Morning journal and courier., 1882-09-15
Henry RHetne,

Germany his excessive ssnsitiveness restrain ed hin from frank interchange of ideas He sought to hide his native weakness of tender feeling under brusqne and repulsing man her. ''He was one of those," writes his friend Schlegel, 'who are ashamed of having wept, because there are some men who, al- though the source of their tears be ever so tender or noble, yet cannot weep without fearfully distorting their features.' His sternness was relaxed only in repartees, which were usually of pitiless sarcasm, Bonn did not pleasantly impress this uncompromjs- ing youth, the sedate university loath to lose him when, in fit spleen, he was rusticated in consequence of barely prevented duel. He appeared forthwith at the university of Berlin, but not until his somber nature had access of bitterness in an unfortunate love affair at Hamburg. After great waste of time, he returned to Gottin- gen, and having first matriculated at the baptismal font, Che religious disabilities prevailing in Germany during Heine's youth deoarred him, as of the Hebrew faith, from the learned professions he finally received the doctors degree in law. Thus equipped, Heine faced the world-young. with frail constitution, poverty stricken, and pensioned on the bounties of an uncle who never hesi- tated to rebuke fault which, however, natu- ral in poet was into1erable in a dependent. What wonder that he became, to use Matthew Arnold's adroit epithet, an ''acrid dissolvent" of the elaboration of customs that fingered as 8 froth upon the stirring fsrment of ideas into which he was born Hardly had he be- come known poet when he was exiled on account of the political tendency of his prose writings, and, without we'll knowing why, he found himself disappointed, baffied, harrsssed by griefs, at war with friends and surround ings all this joined with briefly intermittent bodily torture.
 Impelled by the magnetism which constant, 1y drew hiM towards whatever he could ridi- n,,Ja ho 4a ox,I into society which readily accepted dexteri- ty with irony in offset of social disabilities. He first charmed the ladies of the salons, and then made the rest of the world laugh at them in his letters from the French capital. Bankers and ballet dancers, actors poets, politicians, came in for heavy share of his bitter fun. Disease gained upon him the while, and a paralytic stroke, in 1S48, her aided the close of his life. Thenceforward till 1856 he passed his existence Ion 8 couch, with the use of his limbs gone; wasted so that a woman could carry him the sight of one eye lost, that of the other greatly dim med, and requiring, that it might be exercis- ed, to have the palsied lid lifted and held up by the finger; all this, and suffering besides this, at short intervals, paroxysms of ner- vous agony" 'I have said,' continues Mat thew Arnold, ''that he was not pre- eminently bravo but ill the astonishing force of spirit with which he retained his activity of m1nd, even his gayety, amid all this suffering, and went on composing with undiminished fire to the last, he was truly brave." In the lately published memoirs of Miss Williams Wynn, Mime. Joubert tells of his desperate clinging to life and society when he knew that Che chill of death was already upon him. It was his fancy to be carried to the Louvre and placed sitting in front of the Venus of Me- los, and he would remain for hours in silent meditation before the statue. Here, as over another statue, he fell into rhapsody, but garnished now, as he nearly always garnished afterward exclaimed, ''why did I not die then and there?" He passed away slowly and painfully. A few hours before death 8 friend asked him how he stood with his maker. Have no fear for me, /" he answered in French God will pardon me; that is his part"
 The ''Florentine Nights," small book of fantastic stuff, is, in my opinion, the most characteristic production of Heine. It is, at least in subjective sense, autobiographic, and blending as it does the qualities of his other works, prose and verse, reveals the
 dyllic and the misanthropic side of his na- ture Pagan feeling, German mysticism, morbid sensibility, are interwoven in this marvellous imaginative fabric, which, look at it as we will, reveals the sheen of the ideal shot through the duller threads of the real.
 The hero, Maximilian, who is clearly Heine, relates singular experiences to young lady
 
 bound by some inexplicable tie. He tells how, when boy, he fell in love with the beautiful statue of 8 goddess which he had discovered in ruined garden. "shining forth from the high grass like Grecian revela- tion." He cannot sleep, and steals out in the moonlight to kiss it's lips. He fancies her limbs locked in deep slumber, and steps lightly, lest he waken her. My heart beat as if I were about to commit a murder, and at last kissed the lovely goddess. Never since then have I kissed with such ardor, such tenderness, such passionate despair. But the worlds wonder-hour was long since gone and his kiss could not, as Pygmalions, touch the marble to rehuent love. Maximll- l ian next tells of his passion conceived for l the Madonna of painting seen at Cologne, \ and of his falling in love with a maiden sev' 1 en years after her death. The chief interest of the narrative centers, however, about l Mlle Laurence, a being made up of Willis Bassarid, and Bayadere, whose fate is linked f for time with some travelling mountebanks the mysterious stout woman the learned | dog, and the dwarf whose triangle tinkles | forever in our ears The coloring of the 1 story is sensuously unearthly, as of disem- l bodied Giorgions. Heine's muse Is ever playing a fantasy, with the supernatural for i theme and human passions for variations 1 His personal and artistic analogue is to bt i found only in another art-in Chopin, the 1 soul of whose music, ths fitful melancholy ! l transmitted in Heine.
 After Thackeray, the deadliest enemy oi l shams in this age was Helne; but, unlike ! Thackeray, his mind was weighted with ar | insoluble sediment of cynicism. He believed l that his only defense against the insolence oi l wealth and power was satire and death l 'His dread of soft and tender emotion causes l him to accompany his noblest utterancei ! with flavor of blasphemy; to array his GU
 pids in cap and bells; to endow every one o ] his praces with club foot. His | praise turns to irony; his censure to humor
 every oollocation of things arouses his wits
 love is superseded by scorn; rapturous de light by serpsnts' stings; and al
 this too, in songs that hint of the inmos ! soul life of their author" It Is in his prose
 however that the caustic and venomous turr l iS most necessarily shown. In the mood o | Hamlet, he dropped upon all things and per
 sons his acid irony, and watched the reac tions with the eye of a speculative kobold To the authors of his exile he flung back thi | taunt: "How terrible is exile! Among lt
 saddest annoyances is the fact that it forces
 one into bad company, which cannot b | avoided unless one is willing to expose him
 self to another coalition of rogues at home.
 Some one called him an insane visionary, ant he replied ''Perhaps you are right, and
 am only a Don Quixote whose head has be
 come added by reading all sorts of wonder
 full books. My madness, to be sure, and m.
 ideas, are quite different from the knight o
 La Mancha He tried to restore the declin
 ing era of chivalry; I, on the contrary, trie
 to annihilate every vestige that remained
 remind us of it. He Eaistook wind
 mills for giants, while in the giants of o-da I can see naught but windmills. He mistoo
 leathern wine-pouches for powerful mag clans, while to me our modern magicians ar , naught but wine-pouches. He mistook beg , gars inns for castles, mule-drivers fc Knights, while look upon our ca l ties as beggars' lodging places our knights
 mule-driyers, While he mistook , puppet show for a ceremony of state T. gard our state ceremonies as mere pupps