HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

STntroductton.
xxxvli
mon school-boys." Heine was, as he
calls himself, a " Child of the French
Revolution," an '• Initiator," because he
vigorously assured- the Germans that
ideas were not counters or marbles, to
be played with for their own sake; because
he exhibited in literature modern
ideas applied with the utmost freedom,
clearness, and originality. And therefore
he declared that the great task of
his life had been the endeavour to establish
a cordial relation between France
and Germany. It is because he thus
operates a junction between the French
spirit, and German ideas and German
culture, that he founds something new,
opens a fresh period, and deserves the
attention of criticism far more than the
German poets his contemporaries, who
merely continue an old period till it expires.
It may be predicted that in the
literature of other countries, too, the
French spirit is destined to make its influence
felt,— as an element, in alliance
with the native spirit, of novelty and
movement,— as it has made its influence
felt in German literature; fifty years
hence a critic will be demonstrating to
our grandchildren how this phenomenon
has come to pass.
We in England, in our great burst of
literature during the first thirty years
of the present century, had no manifestation
of the modern spirit, as this
spirit manifests itself in Goethe's works
or Heine's. And the reason is not far