See later, p.

226.] [Footnote 2: The author refers to Naphtali Hirz Wessely (d.

1805), an associate of Mendelssohn in his cultural endeavors.

He wrote _Shire Tif'eret_, "Songs of Glory," an epic in five parts dealing with the Exodus.

The poem was patterned after the epic _Der Messias_ of his famous German contemporary Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock, who, in turn, was influenced by Milton.] Ginzburg and Lebensohn were the central pillars of the Vilna Maskilim circle, which also included men of the type of Samuel Joseph Fuenn, the historian, Mattathiah Strashun, the Talmudist, the censor Tugendhold, the bibliographer Ben-jacob, N.Rosenthal, in a word, the "radicals" of that era--for the mere striving for the restoration of biblical Hebrew and for elementary secular education was looked upon as bold radicalism.
The same circle made an attempt to create a scientific periodical after the pattern of similar publications in Galicia and Germany, In 1841 and 1843 two issues of the magazine _Pirhe Tzafon_, "Flowers of the North," appeared in Vilna, under Fuenn's editorship.