HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Blackguard and Apostate
liberals, writers who seemed to consider rebellion
and revolution not as fearful means to an important
and desirable end, but as things in themselves delightful
and desirable. Heine was a more agreeable
stylist than Borne and therefore more dangerous:
"It is not merely that we mourn over the perversion,
the desecration of one of the noblest gifts of
God to man, i.e. genius — nor is it merely that we
loathe this utter recklessness of the moral corruption
which such writings as these are calculated to
generate among the young, the inexperienced, the
unenlightened. We look farther, and confess that
we consider this heterogeneous intellectual amalgam,
this voluntary debasement in powerful minds,
as amongst the most fearful, the most portentous,
of the signs of the times." *
A similar note was struck by the Quarterly Review
in articles of December, 1834 and December,
1835. The first article, entitled Recent German
Belles-Lettres, discussed Heine as the heir of Jean
Paul, as a literary star malign in its influence, wavering
in its orbit, and unsteady in its fight, but
sparkling all over with a rare brilliancy: "At the
present moment, he is regarded as a literary outlaw,
a downright caput lupinum, in the literary
circles of Germany, where his hand is against every
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