The Essays of "George Eliot" Part 4

We do not discuss whether Dr. c.u.mming's interpretation accords with the meaning of the New Testament writers: we simply point to the fact that the text becomes elastic for him when he wants freer play for his prejudices, while he makes it an adamantine barrier against the admission that mercy will ultimately triumph-that G.o.d, _i.e._, Love, will be all in all. He a.s.sures us that he does not "delight to dwell on the misery of the lost:" and we believe him. That misery does not seem to be a question of feeling with him, either one way or the other. He does not merely resign himself to the awful mystery of eternal punishment; he contends for it. Do we object, he asks, {90} to everlasting happiness?

then why object to everlasting misery?-reasoning which is perhaps felt to be cogent by theologians who antic.i.p.ate the everlasting happiness for themselves, and the everlasting misery for their neighbors.

The compa.s.sion of some Christians has been glad to take refuge in the opinion that the Bible allows the supposition of annihilation for the impenitent; but the rigid sequence of Dr. c.u.mming's reasoning will not admit of this idea. He sees that flax is made into linen, and linen into paper; that paper, when burned, partly ascends as smoke and then again descends in rain, or in dust and carbon. "Not one particle of the original flax is lost, although there may be not one particle that has not undergone an entire change: annihilation is not, but change of form is. _It will be thus with our bodies at the resurrection_. The death of the body means not annihilation. _Not one feature of the face_ will be annihilated." Having established the perpetuity of the body by this close and clear a.n.a.logy, namely, that _as_ there is a total change in the particles of flax in consequence of which they no longer appear as flax, _so_ there will _not_ be a total change in the particles of the human body, but they will reappear as the human body, he does not seem to consider that the perpetuity of the body involves the perpetuity of the soul, but requires separate evidence for this, and finds such evidence by begging the very question at issue-namely, by a.s.serting that the text of the Scripture implies "the perpetuity of the punishment of the lost, and the consciousness of the punishment which they endure." Yet it is drivelling like this which is listened to and lauded as eloquence by hundreds, and which a Doctor of Divinity can believe that he has his "reward as a saint" for preaching and publis.h.i.+ng!

One more characteristic of Dr. c.u.mming's writings, and we have done.

This is the _perverted moral judgment_ that everywhere reigns in them.

Not that this perversion is peculiar to Dr. c.u.mming: it belongs to the dogmatic system which he shares with all evangelical believers. But the abstract tendencies of systems are represented in very different degrees, according to the different characters of those who embrace them; just as the same food tells differently on different const.i.tutions: and there are certain qualities in Dr. c.u.mming that cause the perversion of which we speak to exhibit itself with peculiar prominence in his teaching. A single extract will enable us to explain what we mean:

"The 'thoughts' are evil. If it were possible for human eye to discern and to detect the thoughts that flutter around the heart of an unregenerate man-to mark their hue and their mult.i.tude, it would be found that they are indeed 'evil.' We speak not of the thief, and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like, whose crimes draw down the cognizance of earthly tribunals, and whose unenviable character it is to take the lead in the paths of sin; but we refer to the men who are marked out by their practice of many of the seemliest moralities of life-by the exercise of the kindliest affections, and the interchange of the sweetest reciprocities-and of these men, if unrenewed and unchanged, we p.r.o.nounce that their thoughts are evil.

To ascertain this, we must refer to the object around which our thoughts ought continually to circulate. The Scriptures a.s.sert that this object is _the glory of G.o.d_; that for this we ought to think, to act, and to speak; and that in thus thinking, acting, and speaking, there is involved the purest and most endearing bliss. Now it will be found true of the most amiable men, that with all their good society and kindliness of heart, and all their strict and unbending integrity, they never or rarely think of the glory of G.o.d.

The question never occurs to them-Will this redound to the glory of G.o.d? Will this make his name more known, his being more loved, his praise more sung? And just inasmuch as their every thought comes short of this lofty aim, in so much does it come short of good, and ent.i.tle itself to the character of evil. If the glory of G.o.d is not the absorbing and the influential aim of their thoughts, then they are evil; but G.o.d's glory never enters into their minds. They are amiable, because it chances to be one of the const.i.tutional tendencies of their individual character, left uneffaced by the Fall; and _they an just and upright_, _because they have perhaps no occasion to be otherwise_, _or find it subservient to their interests to maintain such a character_."-"Occ. Disc." vol. i. p. 8.

Again we read (Ibid. p. 236):

"There are traits in the Christian character which the mere worldly man cannot understand. He can understand the outward morality, but he cannot understand the inner spring of it; he can understand Dorcas' liberality to the poor, but he cannot penetrate the ground of Dorcas' liberality. _Some men give to the poor because they are ostentatious_, _or because they think the poor will ultimately avenge their __neglect_; _but the Christian gives to the poor_, _not only because he has sensibilities like other men_, but because inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these my brethren ye did it unto me."

Before entering on the more general question involved in these quotations, we must point to the clauses we have marked with italics, where Dr. c.u.mming appears to express sentiments which, we are happy to think, are not shared by the majority of his brethren in the faith. Dr.

c.u.mming, it seems, is unable to conceive that the natural man can have any other motive for being just and upright than that it is useless to be otherwise, or that a character for honesty is profitable; according to his experience, between the feelings of ostentation and selfish alarm and the feeling of love to Christ, there lie no sensibilities which can lead a man to relieve want. Granting, as we should prefer to think, that it is Dr. c.u.mming's exposition of his sentiments which is deficient rather than his sentiments themselves, still, the fact that the deficiency lies precisely here, and that he can overlook it not only in the haste of oral delivery but in the examination of proof-sheets, is strongly significant of his mental bias-of the faint degree in which he sympathizes with the disinterested elements of human feeling, and of the fact, which we are about to dwell upon, that those feelings are totally absent from his religious theory. Now, Dr. c.u.mming invariably a.s.sumes that, in fulminating against those who differ from him, he is standing on a moral elevation to which they are compelled reluctantly to look up; that his theory of motives and conduct is in its loftiness and purity a perpetual rebuke to their low and vicious desires and practice. It is time he should be told that the reverse is the fact; that there are men who do not merely cast a superficial glance at his doctrine, and fail to see its beauty or justice, but who, after a close consideration of that doctrine, p.r.o.nounce it to be subversive of true moral development, and therefore positively noxious. Dr. c.u.mming is fond of showing up the teaching of Romanism, and accusing it of undermining true morality: it is time he should be told that there is a large body, both of thinkers and practical men, who hold precisely the same opinion of his own teaching-with this difference, that they do not regard it as the inspiration of Satan, but as the natural crop of a human mind where the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic pa.s.sions and dogmatic beliefs.

Dr. c.u.mming's theory, as we have seen, is that actions are good or evil according as they are prompted or not prompted by an exclusive reference to the "glory of G.o.d." G.o.d, then, in Dr. c.u.mming's conception, is a being who has no pleasure in the exercise of love and truthfulness and justice, considered as affecting the well-being of his creatures; He has satisfaction in us only in so far as we exhaust our motives and dispositions of all relation to our fellow-beings, and replace sympathy with men by anxiety for the "glory of G.o.d." The deed of Grace Darling, when she took a boat in the storm to rescue drowning men and women, was not good if it was only compa.s.sion that nerved her arm and impelled her to brave death for the chance of saving others; it was only good if she asked herself-Will this redound to the glory of G.o.d? The man who endures tortures rather than betray a trust, the man who spends years in toil in order to discharge an obligation from which the law declares him free, must be animated not by the spirit of fidelity to his fellow-man, but by a desire to make "the name of G.o.d more known." The sweet charities of domestic life-the ready hand and the soothing word in sickness, the forbearance toward frailties, the prompt helpfulness in all efforts and sympathy in all joys, are simply evil if they result from a "const.i.tutional tendency," or from dispositions disciplined by the experience of suffering and the perception of moral loveliness. A wife is not to devote herself to her husband out of love to him and a sense of the duties implied by a close relation-she is to be a faithful wife for the glory of G.o.d; if she feels her natural affections welling up too strongly, she is to repress them; it will not do to act from natural affection-she must think of the glory of G.o.d. A man is to guide his affairs with energy and discretion, not from an honest desire to fulfil his responsibilities as a member of society and a father, but-that "G.o.d's praise may be sung." Dr. c.u.mming's Christian pays his debts for the glory of G.o.d; were it not for the coercion of that supreme motive, it would be evil to pay them. A man is not to be just from a feeling of justice; he is not to help his fellow-men out of good-will to his fellow-men; he is not to be a tender husband and father out of affection: all these natural muscles and fibres are to be torn away and replaced by a patent steel-spring-anxiety for the "glory of G.o.d."

Happily, the const.i.tution of human nature forbids the complete prevalence of such a theory. Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and though dogmas may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its growth: build walls round the living tree as you will, the bricks and mortar have by and by to give way before the slow and sure operation of the sap. But next to the hatred of the enemies of G.o.d which is the principle of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more obstructive of true moral development than this subst.i.tution of a reference to the glory of G.o.d for the direct promptings of the sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only in proportion as they are directly and inevitably called into activity by their proper objects; pity is strong only because we are strongly impressed by suffering; and only in proportion as it is compa.s.sion that speaks through the eyes when we soothe, and moves the arm when we succor, is a deed strictly benevolent. If the soothing or the succor be given because another being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to be one of benevolence, and becomes one of deference, of obedience, of self-interest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid in producing an _action_, but they presuppose the weakness of the direct motive; and conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the action of accessory motives will be excluded. If, then, as Dr. c.u.mming inculcates, the glory of G.o.d is to be "the absorbing and the influential aim" in our thoughts and actions, this must tend to neutralize the human sympathies; the stream of feeling will be diverted from its natural current in order to feed an artificial ca.n.a.l. The idea of G.o.d is really moral in its influence-it really cherishes all that is best and loveliest in man-only when G.o.d is contemplated as sympathizing with the pure elements of human feeling, as possessing infinitely all those attributes which we recognize to be moral in humanity. In this light, the idea of G.o.d and the sense of His presence intensify all n.o.ble feeling, and encourage all n.o.ble effort, on the same principle that human sympathy is found a source of strength: the brave man feels braver when he knows that another stout heart is beating time with his; the devoted woman who is wearing out her years in patient effort to alleviate suffering or save vice from the last stages of degradation, finds aid in the pressure of a friendly hand which tells her that there is one who understands her deeds, and in her place would do the like. The idea of a G.o.d who not only sympathizes with all we feel and endure for our fellow-men, but who will pour new life into our too languid love, and give firmness to our vacillating purpose, is an extension and multiplication of the effects produced by human sympathy; and it has been intensified for the better spirits who have been under the influence of orthodox Christianity, by the contemplation of Jesus as "G.o.d manifest in the flesh." But Dr. c.u.mming's G.o.d is the very opposite of all this: he is a G.o.d who instead of sharing and aiding our human sympathies, is directly in collision with them; who instead of strengthening the bond between man and man, by encouraging the sense that they are both alike the objects of His love and care, thrusts himself between them and forbids them to feel for each other except as they have relation to Him. He is a G.o.d who, instead of adding his solar force to swell the tide of those impulses that tend to give humanity a common life in which the good of one is the good of all, commands us to check those impulses, lest they should prevent us from thinking of His glory. It is in vain for Dr. c.u.mming to say that we are to love man for G.o.d's sake: with the conception of G.o.d which his teaching presents, the love of man for G.o.d's sake involves, as his writings abundantly show, a strong principle of hatred. We can only love one being for the sake of another when there is an habitual delight in a.s.sociating the idea of those two beings-that is, when the object of our indirect love is a source of joy and honor to the object of our direct love; but according to Dr.

c.u.mming's theory, the majority of mankind-the majority of his neighbors-are in precisely the opposite relation to G.o.d. His soul has no pleasure in them, they belong more to Satan than to Him, and if they contribute to His glory, it is against their will. Dr. c.u.mming then can only love _some_ men for G.o.d's sake; the rest he must in consistency _hate_ for G.o.d's sake.

There must be many, even in the circle of Dr. c.u.mming's admirers, who would be revolted by the doctrine we have just exposed, if their natural good sense and healthy feeling were not early stifled by dogmatic beliefs, and their reverence misled by pious phrases. But as it is, many a rational question, many a generous instinct, is repelled as the suggestion of a supernatural enemy, or as the ebullition of human pride and corruption. This state of inward contradiction can be put an end to only by the conviction that the free and diligent exertion of the intellect, instead of being a sin, is part of their responsibility-that Right and Reason are synonymous. The fundamental faith for man is, faith in the result of a brave, honest, and steady use of all his faculties:

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul according well May make one music as before, But vaster."

Before taking leave of Dr. c.u.mming, let us express a hope that we have in no case exaggerated the unfavorable character of the inferences to be drawn from his pages. His creed often obliges him to hope the worst of men, and exert himself in proving that the worst is true; but thus far we are happier than he. We have no theory which requires us to attribute unworthy motives to Dr. c.u.mming, no opinions, religious or irreligious, which can make it a gratification to us to detect him in delinquencies.

On the contrary, the better we are able to think of him as a man, while we are obliged to disapprove him as a theologian, the stronger will be the evidence for our conviction, that the tendency toward good in human nature has a force which no creed can utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency over all dogmatic perversions.

IV. GERMAN WIT: HENRY HEINE. {99}

"Nothing," says Goethe, "is more significant of men's character than what they find laughable." The truth of this observation would perhaps have been more apparent if he had said _culture_ instead of character. The last thing in which the cultivated man can have community with the vulgar is their jocularity; and we can hardly exhibit more strikingly the wide gulf which separates him from them, than by comparing the object which shakes the diaphragm of a coal-heaver with the highly complex pleasure derived from a real witticism. That any high order of wit is exceedingly complex, and demands a ripe and strong mental development, has one evidence in the fact that we do not find it in boys at all in proportion to their manifestation of other powers. Clever boys generally aspire to the heroic and poetic rather than the comic, and the crudest of all their efforts are their jokes. Many a witty man will remember how in his school days a practical joke, more or less Rabelaisian, was for him the _ne plus ultra_ of the ludicrous. It seems to have been the same with the boyhood of the human race. The history and literature of the ancient Hebrews gives the idea of a people who went about their business and their pleasure as gravely as a society of beavers; the smile and the laugh are often mentioned metaphorically, but the smile is one of complacency, the laugh is one of scorn. Nor can we imagine that the facetious element was very strong in the Egyptians; no laughter lurks in the wondering eyes and the broad calm lips of their statues. Still less can the a.s.syrians have had any genius for the comic: the round eyes and simpering satisfaction of their ideal faces belong to a type which is not witty, but the cause of wit in others. The fun of these early races was, we fancy, of the after-dinner kind-loud-throated laughter over the wine-cup, taken too little account of in sober moments to enter as an element into their Art, and differing as much from the laughter of a Chamfort or a Sheridan as the gastronomic enjoyment of an ancient Briton, whose dinner had no other "removes" than from acorns to beech-mast and back again to acorns, differed from the subtle pleasures of the palate experienced by his turtle-eating descendant. In fact they had to live seriously through the stages which to subsequent races were to become comedy, as those amiable-looking preadamite amphibia which Professor Owen has restored for us in effigy at Sydenham, took perfectly _au serieux_ the grotesque physiognomies of their kindred. Heavy experience in their case, as in every other, was the base from which the salt of future wit was to be made.

Humor is of earlier growth than Wit, and it is in accordance with this earlier growth that it has more affinity with the poetic tendencies, while Wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. Humor draws its materials from situations and characteristics; Wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations. Humor is chiefly representative and descriptive; it is diffuse, and flows along without any other law than its own fantastic will; or it flits about like a will-of-the-wisp, amazing us by its whimsical transitions. Wit is brief and sudden, and sharply defined as a crystal; it does not make pictures, it is not fantastic; but it detects an unsuspected a.n.a.logy or suggests a startling or confounding inference. Every one who has had the opportunity of making the comparison will remember that the effect produced on him by some witticisms is closely akin to the effect produced on him by subtle reasoning which lays open a fallacy or absurdity, and there are persons whose delight in such reasoning always manifests itself in laughter.

This affinity of wit with ratiocination is the more obvious in proportion as the species of wit is higher and deals less with less words and with superficialities than with the essential qualities of things. Some of Johnson's most admirable witticisms consist in the suggestion of an a.n.a.logy which immediately exposes the absurdity of an action or proposition; and it is only their ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness which lift them from reasoning into Wit-they are _reasoning raised to a higher power_. On the other hand, Humor, in its higher forms, and in proportion as it a.s.sociates itself with the sympathetic emotions, continually pa.s.ses into poetry: nearly all great modern humorists may be called prose poets.

Some confusion as to the nature of Humor has been created by the fact that those who have written most eloquently on it have dwelt almost exclusively on its higher forms, and have defined humor in general as the _sympathetic_ presentation of incongruous elements in human nature and life-a definition which only applies to its later development. A great deal of humor may coexist with a great deal of barbarism, as we see in the Middle Ages; but the strongest flavor of the humor in such cases will come, not from sympathy, but more probably from triumphant egoism or intolerance; at best it will be the love of the ludicrous exhibiting itself in ill.u.s.trations of successful cunning and of the _lex talionis_ as in _Reineke Fuchs_, or shaking off in a holiday mood the yoke of a too exacting faith, as in the old Mysteries. Again, it is impossible to deny a high degree of humor to many practical jokes, but no sympathetic nature can enjoy them. Strange as the genealogy may seem, the original parentage of that wonderful and delicious mixture of fun, fancy, philosophy, and feeling, which const.i.tutes modern humor, was probably the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhings of a suffering enemy-such is the tendency of things toward the good and beautiful on this earth!

Probably the reason why high culture demands more complete harmony with its moral sympathies in humor than in wit, is that humor is in its nature more prolix-that it has not the direct and irresistible force of wit.

Wit is an electric shock, which takes us by violence, quite independently of our predominant mental disposition; but humor approaches us more deliberately and leaves us masters of ourselves. Hence it is, that while coa.r.s.e and cruel humor has almost disappeared from contemporary literature, coa.r.s.e and cruel wit abounds; even refined men cannot help laughing at a coa.r.s.e _bon mot_ or a lacerating personality, if the "shock" of the witticism is a powerful one; while mere fun will have no power over them if it jar on their moral taste. Hence, too, it is, that while wit is perennial, humor is liable to become superannuated.

As is usual with definitions and cla.s.sifications, however, this distinction between wit and humor does not exactly represent the actual fact. Like all other species, Wit and Humor overlap and blend with each other. There are _bon mots_, like many of Charles Lamb's, which are a sort of facetious hybrids, we hardly know whether to call them witty or humorous; there are rather lengthy descriptions or narratives, which, like Voltaire's "Micromegas," would be more humorous if they were not so sparkling and ant.i.thetic, so pregnant with suggestion and satire, that we are obliged to call them witty. We rarely find wit untempered by humor, or humor without a spice of wit; and sometimes we find them both united in the highest degree in the same mind, as in Shakespeare and Moliere. A happy conjunction this, for wit is apt to be cold, and thin-lipped, and Mephistophelean in men who have no relish for humor, whose lungs do never crow like Chanticleer at fun and drollery; and broad-faced, rollicking humor needs the refining influence of wit. Indeed, it may be said that there is no really fine writing in which wit has not an implicit, if not an explicit, action. The wit may never rise to the surface, it may never flame out into a witticism; but it helps to give brightness and transparency, it warns off from flights and exaggerations which verge on the ridiculous-in every _genre_ of writing it preserves a man from sinking into the _genre ennuyeux_. And it is eminently needed for this office in humorous writing; for as humor has no limits imposed on it by its material, no law but its own exuberance, it is apt to become preposterous and wearisome unless checked by wit, which is the enemy of all monotony, of all lengthiness, of all exaggeration.

Perhaps the nearest approach Nature has given us to a complete a.n.a.lysis, in which wit is as thoroughly exhausted of humor as possible, and humor as bare as possible of wit, is in the typical Frenchman and the typical German. Voltaire, the intensest example of pure wit, fails in most of his fictions from his lack of humor. "Micromegas" is a perfect tale, because, as it deals chiefly with philosophic ideas and does not touch the marrow of human feeling and life, the writer's wit and wisdom were all-sufficient for his purpose. Not so with "Candide." Here Voltaire had to give pictures of life as well as to convey philosophic truth and satire, and here we feel the want of humor. The sense of the ludicrous is continually defeated by disgust, and the scenes, instead of presenting us with an amusing or agreeable picture, are only the frame for a witticism. On the other hand, German humor generally shows no sense of measure, no instinctive tact; it is either floundering and clumsy as the antics of a leviathan, or laborious and interminable as a Lapland day, in which one loses all hope that the stars and quiet will ever come. For this reason, Jean Paul, the greatest of German humorists, is unendurable to many readers, and frequently tiresome to all. Here, as elsewhere, the German shows the absence of that delicate perception, that sensibility to gradation, which is the essence of tact and taste, and the necessary concomitant of wit. All his subtlety is reserved for the region of metaphysics. For _Ident.i.tat_ in the abstract no one can have an acuter vision, but in the concrete he is satisfied with a very loose approximation. He has the finest nose for _Empirismus_ in philosophical doctrine, but the presence of more or less tobacco smoke in the air he breathes is imperceptible to him. To the typical German-_Vetter Michel_-it is indifferent whether his door-lock will catch, whether his teacup be more or less than an inch thick; whether or not his book have every other leaf unst.i.tched; whether his neighbor's conversation be more or less of a shout; whether he p.r.o.nounce _b_ or _p_, _t_ or _d_; whether or not his adored one's teeth be few and far between. He has the same sort of insensibility to gradations in time. A German comedy is like a German sentence: you see no reason in its structure why it should ever come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather than of the author. We have heard Germans use the word _Langeweile_, the equivalent for ennui, and we have secretly wondered _what_ it can be that produces ennui in a German. Not the longest of long tragedies, for we have known him to p.r.o.nounce that _hochst fesselnd_ (_so_ enchaining!); not the heaviest of heavy books, for he delights in that as _grundlich_ (deep, Sir, deep!); not the slowest of journeys in a _Postwagen_, for the slower the horses, the more cigars he can smoke before he reaches his journey's end. German ennui must be something as superlative as Barclay's treble X, which, we suppose, implies an extremely unknown quant.i.ty of stupefaction.

It is easy to see that this national deficiency in nicety of perception must have its effect on the national appreciation and exhibition of Humor. You find in Germany ardent admirers of Shakespeare, who tell you that what they think most admirable in him is his _Wortspiel_, his verbal quibbles; and one of these, a man of no slight culture and refinement, once cited to a friend of ours Proteus's joke in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"-"Nod I? why that's Noddy," as a transcendant specimen of Shakespearian wit. German facetiousness is seldom comic to foreigners, and an Englishman with a swelled cheek might take up _Kladderadatsch_, the German Punch, without any danger of agitating his facial muscles.

Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that, among the five great races concerned in modern civilization, the German race is the only one which, up to the present century, had contributed nothing cla.s.sic to the common stock of European wit and humor; for _Reineke Fuchs_ cannot be regarded as a peculiarly Teutonic product. Italy was the birthplace of Pantomime and the immortal Pulcinello; Spain had produced Cervantes; France had produced Rabelais and Moliere, and cla.s.sic wits innumerable; England had yielded Shakspeare and a host of humorists. But Germany had borne no great comic dramatist, no great satirist, and she has not yet repaired the omission; she had not even produced any humorist of a high order.

Among her great writers, Lessing is the one who is the most specifically witty. We feel the implicit influence of wit-the "flavor of mind"-throughout his writings; and it is often concentrated into pungent satire, as every reader of the _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_ remembers.

Still Lessing's name has not become European through his wit, and his charming comedy, _Minna von Barnhelm_, has won no place on a foreign stage. Of course we do not pretend to an exhaustive acquaintance with German literature; we not only admit-we are sure that it includes much comic writing of which we know nothing. We simply state the fact, that no German production of that kind, before the present century, ranked as European; a fact which does not, indeed, determine the _amount_ of the national facetiousness, but which is quite decisive as to its _quality_.

Whatever may be the stock of fun which Germany yields for home consumption, she has provided little for the palate of other lands. All honor to her for the still greater things she has done for us! She has fought the hardest fight for freedom of thought, has produced the grandest inventions, has made magnificent contributions to science, has given us some of the divinest poetry, and quite the divinest music in the world. No one reveres and treasures the products of the German mind more than we do. To say that that mind is not fertile in wit is only like saying that excellent wheat land is not rich pasture; to say that we do not enjoy German facetiousness is no more than to say that, though the horse is the finest of quadrupeds, we do not like him to lay his hoof playfully on our shoulder. Still, as we have noticed that the pointless puns and stupid jocularity of the boy may ultimately be developed into the epigrammatic brilliancy and polished playfulness of the man; as we believe that racy wit and chastened delicate humor are inevitably the results of invigorated and refined mental activity, we can also believe that Germany will, one day, yield a crop of wits and humorists.

Perhaps there is already an earnest of that future crop in the existence of Heinrich Heine, a German born with the present century, who, to Teutonic imagination, sensibility, and humor, adds an amount of _esprit_ that would make him brilliant among the most brilliant of Frenchmen.

True, this unique German wit is half a Hebrew; but he and his ancestors spent their youth in German air, and were reared on _Wurst_ and _Sauerkraut_, so that he is as much a German as a pheasant is an English bird, or a potato an Irish vegetable. But whatever else he may be, Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age: no echo, but a real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth studying; a surpa.s.sing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us in delicious song; a humorist, who touches leaden folly with the magic wand of his fancy, and trans.m.u.tes it into the fine gold of art-who sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, who holds in his mighty hand the most scorching lightnings of satire; an artist in prose literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe the possibilities of German prose; and-in spite of all charges against him, true as well as false-a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and brave words on behalf of his fellow-men.

He is, moreover, a suffering man, who, with all the highly-wrought sensibility of genius, has to endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an intellectual interest. It is true, alas!

that there is a heavy weight in the other scale-that Heine's magnificent powers have often served only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but have not a little bra.s.s, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coa.r.s.eness and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days. Hence, before his volumes are put within the reach of immature minds, there is need of a friendly penknife to exercise a strict censors.h.i.+p. Yet, when all coa.r.s.eness, all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of exquisite poetry, of wit, humor, and just thought. It is apparently too often a congenial task to write severe words about the transgressions committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the advantage of being himself a man of _no_ genius, so that those transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; _he_, forsooth, never lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coa.r.s.e allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the temptation that lies in transcendent power. We are also apt to measure what a gifted man has done by our arbitrary conception of what he might have done, rather than by a comparison of his actual doings with our own or those of other ordinary men. We make ourselves overzealous agents of heaven, and demand that our brother should bring usurious interest for his five Talents, forgetting that it is less easy to manage five Talents than two. Whatever benefit there may be in denouncing the evil, it is after all more edifying, and certainly more cheering, to appreciate the good. Hence, in endeavoring to give our readers some account of Heine and his works, we shall not dwell lengthily on his failings; we shall not hold the candle up to dusty, vermin-haunted corners, but let the light fall as much as possible on the n.o.bler and more attractive details. Our sketch of Heine's life, which has been drawn from various sources, will be free from everything like intrusive gossip, and will derive its coloring chiefly from the autobiographical hints and descriptions scattered through his own writings. Those of our readers who happen to know nothing of Heine will in this way be making their acquaintance with the writer while they are learning the outline of his career.

We have said that Heine was born with the present century; but this statement is not precise, for we learn that, according to his certificate of baptism, he was born December 12th, 1799. However, as he himself says, the important point is that he was born, and born on the banks of the Rhine, at Dusseldorf, where his father was a merchant. In his "Reisebilder" he gives us some recollections, in his wild poetic way, of the dear old town where he spent his childhood, and of his schoolboy troubles there. We shall quote from these in b.u.t.terfly fas.h.i.+on, sipping a little nectar here and there, without regard to any strict order:

"I first saw the light on the banks of that lovely stream, where Folly grows on the green hills, and in autumn is plucked, pressed, poured into casks, and sent into foreign lands. Believe me, I yesterday heard some one utter folly which, in anno 1811, lay in a bunch of grapes I then saw growing on the Johannisberg. . . . Mon Dieu! if I had only such faith in me that I could remove mountains, the Johannisberg would be the very mountain I should send for wherever I might be; but as my faith is not so strong, imagination must help me, and it transports me at once to the lovely Rhine. . . .

I am again a child, and playing with other children on the Schlossplatz, at Dusseldorf on the Rhine. Yes, madam, there was I born; and I note this expressly, in case, after my death, seven cities-Schilda, Krahwinkel, Polkwitz, Bock.u.m, Dulken, Gottingen, and Schoppenstadt-should contend for the honor of being my birthplace.

Dusseldorf is a town on the Rhine; sixteen thousand men live there, and many hundred thousand men besides lie buried there. . . . . Among them, many of whom my mother says, that it would be better if they were still living; for example, my grandfather and my uncle, the old Herr von Geldern and the young Herr von Geldern, both such celebrated doctors, who saved so many men from death, and yet must die themselves. And the pious Ursula, who carried me in her arms when I was a child, also lies buried there and a rosebush grows on her grave; she loved the scent of roses so well in life, and her heart was pure rose-incense and goodness. The knowing old Canon, too, lies buried there. Heavens, what an object he looked when I last saw him!

_He was made up of nothing but mind and plasters_, and nevertheless studied day and night, as if he were alarmed lest the worms should find an idea too little in his head. And the little William lies there, and for this I am to blame. We were schoolfellows in the Franciscan monastery, and were playing on that side of it where the Dussel flows between stone walls, and I said, 'William, fetch out the kitten that has just fallen in'-and merrily he went down on to the plank which lay across the brook, s.n.a.t.c.hed the kitten out of the water, but fell in himself, and was dragged out dripping and dead.

_The kitten lived to a good old age_. . . . Princes in that day were not the tormented race as they are now; the crown grew firmly on their heads, and at night they drew a nightcap over it, and slept peacefully, and peacefully slept the people at their feet; and when the people waked in the morning, they said, 'Good morning, father!'

and the princes answered, 'Good morning, dear children!' But it was suddenly quite otherwise; for when we awoke one morning at Dusseldorf, and were ready to say, 'Good morning, father!' lo! the father was gone away; and in the whole town there was nothing but dumb sorrow, everywhere a sort of funeral disposition; and people glided along silently to the market, and read the long placard placed on the door of the Town Hall. It was dismal weather; yet the lean tailor, Kilian, stood in his nankeen jacket which he usually wore only in the house, and his blue worsted stockings hung down so that his naked legs peeped out mournfully, and his thin lips trembled while he muttered the announcement to himself. And an old soldier read rather louder, and at many a word a crystal tear trickled down to his brave old mustache. I stood near him and wept in company, and asked him, '_Why we wept_?' He answered, 'The Elector has abdicated.' And then he read again, and at the words, 'for the long-manifested fidelity of my subjects,' and 'hereby set you free from your allegiance,' he wept more than ever. It is strangely touching to see an old man like that, with faded uniform and scarred face, weep so bitterly all of a sudden. While we were reading, the electoral arms were taken down from the Town Hall; everything had such a desolate air, that it was as if an eclipse of the sun were expected. . . . I went home and wept, and wailed out, 'The Elector has abdicated!' In vain my mother took a world of trouble to explain the thing to me. I knew what I knew; I was not to be persuaded, but went crying to bed, and in the night dreamed that the world was at an end."

The next morning, however, the sun rises as usual, and Joachim Murat is proclaimed Grand Duke, whereupon there is a holiday at the public school, and Heinrich (or Harry, for that was his baptismal name, which he afterward had the good taste to change), perched on the bronze horse of the Electoral statue, sees quite a different scene from yesterday's:

"The next day the world was again all in order, and we had school as before, and things were got by heart as before-the Roman emperors, chronology, the nouns in _im_, the _verba irregularia_, Greek, Hebrew, geography, mental arithmetic!-heavens! my head is still dizzy with it-all must be learned by heart! And a great deal of this came very conveniently for me in after life. For if I had not known the Roman kings by heart, it would subsequently have been quite indifferent to me whether Niebuhr had proved or had not proved that they never really existed. . . . But oh! the trouble I had at school with the endless dates. And with arithmetic it was still worse.

What I understood best was subtraction, for that has a very practical rule: 'Four can't be taken from three, therefore I must borrow one.'

But I advise every one in such a case to borrow a few extra pence, for no one can tell what may happen. . . . As for Latin, you have no idea, madam, what a complicated affair it is. The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had first had to learn Latin. Luckily for them, they already knew in their cradles what nouns have their accusative in _im_. I, on the contrary, had to learn them by heart in the sweat of my brow; nevertheless, it is fortunate for me that I know them . . . and the fact that I have them at my finger-ends if I should ever happen to want them suddenly, affords me much inward repose and consolation in many troubled hours of life. . . . Of Greek I will not say a word, I should get too much irritated. The monks in the Middle Ages were not so far wrong when they maintained that Greek was an invention of the devil. G.o.d knows the suffering I endured over it. . . . With Hebrew it went somewhat better, for I had always a great liking for the Jews, though to this very hour they crucify my good name; but I could never get on so far in Hebrew as my watch, which had much familiar intercourse with p.a.w.nbrokers, and in this way contracted many Jewish habits-for example, it wouldn't go on Sat.u.r.days."

Heine's parents were apparently not wealthy, but his education was cared for by his uncle, Solomon Heine, a great banker in Hamburg, so that he had no early pecuniary disadvantages to struggle with. He seems to have been very happy in his mother, who was not of Hebrew but of Teutonic blood; he often mentions her with reverence and affection, and in the "Buch der Lieder" there are two exquisite sonnets addressed to her, which tell how his proud spirit was always subdued by the charm of her presence, and how her love was the home of his heart after restless weary ramblings:

"Wie machtig auch mein stolzer Muth sich blahe, In deiner selig sussen, trauten Nahe Ergreift mich oft ein demuthvolles Zagen.

Und immer irrte ich naeh Liebe, immer Nach Liebe, doch die Liebe fand ich nimmer, Und kehrte um nach Hause, krank und trube.

Doch da bist du entgegen mir gekommen, Und ach! was da in deinem Aug' geschwommen, Das war die susse, langgesuchte Liebe."

He was at first destined for a mercantile life, but Nature declared too strongly against this plan. "G.o.d knows," he has lately said in conversation with his brother, "I would willingly have become a banker, but I could never bring myself to that pa.s.s. I very early discerned that bankers would one day be the rulers of the world." So commerce was at length given up for law, the study of which he began in 1819 at the University of Bonn. He had already published some poems in the corner of a newspaper, and among them was one on Napoleon, the object of his youthful enthusiasm. This poem, he says in a letter to St. Rene Taillandier, was written when he was only sixteen. It is still to be found in the "Buch der Lieder" under the t.i.tle "Die Grenadiere," and it proves that even in its earliest efforts his genius showed a strongly specific character.

It will be easily imagined that the germs of poetry sprouted too vigorously in Heine's brain for jurisprudence to find much room there.

Lectures on history and literature, we are told, were more diligently attended than lectures on law. He had taken care, too, to furnish his trunk with abundant editions of the poets, and the poet he especially studied at that time was Byron. At a later period, we find his taste taking another direction, for he writes, "Of all authors, Byron is precisely the one who excites in me the most intolerable emotion; whereas Scott, in every one of his works, gladdens my heart, soothes, and invigorates me." Another indication of his bent in these Bonn days was a newspaper essay, in which he attacked the Romantic school; and here also he went through that chicken-pox of authors.h.i.+p-the production of a tragedy. Heine's tragedy-_Almansor_-is, as might be expected, better than the majority of these youthful mistakes. The tragic collision lies in the conflict between natural affection and the deadly hatred of religion and of race-in the sacrifice of youthful lovers to the strife between Moor and Spaniard, Moslem and Christian. Some of the situations are striking, and there are pa.s.sages of considerable poetic merit; but the characters are little more than shadowy vehicles for the poetry, and there is a want of clearness and probability in the structure. It was published two years later, in company with another tragedy, in one act, called _William Ratcliffe_, in which there is rather a feeble use of the Scotch second-sight after the manner of the Fate in the Greek tragedy.

We smile to find Heine saying of his tragedies, in a letter to a friend soon after their publication: "I know they will be terribly cut up, but I will confess to you in confidence that they are very good, better than my collection of poems, which are not worth a shot." Elsewhere he tells us, that when, after one of Paganini's concerts, he was pa.s.sionately complimenting the great master on his violin-playing. Paganini interrupted him thus: "But how were you pleased with my _bows_?"

In 1820 Heine left Bonn for Gottingen. He there pursued his omission of law studies, and at the end of three months he was rusticated for a breach of the laws against duelling. While there, he had attempted a negotiation with Brockhaus for the printing of a volume of poems, and had endured the first ordeal of lovers and poets-a refusal. It was not until a year after that he found a Berlin publisher for his first volume of poems, subsequently transformed, with additions, into the "Buch der Lieder." He remained between two and three years at Berlin, and the society he found there seems to have made these years an important epoch in his culture. He was one of the youngest members of a circle which a.s.sembled at the house of the poetess Elise von Hohenhausen, the translator of Byron-a circle which included Chamisso, Varnhagen, and Rahel (Varnhagen's wife). For Rahel, Heine had a profound admiration and regard; he afterward dedicated to her the poems included under the tide "Heimkehr;" and he frequently refers to her or quotes her in a way that indicates how he valued her influence. According to his friend F. von Hohenhausen, the opinions concerning Heine's talent were very various among his Berlin friends, and it was only a small minority that had any presentiment of his future fame. In this minority was Elise von Hohenhausen, who proclaimed Heine as the Byron of Germany; but her opinion was met with much head-shaking and opposition. We can imagine how precious was such a recognition as hers to the young poet, then only two or three and twenty, and with by no means an impressive personality for superficial eyes. Perhaps even the deep-sighted were far from detecting in that small, blonde, pale young man, with quiet, gentle manners, the latent powers of ridicule and sarcasm-the terrible talons that were one day to be thrust out from the velvet paw of the young leopard.

It was apparently during this residence in Berlin that Heine united himself with the Lutheran Church. He would willingly, like many of his friends, he tells us, have remained free from all ecclesiastical ties if the authorities there had not forbidden residence in Prussia, and especially in Berlin, to every one who did not belong to one of the positive religions recognized by the State.

"As Henry IV. once laughingly said, '_Paris vaut bien une messe_,' so I might with reason say, '_Berlin vaut bien une preche_;' and I could afterward, as before, accommodate myself to the very enlightened Christianity, filtrated from all superst.i.tion, which could then be had in the churches of Berlin, and which was even free from the divinity of Christ, like turtle-soup without turtle."

At the same period, too, Heine became acquainted with Hegel. In his lately published "Gestandnisse" (Confessions) he throws on Hegel's influence over him the blue light of demoniacal wit, and confounds us by the most bewildering double-edged sarcasms; but that influence seems to have been at least more wholesome than the one which produced the mocking retractations of the "Gestandnisse." Through all his self-satire, we discern that in those days he had something like real earnestness and enthusiasm, which are certainly not apparent in his present theistic confession of faith.

"On the whole, I never felt a strong enthusiasm for this philosophy, and conviction on the subject was out of question. I never was an abstract thinker, and I accepted the synthesis of the Hegelian doctrine without demanding any proof; since its consequences flattered my vanity. I was young and proud, and it pleased my vainglory when I learned from Hegel that the true G.o.d was not, as my grandmother believed, the G.o.d who lives in heaven, but myself here upon earth. This foolish pride had not in the least a pernicious influence on my feelings; on the contrary, it heightened these to the pitch of heroism. I was at that time so lavish in generosity and self-sacrifice that I must a.s.suredly have eclipsed the most brilliant deeds of those good _bourgeois_ of virtue who acted merely from a sense of duty, and simply obeyed the laws of morality."