HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
average educated Englishman of the Eighteen-
Forties. He lacked the first hand knowledge of
Milnes and the thoroughness of Juhan Fane, but he
was not unsympathetic in his approach. He recalled
that Heine's Sketches of German Literature of the
Nineteenth Century were first undertaken for the
Athenaeum, but that their tone and temper precluded
the possibility of their appearing in an English
periodical. He regretted that Heine's appetite
for raillery and satire swallowed up his more poetic
vein: "From the moment when he commenced the
career of a political controversialist, Heine would
appear also to have begun that game of crosspurposes
with Life in the playing of which genius
too often takes a morbid or cynical pleasure, — certain,
alas! to lose. He connected himself with European
liberalism — without having mastered the
truth that such a profession of faith demands energy,
uprightness, and self-sacrifice to distinguish
the apostle of liberty from the apologist of license.
In proportion as he gave up writing Reisebilder and
fairy tales for social and political satire, the taste for
mockery spread. From laughing at 'creeds outworn,'
he took to laughing at everyone's and at his
own sincerity. Such mirth — the death-rattle of
poetry — can no more be heard without pain than
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