710 POETRY 



is exactly suited to the universal nature of the subject, the character of 

 that form is specifically German. Faust is German in its subject. 

 The legend of Faustus grew up in Germany itself during the sixteenth 

 century, and had therefore for generations been in the minds of the 

 people. Goethe assimilated it, brooded over it during his youth, and 

 poured into this mould all his own individual characteristics, as well 

 as the national characteristics of his race. Again Faust is German 

 in its dramatic form. Faust himself, with his vast intellectual energy 

 and his sense of ennui, represents the philosophic mind of Europe in 

 the eighteenth century, but, above all, the mind of Germany, de- 

 prived of the opportunities of action, and recalling the description of 

 Tacitus: " Ipsi hebent: idem homines inertiam amant, quietem oder- 

 unt." Mephistopheles is but the reflection of the ironic, scoffing spirit 

 which is the natural product of such a soil in the cultivated portion of 

 society; Gretchen, on the other hand, with her simple domestic in- 

 stincts and her trusting piety, typifies the unsophisticated elements 

 in the German people. Finally, Faust is German in its style : there is 

 in it none of that uneasy artificial sense of experiment which we find 

 in earlier German poets of the eighteenth century; the versification is 

 easy and flowing, suited alike to the nature of the subject and to the 

 genius of the language. 



It is precisely these qualities that give color and character to the 

 songs of Heinrich Heine, Goethe's lineal successor in German poetry. 

 I believe that it was Thiers who described Heine as the wittiest 

 Frenchman since Voltaire, one of those epigrams in which the super- 

 ficial cleverness is a symptom of internal falsehood. Heine no doubt 

 imitated Voltaire in the raillery with which he assailed established 

 beliefs and institutions; but his raillery is quite devoid of the logical 

 analysis which characterizes the work of the author of Candidc. It 

 would be equally true to say that Heine was the wittiest Englishman 

 since Byron, whom he also imitates in his combination of the cynical 

 with the pathetic: but Heine's irony is not less remote from Byron's 

 aristocratic scorn than from Voltaire's philosophic mockery. 



Heine was a representative German, though no doubt the hatred 

 of the Jew for the country, with all its institutions and rulers, that 

 oppressed the .Tewi=h race, was al?o strongly developed in his char- 

 acter. In one of his mo?t characteristic =ongs he imagine? a girl in 

 a foreign land struck with compassion for him and inquiring who 

 he is. He answer?: 



I am a German poet, 



In the Gorman land well known; 

 When men count the best names in it, 



They will count with these my own. 



And what I feel, little maiden, 

 Men feel in the German land; 



When they reckon its fiercest sorrows, 

 Mv -niTnw- \vitli llH.se will stand. 



