The Press.
London, England, 1856-04-12 00:00:00

Nittraturt.

Heinrich Heim'. Book of Songs. A Trans-
lation by John E. Wallis. London : Chap-
man and Hall.
FOR some time past there have been symptoms
of a reaction against the extreme attention
paid a few years ago to the study of German
literature. The consen ativo love of our
mother tongue, and our national antipathy to
foreign modes, along with the influence of
German infidelity, have tended to damp the
ardour with which many looked to Germany
for philosophy and science. At one period
there was imminent danger of the literary
mind of England becoming Germanised, but
that danger has passed away. We have found
out that some of the vaunted thinkers of
Germany are more potent to shake than to
establish, that they are " architects of ruin,"
and, even when they are truly original, that
their reflections are dashed with so much of
the abstruse and the whimsical, as to
make them unsafe guides. In the country
Which cradled the Reformation there has been
a lamentable degeneracy on religion, and the
gravity of the Teutonic nature has reeled
under the intoxicating influence of Pan-
theism.

Good sense, anti a genius for the prac-
tical, distinguish our English society; and
we should have to revolutionise our whole
code upon literature and morals, if we
were to prostrate ourselves before the wor•
ship of Germanism. In England politics
and manners blend into each other ; and we
must receive with distrust forms of thought or
practice adapted for a country where bureau-
cracy is enthroned. But though in life
and in philosophical speculation we are
opposed to Germanism and its Carlylian
missionaries, we can give the heartiest appre-
ciation to German genius in poetry, in music,
and in some special departments of the
fine arts. Idolatrous admiration of German
fashions and mannerisms is one thing—judi-
cious recognition of German genius is quite
another.
We are glad, therefore, to have this trans-
lation of Heine'a songs. The translator dis-
arms his critics by his unaffectedly diffident
estimate of his own labours. Mr. Wallis, in
his preface, states that most of the poems
were rendered so far back as I S4O, when he
was a student ata German university. " Time
" has increased his own sense of the difficulty
" of the task, and the numberless faults and
" shortcomings of the execution " ; but, in
order to meet the present demand for publica-
tions about Heine, Mr. Wallis was induced to
present them to the public, and he adds that
he was not compelled to do so " by hunger or
" the request of friends." The fault of the
performance is the youthful crudeness dis-
cernible in several places, especially in the
ballads, and the want of metrical resonance in
the language. A translator of verse requires
as perfect a command of the inflections
of speech and the niceties of rhythm as an
original poet Yet we are glad to have this
" Book of Songs," and Mr. Wallis deserves
the thanks of Heine's friends and admirers;
and we hope that the present will not be the
only production of Mr. Wallis upon German
literature, as its exposition to an English pub-
lic ought fo be rescued from the hands of a
dogmatic clique.
Heine had great force, limited by splenetic
influences resulting, perhaps, from physical
disease. His nature had much in it that was
gnarled and curiously twisted, but its knotty
strength was gracefully festooned by some
charming flowers of poetic fancy. His bitter-
ness was more of the lip than the heart; his
sense of the falsity of some systems of thought
was sentimental rather than logical ; and a
critic's perceptions were blent with a poet's
emotions in his nature. The thinking of the
scholar is discernible even in his sentimental
ell'usions, but %hen he attempts to be strong,
broad, and practical, Heine at once reveals
how much of a literary idealist was in his
composition. There are some diameters in
whom the man is everything, and his accidental
calling almost nothing. In neine the soul of