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CHAPTER VI.

HEINE AS FRENCH AUTHOR.

THE story of Heine's relations with the Saint Simonians shows that at this time he was by no means the sceptical spirit of his latter days, after he had become the victim of paralysis and of another long and painful malady; but that the principle of faith was still active within him, and capable of taking glowing and generous interest and of conceiving a mighty hope in the future of humanity.

It was, indeed, the kindred generous qualities of the French nation, and their accessibility to kindred enthusiasms, which had first drawn him to France, and the sympathy he had manifested with the principles of the French Revolution had brought down upon him the interference of the Austrian Cabinet, and closed against him the columns of the Allgemeine Zeitung.'

Such passionate sympathy with the strivings and future of the French nation was indeed not peculiar to Heine alone: it had shown itself in a still more vehement form in Shelley, Coleridge, and other of the great spirits at the beginning of the century, and may be said to have been in those times almost a constant characteristic of the poetic and liberal mind.

The task which Heine undertook in consequence of such sympathy was twofold: he had designed to be the interpreter of French ideas in things literary, æsthetic, social, and political, in his own country, and to fulfil a corresponding duty, as regards Germany, in France. He hoped thus to

remove the intellectual barriers which existed between the two peoples, and he fondly trusted that a more intimate spiritual acquaintance between them would render those national enmities and jealousies impossible which had hitherto been taken advantage of by dynasties for the advantage of their own ambitions, and in order to arrest the growth of democracy. The first part of Heine's programme-that of disseminating his views on French politics and literature— had become impossible of further execution from the jealous watchfulness of all German governments over every new expression of thought and opinion: the interference of Metternich with Heine's activity as regards the 'Allgemeine Zeitung' was speedily followed by an increased severity of the censorship in Prussia and other German states, and by general decrees of the Diet at Frankfort passed at the instigation of the chief statesmen in the Austrian cabinet. One such decree, passed on the 5th of July, 1832, forbade all importation into German territory of German books printed abroad, without permission of the Government, and another forbade the importation of German books published in Paris; so that Heine had as little hope of succeeding in importing his writings into his own country from abroad, as he had in escaping mutilation at the hands of the censors at home.

There were yet other circumstances which induced him to direct his next efforts towards gaining the ear rather of the French public than of the German, and that arose from his own fault. He had, we have seen, incurred the hostility of the authorities by his sympathy with French ideas, and the suspicion of the extreme liberals by his moderation towards existing governments; and he had further succeeded in disgusting a large proportion of his admirers by the cynical licentiousness of the Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelowopski,' and by his series of love poems written in honour of a band of light women,' and published in the first volume of the Salon,' in which love was treated in a grossly Bohemian

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and heathen fashion. It is, however, but fair to Heine to say that he gave some reason, though a bad one, for this desecration of the gift of poetry committed to him; he asserted, in a letter to his brother Maximilian, written after the appearance of the Salon,' that he desired to give another direction to public opinion respecting himself. 'Better that it should be said that I am a scamp than a too earnest Vaterland-liberator. The reputation of being this last is not desirable at the present time. The democrats are furious about me; they say I shall soon come out as an aristocrat— I think they are wrong. I shall withdraw from politics. In this epoch of reaction, above all, I will certainly write nothing. The Vaterland may now find another fool.' That there was some truth in the excuse here given cannot be denied. Heine, in order to pass with the authorities of his country as a less serious revolutionist than they deemed him to be, was willing-too willing-to play the scamp in the eyes of the public. It can, however, not escape remark that this attitude of his harmonises ill with that which he assumed only five months before in his preface to 'French Affairs,' in which he had assumed the garb and the inspiration of a prophet, took into his mouth the words of Luther

Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen;' and declared himself to be the slave of his thought and of the spirit by which he was possessed. The descent from this majestic position to that of sitting down at his desk, and writing a series of licentious and lascivious songs, was scandalous, and to the mass of even his greatest admirers unintelligible. Nevertheless, this descent from the sublime to the unclean, from the zenith to the gutter, was unfortunately not unnatural in a genius so mobile as Heine's under the pressure of the circumstances to which he was subjected. There was in his nature that leaven of paganism and sensuality which was too prone to rise under the fiery ordeal of oppression; and when a genius of such transcendent

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merit-one born to render such graceful, delicate, and exceptional services to humanity-fails in acquiring respect from others, it is not unlikely to end by ceasing to respect itself and by loosing the bridle off its more sensual nature, and allowing it to revel in the fields of license. It seemed, too, as though, in this inconstancy and degradation of affection, he was taking revenge for that first and bitterest disappointment which had sunk, as though for ever, a well of Marah in his soul, However, Heine could hardly have adopted a line of conduct more calculated to expose himself to the malice of his enemies, who would take care to emphasise the fact that this caustic utterer of so many sarcasms about Teutonic dreaminess, dilatoriness, and absence of all political sense, about Teutonic servility and Teutonic incapacity to lay hold of any opportunity for making a single step towards political freedom, was a shameless profligate and licentious roamer of the Boulevards of Paris. And it must be confessed that the most honest and liberal of Germans might justly feel some indignation at the quips and jibes levelled at his country from such a hand; it is not given to all to comprehend that elastic rebound, so characteristic of the poet's nature in respect of all subjects, with which it is capable of becoming impassioned that instantaneous recoil so well described by Wordsworth

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no farther go;
Ás high as we have mounted in delight,

In our dejection do we sink as low.

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We poets in our youth begin in gladness,

But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.

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It is but just to remember that the poet and satirist who taunted so continually the heavy Vetter Michel' about his love for his nightcap, and the regularity of his snores, also uttered the beautiful saying that if ever-which God pre

vent!-liberty should disappear from the world, then a German dreamer would discover it again in his dreams.'

It will thus be seen that the first part of Heine's programme -that of becoming an interpreter of French thought in Germany-had become surrounded with difficulties, some of which were of his own creation; that he was at variance at once with the Government and with the Radicals; that the trials of censorship, prohibition of sale of books, exclusion from the columns of newspapers, beset him from above, while from below he had to defend himself against the suspicions and accusations of the democrats; and that by his own fault he had estranged from him the best and largest part of his admirers. All these things drove him so much the more to devote himself energetically to the other part of his programme -that of disseminating a knowledge of German literature and philosophy in France. The book on the Romantic School,' and that on the History of German Religion and Philosophy,' were the first results of this activity directed towards French opinion.

The moment was a favourable one for obtaining a hearing on such subjects in France. The French Romantic School was then in the full fervour of militant zeal, and, in its revolt against the traditions of French Classicism, eagerly seeking for allies among the past and present representatives of literary renown abroad. The French Romantic School, although it probably borrowed its name from the German Romantic School, had but a superficial resemblance to it in its aims. The latter, as we have seen, was mainly a return to mediæval models and ways of thought, leading to mysticism and neo-Catholicism and seclusion from the popular life of the time. The French Romantic School, on the other hand, aimed at delivering the literary taste of the nation from the traditional trammel of restraints which had become intolerable to the expanding intelligence of the country. The severe canons of taste of the French classic writers had resulted in

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