might have done, instead of pottering about Ronmelia and Afghanistan, he would have died Dictator.
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