IDEA OF LAW IX POETKY 711 



What were the German sorrows ? Heine unites in himself the charac- 

 ters of Faust, Mephistopheles, and Gretchen, despair, scoffing, ten- 

 derness; and he expresses the agony caused by this conflict of emo- 

 tions under the image of the lover who has lost his love. The image he 

 employs is both universal and nationally characteristic; universal in 

 its ordinary application, as well as in giving utterance to the yearning 

 of the human heart for the infinite 



The desire of the moth for the star, 



Of the night for the morrow, 

 The devotion to something afar 



From the sphere of our sorrow 



characteristic in its expression of the sense of vanity in the German 

 mind, caused by the contrast between their own energy in metaphysical 

 speculation and their impotence in political action. But of the essen- 

 tial elements in his poetry I venture to say that the least congenial to 

 his imagination was the scoffing wit of Mephistopheles, and that the 

 chief ingredient in his art was the domestic tenderness of Gretchen. 



We may see this from the prevailing features in Heine's lyrical 

 style. Matthew Arnold and oilier critics have spoken with just ap- 

 preciation of the perfection of Heine's lyrical form, but it is worth 

 while to note more precisely the essential character of that form. Its 

 character lies, I think, in the use of images, which are at once perfect 

 in expression, and which yet suggest something beyond what is ex- 

 pressed, of metrical words which set in motion an infinite train of 

 thoughts and emotions. Let me attempt bv a single example, which 

 will speak for itself, to show you what 1 mean. Here is a very inad- 

 equate rendering in English of a little poem complete in three stanzas 

 about the three kings of Cologne: 



The three holy Kin^rs from the Kastland came; 



Kadi asks wherever he parses, 

 "Which way is the way to Bethlehem, 



My lovely lads and lapses ? " 



The yoiniLT and the old. they could not say; 



The K HILTS fared onward featly. 

 And followed a golden star alway. 



That shone full hi^h and sweetly. 



The star over Joseph's house abode; 



They passed 'neath the roof tree lowly; 

 The Baby eried, the Oxen lowed; 



Then san those three Kin^s, holy. 



Imagine Voltaire, or indeed anv one but a German, writing anything 

 like that. It strikes exactly the same note as Goethe's " There was a 

 King of Thule " in Faust. And this note was possible to the German 

 poet, and to no other, because the German people were nearer than 



