HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Blackguard and Apostate
every man's hand were against him. It did not join
the chorus of abuse levelled at his head after the
appearance of the later volumes of Travel Sketches.
Reviewing the second edition of 1831, it reproved
but mildly the Hcentiousness which it could not
condone. It found in Heine's whimsicaUty a certain
affinity to Laurence Sterne and in his grossness
a quality comparable to Swift. If the German
writer seemed to be professing infidelity, such as
Englishmen were little accustomed to tolerate, it
felt that maturer consideration of his literary
products would disclose not so much real infidelity
as rather a cynical levity in treating all subjects,
holy as well as profane. "This cynical levity
is often offensive, even beyond the license of
French scepticism, perhaps from a greater hardness
of the wit which generated it; but in this, as
in many other matters, the fault seems to be rather
in the imagination than the heart. Heine, occar
sionally, in his loftier moments, breathes naturally
forth feelings of very deep, if not altogether orthodox,
piety, and expresses great horror of infidelity,
at least in women." ^
The Athenaeum did not want to see Heine translated,
since he was not wholesome fare for general
readers. But it beHeved that whosoever de-
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