No More Learning

Dans
SELECTIONS FROM HEGEL'S WRITINGS
THE
HE following extracts from English translations from Hegel will
serve to illustrate his difficulties of style, which appear through
a translation somewhat exaggerated on account of the impossi-
bility of rendering his technical terms into corresponding terms in
English. His writings are built up systematically, and somewhere in
his works each technical term will be found to be explained fully;
but unfortunately for his readers, he uses these terms anywhere in
their full technical significance, assuming that the reader is acquainted
with the detailed exposition which he has given somewhere else.
Such simple words as "reason," "spirit," "self-consciousness," are
used as glibly as if they meant only the ordinary mental pictures
called up by the reading public at sight of these words. But we
have seen that "spirit" implies an investigation occupying five or six
hundred pages in that most abstruse and exasperating work The
Phenomenology of Spirit. ' (1) It implies the psychological demon-
stration that self-activity is the true first principle, presupposed not
only as the basis of all life but as the basis of all inorganic nature.
(This is the step called "self-consciousness. ") (2) It presupposes the


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
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long investigation through experience of untold centuries into the
objects of nature, discovering finally their purpose in creation; and
the other phase of investigation into the action of the human will,
by which it arrives at moral and ethical forms of action. (This is
the process called "reason. ") (3) Finally, it presupposes a like inves-
tigation on the part of human experience into institutions best calcu-
lated to realize human nature, the family, civil society, the State and
the Church. (This process is called "spirit. ")
This style resembles in some degree that of treatises in higher
mathematics, wherein a simple formula of two or three terms quotes
a result which has been arrived at after one or two hundred pages
of close analytical reasoning.
In the following extracts I preface each by a brief explanation
indicating the general result, and calling attention to some of the
technical terms which contain the compendious reference here de-
scribed.
W. T. H.
TRANSITION TO THE GREEK WORLD
From the Philosophy of History
[The following passage, on the transition from the history of Egypt to
that of Greece, shows how a national consciousness which expresses itself
only in symbols passes over to one that expresses itself in the language of
thought. ]
THE
HE Egyptian Spirit has shown itself to us as in all respects
shut up within the limits of particular conceptions, and
as it were, imbruted in them; but likewise stirring itself
within these limits,-passing restlessly from one particular form
into another. This Spirit never rises to the Universal and
Higher, for it seems to be blind to that; nor does it ever with-
draw into itself: yet it symbolizes freely and boldly with partic
ular existence, and has already mastered it. All that is now
required is to posit that particular existence- which contains the
germ of ideality—as ideal, and to comprehend Universality itself,
which is already potentially liberated from the particulars involv
ing it. It is the free, joyful Spirit of Greece that accomplishes
this, and makes this its starting-point. An Egyptian priest is
reported to have said that the Greeks remain eternally children.
We may say on the contrary that the Egyptians are vigorous
boys, eager for self-comprehension, who require nothing but clear
understanding of themselves in an ideal form in order to become


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
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Young Men. In the Oriental Spirit there remains as a basis
the massive substantiality of Spirit immersed in Nature. To the
Egyptian Spirit it has become impossible-though it is still in-
volved in infinite embarrassment-to remain contented with that.
The rugged African nature disintegrated that primitive Unity, and
lighted upon the problem whose solution is Free Spirit.
THE PROBLEM
From the Philosophy of History>
[Hegel uses with great effect a quotation from a Neo-Platonist philosopher
who used the clear thoughts of Aristotle and Plato to explain the symbolic
consciousness of the Greeks. ]
THA
HAT the Spirit of the Egyptians presented itself to their con-
sciousness in the form of a problem, is evident from the
celebrated inscription in the sanctuary of the Goddess Neith
at Sais: "I am that which is, that which was, and that which
will be no one has lifted my veil. " This inscription indicates the
principle of the Egyptian Spirit; though the opinion has often
been entertained, that its purport applies to all times. Proclus
supplies the addition, "The fruit which I have produced is Helios. "
That which is clear to itself is therefore the result of, and the
solution of, the problem in question. This lucidity is Spirit —
the Son of Neith the concealed night-loving divinity. In the
Egyptian Neith, Truth is still a problem. The Greek Apollo
is its solution; his utterance is: "Man, know thyself. " In this
dictum is not intended a self-recognition that regards the special-
ties of one's own weaknesses and defects: it is not the individual
that is admonished to become acquainted with his idiosyncrasy,
but humanity in general is summoned to self-knowledge. This
mandate was given for the Greeks; and in the Greek Spirit,
humanity exhibits itself in its clear and developed condition.
Wonderfully, then, must the Greek legend surprise us, which
relates that the Sphinx- the great Egyptian symbol-appeared
in Thebes, uttering the words: "What is that which in the morn-
ing goes on four legs, at midday on two, and in the evening
on three? " Edipus, giving the solution Man, precipitated the
Sphinx from the rock. The solution and liberation of that Ori-
ental Spirit, which in Egypt had advanced so far as to propose
the problem, is certainly this: that the Inner Being (the Essence)


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
of Nature is Thought, which has its existence only in the human
consciousness. But that time-honored antique solution given by
Edipus - who thus shows himself possessed of knowledge-is
connected with a dire ignorance of the character of his own
actions. The rise of spiritual illumination in the old royal house
is disparaged by connection with abominations, the result of ignor-
ance; and that primeval royalty must-in order to attain true
knowledge and moral clearness-first be brought into shapely
form, and be harmonized with the Spirit of the Beautiful, by
civil laws and political freedom.
THE GREEK WORLD
From the Philosophy of History'
[In explaining the general characteristics of the Greek national mind,
Hegel calls attention to the fact that Greek civilization is the first appearance
of "spirit" in the world, using the word in the technical sense above described;
namely, that it is the first nationality which adopts free institutions, that is to
say, institutions which embody reason and are adapted to assist the individual
citizen to attain free reasonable action. He uses the expression, "In Greece
advancing spirit makes itself the content of its volition and its knowledge;">
meaning, as he explains later, that the Greek citizen makes it his personal
interest to adopt as his own will the will of the State; for this is the essence
of freedom. The individual citizen, too, understands the motive of the State;
that is to say, it is not a motive of some mere ruler or tyrant, but the motive
that arises in the mind of the individual citizen, as such, and declared by his
vote. He contrasts this form of spirit with a further developed one, in which
the individual citizen lays less stress upon his individual satisfaction, and looks
more to the reasonable result, even if at the cost of his individuality. One of
the finest passages in Hegel is the paragraph upon Achilles and Alexander. ]
Α
MONG the Greeks we feel ourselves immediately at home,
for we are in the region of Spirit; and though the origin
of the nation, as also its philological peculiarities, may be
traced farther, even to India, the proper Emergence, the true
Palingenesis of Spirit, must be looked for in Greece first. At an
earlier stage I compared the Greek world with the period of ado-
lescence; not indeed in that sense, that youth bears within it a
serious anticipative destiny, and consequently by the very condi-
tions of its culture urges towards [rests on] an ulterior aim,—
presenting thus an inherently incomplete and immature form, and
being then most defective when it would deem itself perfect,—but
in that sense, that youth does not yet present the activity of work,


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
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does not yet exert itself for a definite intelligent aim, but rather
exhibits a concrete freshness of the soul's life. It appears in the
sensuous actual world as Incarnate Spirit and Spiritualized Sense
[i. e. , æsthetic art], in a unity which owed its origin to Spirit.
Greece presents to us the cheerful aspect of youthful freshness,
of Spiritual vitality. It is here first that advancing Spirit makes
itself the content of its volition and its knowledge; but in such
a way that State, Family, Law, Religion, are at the same time
objects aimed at by individuality, while the latter is individuality
only in virtue of those aims. The [full-grown] man, on the other
hand, devotes his life to labor for an objective aim; which he
pursues consistently, even at the cost of his individuality.
The highest form that floated before the Greek imagination
was Achilles, the Son of the Poet, the Homeric Youth of the
Trojan War. Homer is the element in which the Greek world
lives, as man does in the air. The Greek life is a truly youthful
achievement. Achilles, the ideal youth of poetry, commenced
it; Alexander the Great, the ideal youth of reality, concluded it.
Both appear in contest with Asia: Achilles, as the principal
figure in the national expedition of the Greeks against Troy, does
not stand at its head, but is subject to the Chief of Chiefs; he
cannot be made the leader without becoming a fantastic, unten-
able conception. On the contrary, the second youth, Alexander,
-the freest and finest individuality that the real world has ever
produced,- advances to the head of this youthful life that has
now perfected itself, and accomplishes the revenge against Asia.
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIANITY
From the Philosophy of History'
[After treating Rome as a kingdom and a republic, Hegel takes up, in the
chapter on the Roman Empire, the subject of the introduction of Christianity,
making one of his profoundest (and obscurest) analyses in his discussion of
the doctrine of Christianity as related to the previous standpoints in the world
history. There is no passage in all his writings more worthy of study than
this discussion of the elements of Christianity. It contains one of his best
statements of the superiority of those forms of the State, religion, or philoso-
phy, which give the individual independent subsistence, and do not make him a
transient wave to be swallowed up by the ocean of being. Hegel has unfolded
in the Philosophy of Right,' the Philosophy of Religion,' and the Phenom-
enology of Spirit,' this insight into the substantial and permanent character
of the individual man, who possesses personal immortality. Here he treats of


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
it as the essential element in Christianity, which recognizes individual per-
sonality in the absolute, and the reflection of that permanent individuality
in human beings. In fact, Hegel sees in the doctrine of the incarnation, cruci-
fixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the adequate religious statement
of this final doctrine of the creation of the individual for immortality and
reconciliation with God. It is the doctrine of the divine-human. «The Abso-
lute Object, Truth, is Spirit; " that is to say, the object of God's thinking is
man in the highest institutional form, called in revelation the "invisible
Church" or the "City of God. » This, however, is not only the object of
God's consciousness, but also of man's as a member of the invisible Church;
and thus, as Hegel goes on to say, man realizes that the essential being of the
world is his own essential being, and thus he removes its mere objectivity,
its existence as an alien being outside of himself, which he adopts merely on
external authority, and thus comes to make it internal, subjective, seeing its
truth by his own insight and not on mere hearsay. ]
T HAS been remarked that Cæsar inaugurated the Modern
World on the side of reality, while its spiritual and inward
existence was unfolded under Augustus. At the beginning of
that empire whose principle we have recognized as finiteness and
particular subjectivity exaggerated to infinitude, the salvation of
the World had its birth in the same principle of subjectivity,—
viz. , as a particular person, in abstract subjectivity, but in such a
way that conversely, finiteness is only the form of his appear-
ance, while infinity and absolutely independent existence con-
stitute the essence and substantial being which it embodies. The
Roman World as it has been described-in its desperate condi-
tion and the pain of abandonment by God-came to an open
rupture with reality, and made prominent the general desire for
a satisfaction such as can only be attained in "the inner man,"
the Soul, thus preparing the ground for a higher Spiritual
World. Rome was the Fate that crushed down the gods and all
genial life in its hard service, while it was the power that puri-
fied the human heart from all specialty. Its entire condition is
therefore analogous to a place of birth, and its pain is like the
travail-throes of another and higher Spirit, which manifested
itself in connection with the Christian Religion. This higher
Spirit involves the reconciliation and emancipation of Spirit;
while man obtains the consciousness of Spirit in its universality
and infinity. The Absolute Object, Truth, is Spirit; and as man
himself is Spirit, he is present [is mirrored] to himself in that
object, and thus in his Absolute Object has found Essential
Being and his own essential being. But in order that the object-
ivity of Essential Being may be done away with, and Spirit be
-


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7179
no longer alien to itself,-may be with itself [self-harmonized],
the Naturalness of Spirit, that in virtue of which man is a
special empirical existence, must be removed; so that the alien
element may be destroyed, and the reconciliation of Spirit be
accomplished.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
From the Philosophy of History>
[Hegel goes on to show the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity, as
a symbol of this deep truth. He discusses the appearance of concrete sub-
jective caprice in the Greek national mind, and the abstract subjective mind
in the Roman national mind, especially in the right of private property, in
goods and chattels, and in land,- a right which realized for the citizen a
sphere of free individuality. ]
G
OD is thus recognized as Spirit only when known as the Tri-
une. This new principle is the axis on which the History
of the World turns. This is the goal and the starting-point
of History. "When the fullness of the time was come, God sent
his Son," is the statement of the Bible. This means nothing else
than that self-consciousness had reached the phases of development
[momente] whose resultant constitutes the Idea of Spirit, and had
come to feel the necessity of comprehending those phases abso-
lutely. This must now be more fully explained. We said of the
Greeks, that the law for their Spirit was "Man, know thyself. "
The Greek Spirit was a consciousness of Spirit, but under a lim-
ited form, having the element of Nature as an essential ingre-
dient. Spirit may have had the upper hand, but the unity of
the superior and the subordinate was itself still Natural. Spirit
appeared as specialized in the idiosyncrasies of the genius of the
several Greek nationalities and of their divinities, and was repre-
sented by Art, in whose sphere the Sensuous is elevated only to
the middle ground of beautiful form and shape, but not to pure
Thought. The element of Subjectivity that was wanting in the
Greeks we found among the Romans; but as it was merely
formal and in itself indefinite, it took its material from passion
and caprice; - even the most shameful degradations could be here
connected with a divine dread [vide the declaration of Hispala
respecting the Bacchanalia, Livy xxxix. 13]. This element of
subjectivity is afterwards further realized as Personality of Indi-
viduals a realization which is exactly adequate to the principle,


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
and is equally abstract and formal. As such an Ego [such a per-
sonality], I am infinite to myself, and my phenomenal existence
consists in the property recognized as mine, and the recognition
of my personality. This inner existence goes no further; all
the applications of the principle merge in this. Individuals are
thereby posited as atoms; but they are at the same time subject
to the severe rule of the One, which, as monas monadum, is a
power over private persons [the connection between the ruler
and the ruled is not mediated by the claim of Divine or of Con-
stitutional Right, or any general principle, but is direct and indi-
vidual, the Emperor being the immediate lord of each subject in
the Empire]. That Private Right is therefore, ipso facto, a nul-
lity, an ignoring of the personality; and the supposed condition of
Right turns out to be an absolute destitution of it. This contra-
diction is the misery of the Roman World.
THE NATURE OF EVIL
From the Philosophy of History'
[This free individuality, founded on the ownership of property, was not
balanced by a freedom in the Roman imperial government. In relation to the
Emperor everything was uncertain. All the nations of Europe, Asia, and
Africa were brought under the yoke of the Roman law. Deprived of his
local religion, of his local rulers, and of all his special aims, Rome and the
Roman Empire were placed before man as supreme object of his will, and
there arose a feeling of longing, an unsatisfied aspiration. Hegel compares this
feeling to that expressed in the Psalms of David and in the Prophets. This
is a remarkable commentary on the expression "The fullness of time was
come. " He makes a discrimination between the consciousness of sin revealed
in the Old Testament, and the shallow idea of error or evil, giving a profound
significance to the idea of the Fall. ]
THE
HE higher condition in which the soul itself feels pain and
longing-in which man is not only "drawn," but feels that
the drawing is into himself [into his own inmost nature]—
is still absent. What has been reflection on our part must arise
in the mind of the subject of this discipline in the form of a
consciousness that in himself he is miserable and null. Outward
suffering must, as already said, be merged in a sorrow of the
inner man. He must feel himself as the negation of himself; he
must see that his misery is the misery of his nature-that he
is in himself a divided and discordant being. This state of mind,


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7181
this self-chastening, this pain occasioned by our individual noth-
ingness, the wretchedness of our [isolated] self, and the longing
to transcend this condition of soul,- must be looked for else-
where than in the properly Roman World. It is this which
gives to the Jewish People their World-Historical importance and
weight; for from this state of mind arose that higher phase in
which Spirit came to absolute self-consciousness-passing from
that alien form of being which is its discord and pain, and
mirroring itself in its own essence. The state of feeling in ques-
tion we find expressed most purely and beautifully in the Psalms
of David, and in the Prophets; the chief burden of whose utter-
ances is the thirst of the soul after God; its profound sorrow
for its transgressions, the desire for righteousness and holiness.
Of this Spirit we have the mythical representation at the very
beginning of the Jewish canonical books, in the account of the
Fall. Man, created in the image of God, lost, it is said, his state
of absolute contentment, by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge
of Good and Evil. Sin consists here only in Knowledge; this
is the sinful element, and by it man is stated to have trifled
away his Natural happiness. This is a deep truth, that evil lies
in consciousness: for the brutes are neither evil nor good; the
merely Natural Man quite as little. Consciousness occasions
the separation of the Ego, in its boundless freedom as arbitrary
choice, from the pure essence of the Will,— i. e. , from the Good.
Knowledge, as the disannulling of the unity of mere Nature,
is the "Fall"; which is no casual conception, but the eternal
history of Spirit. For the state of innocence, the paradisiacal
condition, is that of the brute. Paradise is a park, where only
brutes, not men, can remain. For the brute is one with God
only implicitly [not consciously]. Only Man's Spirit [that is]
has a self-cognizant existence. This existence for self, this
consciousness, is at the same time separation from the Universal
and Divine Spirit. If I hold in my abstract Freedom, in contra-
position to the Good, I adopt the standpoint of Evil.


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
THE FALL
From the Philosophy of History>
[The Fall is the eternal mythus of man, stating the arrival of man to a
deeper consciousness of his true self,- his union with the divine-human and
his wide separation between his real and his ideal; the necessity for a recon-
ciliation of the two. A further interpretation of the Old Testament doctrine
of the fall of man and the history of the chosen people. ]
THE
HE Fall is therefore the eternal Mythus of Man; in fact, the
very transition by which he becomes man. Persistence in
this standpoint is, however, Evil, and the feeling of pain at
such a condition, and of longing to transcend it, we find in David,
when he says: "Lord, create for me a pure heart, a new stead-
fast Spirit. " This feeling we observe even in the account of
the Fall; though an announcement of reconciliation is not made
there, but rather one of continuance in misery. Yet we have in
this narrative the prediction of reconciliation in the sentence,
"The Serpent's head shall be bruised;" but still more profoundly
expressed where it is stated that when God saw that Adam had
eaten of that tree, he said, “Behold, Adam is become as one of
us, knowing Good and Evil. " God confirms the words of the
Serpent. Implicitly and explicitly, then, we have the truth that
man through Spirit-through cognition of the Universal and the
Particular comprehends God himself. But it is only God that
declares this, not man; the latter remains, on the contrary, in
a state of internal discord. The joy of reconciliation is still dis-
from humanity; the absolute and final repose of his whole
being is not yet discovered to man. It exists, in the first in-
stance, only for God. As far as the present is concerned, the
feeling of pain at his condition is regarded as a final award.
The satisfaction which man enjoys at first, consists in the finite
and temporal blessings conferred on the Chosen Family and the
possession of the Land of Canaan. His repose is not found in
God. Sacrifices are, it is true, offered to Him in the Temple,
and atonement made by outward offerings and inward penitence.
But that mundane satisfaction in the Chosen Family, and its
possession of Canaan, was taken from the Jewish people in the
chastisement inflicted by the Roman Empire. The Syrian kings
did indeed oppress it, but it was left for the Romans to annul
its individuality. The Temple of Zion is destroyed; the God-
serving nation is scattered to the winds. Here every source of
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7183
satisfaction is taken away, and the nation is driven back to the
standpoint of that primeval Mythus, the standpoint of that pain-
ful feeling which humanity experiences when thrown upon itself.
Opposed to the universal Fatum of the Roman World, we have.
here the consciousness of Evil and the direction of the mind
Godwards. All that remains to be done is, that this fundamental
idea should be expanded to an objective universal sense, and be
taken as the concrete existence of man as the completion of
his nature. Formerly the Land of Canaan, and themselves as
the people of God, had been regarded by the Jews as that con-
crete and complete existence. But this basis of satisfaction is
now lost, and thence arises the sense of misery and failure of
hope in God, with whom that happy reality had been essentially
connected. Here, then, misery is not the stupid immersion in a
blind Fate, but a boundless energy of longing. Stoicism taught
only that the Negative is not—that pain must not be recognized
as a veritable existence: but Jewish feeling persists in acknowl-
edging Reality and desires harmony and reconciliation within its.
sphere; for that feeling is based on the Oriental Unity of Nature,
-i. e. , the unity of Reality, of Subjectivity, with the substance
of the One Essential Being. Through the loss of mere outward
reality Spirit is driven back within itself; the side of reality is
thus refined to Universality, through the reference of it to the
One.
―
――――――――――
THE ATONEMENT
From the Philosophy of History>
<
[The Persian idea of good and evil (Ormuzd and Ahriman) is not much
deeper than that of light and darkness, but in the Old Testament it becomes
the distinction between holiness and sin. Hegel points out the infinite depth
of subjectivity or personal self-realization that is involved in consciousness of
sin. He shows how "that unrest of infinite sorrow" passes over into a con-
sciousness of the infinite gain of reconciliation with the Divine when "The
fullness of time was come. "]
THE
HE Oriental antithesis of Light and Darkness is transferred to
Spirit, and the Darkness becomes Sin. For the abnegation
of reality there is no compensation but Subjectivity itself —
the Human Will as intrinsically universal; and thereby alone
does reconciliation become possible. Sin is the discerning of
Good and Evil as separation; but this discerning likewise heals.


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
the ancient hurt, and is the fountain of infinite reconciliation.
The discerning in question brings with it the destruction of that
which is external and alien in consciousness, and is consequently
the return of subjectivity into itself. This, then, adopted into
the actual self-consciousness of the World, is the Reconciliation
[atonement] of the World. From that unrest of infinite sorrow
in which the two sides of the antithesis stand related to each
other is developed the unity of God with Reality [which latter
had been posited as negative],-i. e. , with Subjectivity which had
been separated from Him. The infinite loss is counterbalanced
only by its infinity, and thereby becomes infinite gain. The rec
ognition of the identity of the Subject and God was introduced
into the World when the fullness of Time was come: the con-
sciousness of this identity is the recognition of God in his true
essence. The material of Truth is Spirit itself inherent vital
movement. The nature of God as pure Spirit is manifested to
man in the Christian Religion.
-


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7185
HEINRICH HEINE
(1799-1856)
BY RICHARD BURTON
I
F QUALITY is to decide a writer's position, Heinrich Heine
stands with the few great poets and literary men of Ger-
many. His lyrics at their best have not been surpassed in
his own land, and rank with the masterpieces of their kind in world
literature. As a prose writer he had extraordinary brilliancy, vigor
of thought, and grace of form, and as a thinker he must be regarded
as one of the pioneers of modern ideas in our century. In German
criticism, because of his Semitic blood-his pen not seldom dipped
in gall when he wrote of the Fatherland—and his defects of char-
acter, full justice has not been done to him as singer and sayer. It
remained for an English critic, Matthew Arnold, to define his true
place in the literature of our time. A brief survey of his life will
make this plainer.
A main thing to remember of Heine the man is, that he was an
upper-class Jew. The services of this wonderful people to art, let-
ters, and philosophy, as well as to politics and finance, are familiar.
This boy of Düsseldorf was one of the most gifted of the race of
Mendelssohn and Rothschild, Rachel and Rubinstein, Chopin and
Disraeli. Born in that picturesque old Rhine town, December 12th
(or 13th), 1799,- he just missed, as he said, being one of the first
men of the century,- his father was a wealthy merchant, his mother
a Van Geldern, daughter of a noted physician and statesman. He
received a good education, first in a Jesuit monastery, then-after
an attempt to establish him at Hamburg in mercantile life, which to
the disappointment of his family proved utterly distasteful in the
German universities of Bonn and Göttingen. The law was thought
of as a profession; but this necessitated his becoming a Christian, for
at the time in Germany all the learned callings were closed to Jews.
Heine, though not a believer in the religion of his people, was in
thorough sympathy with their wrongs, always the champion of their
cause: deeply must he have felt the humiliation of this enforced
apostasy, which was performed in 1825, in his twenty-sixth year, the
baptismal registry reading "Johann Christian Heine," names he
never made use of as a writer. Doubtless the iron entered his soul
XII-450


## p. 7186 (#588) ###########################################

7186
HEINRICH HEINE-
in the act. Before his study at Göttingen, which resulted in his
securing a law degree, Heine spent several years in Berlin, and pub-
lished a volume of verse there in 1822 without success. Letters
which he carried from the poet Schlegel secured him, however, the
entrée of leading houses, where he met in familiar intercourse Cha-
misso, Hegel, and like noted folk, and became the centre of social
interest as he read from manuscript, essays and poems which were
later to give him fame when grouped together in the volume en-
titled 'Reisebilder' (Sketches of Travel), containing his most famous
work in the essay form; his Buch der Lieder' (Book of Songs),
which followed soon thereafter, performing the same service for his
reputation as poet.
He made no professional use of his legal lore,
but traveled and tasted life. The years from 1827 to 1830 were spent
mostly in Munich and Berlin. Heine took an active part in the jour-
nalistic and literary life of these cities, and drove his pen steadily as
a doughty free-lance of letters in the cause of intellectual emanci-
pation. A satiric pamphlet against the nobility in 1830, the year of
the July Revolution in France, made him fear for his personal lib-
erty; and the next year he removed to Paris, and began the life
there which was to end only in his death a quarter-century later.
A liaison with a grisette resulted in his marriage with her; and
their quarrelsome, affectionate life together has been often limned.
In the capital that has fascinated so many distinguished spirits-at
first well, and happy, and seen in society, making occasional journeys
abroad; later poor, sick, with gall in his pen and with a swarm of
enemies- Heine passed this long period of his life, chained during
the ten final years to what he called in grim metaphor his "mattress
grave. "
His disease was a spinal affection, resulting in slow paraly-
sis, loss of sight, the withering of his limbs. No more terrible picture
is offered in the personal annals of literature than that of the once
gay poet, writhing in his bed through sleepless nights, the sight of
one eye gone, the drooping lid of the other lifted by the hand that
he might see to use the pen. "I saw the body all shrunk together,
from which his legs hung down without signs of life," says his sister,
who visited him in Paris the year before he died. "I had to gather
all my powers of self-control in order to support in quiet the horri-
ble sight. " The volumes of letters and other memorabilia published
in recent years plainly set forth the dual nature of this man: his
querulousness, equivocations, and jealousies; his impulsive affection.
towards his near of kin. The French government granted him a
pension for his services as revolutionary writer, and it came in the
nick of time; for on the death in 1844 of his rich uncle Solomon
Heine, who for years had granted him an allowance, it was found
that no provision for its maintenance had been made in the will.


## p. 7187 (#589) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
7187
Heine's bitterness under the heavy hand of Fate comes out pathet-
ically in his latest poems and letters. "I am no longer," he wrote,
"a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down
upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor, fatally ill Jew,
an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man. " His mind remained
wonderfully clear to the end, as his literary work testifies; and at
least he had the courage of his convictions, contemptuously repudiat-
ing the rumor that his former skepticism had been changed in the
fiery alembic of suffering. His impious jest on his death-bed is typi-
cal, whether apocryphal or not: "God will forgive me: it is his line
of business" ("c'est son métier »).
It may be said that there is a touch of heroism in the fact that
for so long he refused to end an existence of such agony by his own
violent act, enduring until Nature gave him release, which she did
but tardily, when he had passed his fifty-sixth year, February 17th,
1856. He was buried in the cemetery of Montmartre, without any
religious ceremony, as he wished,- a conclusion in key with his whole
manner of life,-preserving his Bohemianism to the very grave's
edge. It is likely that this terrible closing couplet from his poem on
Morphine summed up his feeling honestly enough:-
"Lo, sleep is good; better is death; in sooth,
The best of all were never to be born. »
Yet skepticism was not his constant attitude; a man of moods, he
could write shortly before his taking-off: "I suffer greatly, but sup-
port my wretchedness with submission to the unfathomable will of
God. " And it is but justice to add that in his will he declared that
his intellectual pride was broken, and that he had come to rest in
the truths of religion. It is by these inconsistencies and warring emo-
tions that glimpses of the man's complex, elusive nature are gained.
In his younger days Heine is described as a handsome fellow, slight
of figure, blond, with a poetic paleness and an air of distinction.
Later he became corpulent: his sad physical presentment during the
final years is finely indicated in the Hasselriis statue of the poet
erected at Corfu by the Empress of Austria.
Heine's long Parisian residence, his Gallic inoculation, have been
the theme of countless animadversions. He has been painted as a
man without a country, a turncoat, and a traitor. Certain facts must
be borne in mind in passing judgment upon him. As a boy in Düs-
seldorf he breathed the atmosphere of the French Revolution, and
grew up an enthusiast of the cause, calling himself its "child. " The
French, again, were the people who, as Arnold remarks, made it pos-
sible for the Jews in Germany to find wide activities for the exercise
of their talents. His own land proscribed his works: in France, when


## p. 7188 (#590) ###########################################

7188
HEINRICH HEINE
he had mastered the tongue, his works which appeared in French
won him speedy applause, and he was hailed as the wittiest writer
since Voltaire. And to pass from external to internal, there was much
in Heine to respond to the peculiarly French traits: flashing wit,
lightness of touch, charm of form, lucidity of expression. Small
wonder, then, that he crossed the Rhine and took up his abode in
the city which has always been a centre of enlightened thinking. In
spite of all his sympathy, temperamental and intellectual, for things.
French, Heine never forgot that he was a German poet, nor was love
for the Fatherland killed in his soul. There is a proud ring in his
well-known lines:-
"I am a German poet
Of goodly German fame:
Where their best names are spoken,
Mine own they are sure to name. »
The estimates of Heine on his personal side range from parti-
san eulogium to savage and sweeping condemnation. Perhaps it is
safest to regard him as a man of complex nature and warring tend-
encies, in whom faults of character were accentuated by the events
of his career. He was sensitive to morbidity, irascible, dissolute in
his youth, paying in after days for his excesses the fearful penalty
of a slow torturous disease. He had a waspish tendency to sting an
enemy, and was quick to take offense from friends. His mocking
spirit of contradiction was not above sacrificing justice and purity
to its ends; he was at times, in his writings, sensual, ribald, blas-
phemous. It is fair to plead in partial extenuation the early mis-
appreciation of his kinsfolk, the hostility towards his race, and the
exigencies of his subsequent battle for bread, reputation, and the
victory of ideas. On the other hand, it is weak sentimentality or
purblind favoritism to represent Heine as a hero ill-starred by for-
tune. He was far from an admirable character, and no whitewashing
can make him so: his greatest enemy came from within. He was
one who, like Louie in 'David Grieve,' was at death "freed from the
fierce burden" of himself.
As a lyric poet Heine is incomparable. It is in this form that
the German genius finds finest, freest expression, and the student of
German literature must still point to Goethe and Heine as its chief
exponents; nor in lyric expression need the latter yield to the former.
The representative pieces hereinafter printed, with others of like
quality, are among the precious bits of poetry which the world has
taken forever to its heart. No translation can give an adequate idea
of their haunting perfection, their magic of diction and witchery of
music. The reader unfamiliar with German and making Heine's
acquaintance at second hand needs to understand this impossibility;


## p. 7189 (#591) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
7189
otherwise the poet's due praise may seem rhetorical and excessive.
It is said to take a thief to catch a thief: quite as truly does it take
a poet to catch a poet, and the task is far more difficult.
To get a
first-hand knowledge of Heine lends in itself a zest to the learning
of his tongue. The characteristics of these lyrics may be defined in
few words. As to form, the poet wisely seized upon the popular
ballad measures of older German literature, and in rhythms, stanzas,
and diction, clung for the most part to those homely creations,
thereby giving his work a natural touch and archaic flavor, blending
to produce an effect of simplicity and directness which really hide.
consummate art. No lyrist has had more genuine songfulness, the
last test of the true lyric; in proof, witness the frequency with which
his most familiar poems have been set to music by the gifted com-
posers of his own and other lands.
But Heine was not alone the singer: he was critic and satirist as
well. Even the exquisite deep romanticism of his lyrics is sometimes
rudely broken by his own sneering laugh; it is as if the critical in
him had of a sudden made him ashamed of his own emotion. One
of his German critics has said that he bore a laughing tear-drop on
his escutcheon: the flowery phrase denotes this mingling of song and
satire in his work. The impish anticlimax of some of his loveliest
utterances is one of the grievous things his admirers have to forgive.
Heine, in his earlier spontaneous poetry a romanticist of the roman-
ticists, came to perceive intellectually that the work of the so-called
Romantic school in Germany must give way to an incoming age of
scientific learning and modern ideas; that because it looked backward
to the Middle Ages, the movement was wrong. And in this convic-
tion he set himself to fight the old and hail the new. However this
perception may prove his prophetic insight, it would have been bet-
ter for his poetry had he remained in bondage to romanticism. When
in a love poem which opens tenderly, he concludes with this stanza:
"Dearest friend, thou art in love,
And that love must be confessed;
For I see thy glowing heart
Plainly scorching through thy vest,"-
-
one feels that the poet gets his effect of fun at too costly a price.
Parody, to pay, must gain more than it loses. The doubt of the
singer's sincerity is never quite shaken off. There is reason for call-
ing Heine "the mocking-bird of the singing grove. "
As an essay-writer, Heine's substantial reputation rests upon the
'Reisebilder,' those gay, audacious, charming, bitter travel sketches
of mingled verse and prose, in the main descriptive of his wander-
ings through Germany, and of the most varied theme and tone:


## p. 7190 (#592) ###########################################

7190
HEINRICH HEINE
now beautiful rhapsodies on the scenes of nature; now quaint pict-
ures of life in city or country, painted with Dutch-like fidelity and
realism; now rapier thrusts of wit; again powerful diatribes against
existing conventions, or personal attacks upon fellow writers, as in
his ill-judged and wanton onslaught upon the romantic bard, the
Count von Platen. Far from being all of a piece, these phantasy
sketches are of very unequal merit, ranging from the exquisite lyric
work of the opening section and the delightful narrative of his expe-
riences in the Hartz Mountains, to the sparkling indecencies of the
division dealing with Italy, and the more labored argument and sat-
ire of the English Fragments. Of the 'Reisebilder' as a whole it
may be said that inspiration grows steadily less in the successive
parts. The portion penned in Heine's early twenties deservedly
caught the fancy of Europe by the polish and poetry, the striking
manner and daring thought it possessed. The writer laughs at the
traditions of learning in his native land, he pricks with the sword of
satire the ponderous German sentimentality, and he fights with all
the weapons in the arsenal of a gifted wit for that modern thing,
Liberty, liberty of conscience, action, opinion. The point of view
was new in the literature of the early century, dosed as it was with
heavy romanticism and in awe of the old for its own sake. The
style was of unprecedented vigor and brilliance: it is easy to under-
stand why he took his wide audience by storm, and became the liter-
ary force of the day. To say a wise, keen thing in a light way, to
say it directly yet with grace, calls for a beautiful talent. To accom-
plish this in and with the German language is a double triumph. All
Heine's later writings, prose or poetry,- and during his residence in
Paris he published numerous works,-are developments or after-
echoes of his travel sketches and Book of Songs. Some of them
are simply high-class journalism: his critical faculty and graces of
manner are best represented by the critique on the Romantic school,
which is wise in forecasting the new literary ideals, and a model of
clearness and elegance. But for the general reader it will suffice to
make the acquaintance of the inimitable 'Reisebilder' and the 'Buch
der Lieder,' born of his youth and meridian of genius.
As a thinker, a force in the development of modern ideas,— the
ideas of liberty in its application to politics, science, education, and
religion, Heine was a torch-bearer of his time. In his remarkable
essay upon the German poet, Matthew Arnold gives him full credit
for this influence,- possibly exaggerating it. The sympathy between
the enlightened Jew who railed at perfunctoriness in Church and
State, and the English radical who rebukes his fellow islanders for
their lack of devotion to the Idea, naturally made Arnold the other's
champion. Both attacked the Philistine and saw the movement of the
-


## p. 7191 (#593) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
7191
Time-spirit. But if the Englishman goes too far in declaring Heine
"the most important German successor and continuator of Goethe in
Goethe's most important line of activity," that of "a soldier in the
war of liberation of humanity,”—it is equally true that his estimate
hits nearer the mark than the misappreciations of too many critics of
his own country. Heine was an individualist, an iconoclast, satirizing
with trenchant power existing abuses, as Ibsen in later days has done
in Norway, a service which Carlyle with Juvenalian vigor performed
for England. This mission is at the best a thankless one; especially
so when, as in the case of Heine, the character of the prophet is full
of flaws. Yet is the work none the less valuable.
Heine's sentiment had in it much of the morbid, and in this
aspect he might not inaptly be dubbed decadent; using the word as it
is applied in latter-day literature, to denote what is unwholesome,
extravagant, or bestial. But intellectually he saw clear, and was at
bottom sane. His mind was too broad and vigorous, too incisive, for
any other result.
But in the ultimate decision, and in spite of his acidulous force as
a dissolvent of outworn thoughts, Heinrich Heine's chief fame must
rest on his wonderful poetry; he was a poet called to song, who,
when true to his highest inspiration, was a romantic bard of the
first rank in lyric utterance. With his music in our ears, we can for-
get if not condone the blots on his career, the unequal quality of his
production, growing pensive over the strange commingling in this
man of Divine gifts and human defects. He is another of those clay
vessels shaped by the hand of the mystic Potter to hold precious
wine, for the stimulation and joy of his kind.
Richard Burton.
ATLAS
Α'
H ME, most wretched Atlas! All the world,
The whole great world of sorrow I am bearing;
I bear what is unbearable, and breaking
Is now my heart within me.
Thou haughty heart, thou hast now what thou wouldst!
For happy thou wouldst be, supremely happy,
Else be supremely wretched, haughty heart;
And lo! now art thou wretched.
Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.


## p. 7192 (#594) ###########################################

7192
HEINRICH HEINE
THE LORELEI
KNOW not whence it rises,
I
This thought so full of woe;
But a tale of times departed
Haunts me, and will not go.
The air is cool, and it darkens,
And calmly flows the Rhine;
The mountain peaks are sparkling
In the sunny evening-shine.
And yonder sits a maiden,
The fairest of the fair:
With gold is her garment glittering,
As she combs her golden hair;
With a golden comb she combs it;
And a wild song singeth she,
That melts the heart with a wondrous
And powerful melody.
The boatman feels his bosom
With a nameless longing move;
He sees not the gulfs before him,
His gaze is fixed above;
Till over the boat and boatman
The Rhine's deep waters run:
And this, with her magic singing,
The Lorelei has done!
T"
From the Edinburgh Review.
PINE AND PALM
HERE stands a lonely pine-tree
In the north, on a barren height;
He sleeps while the ice and snowflakes
Swathe him in folds of white.
He dreameth of a palm-tree
Far in the sunrise land,
Lonely and silent longing
On her burning bank of sand.
'Poems and Ballads': Translated, and copyright 1881, by Emma Lazarus.


## p. 7193 (#595) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
LOVE SONGS
HOU Seemest like a flower,
So pure and fair and bright;
A melancholy yearning
Steals o'er me at thy sight.
THOU
I fain would lay in blessing
My hands upon thy hair;
Imploring God to keep thee
So bright, and pure, and fair.
THOU fairest fisher-maiden,
Row thy boat to the land.
Come here and sit beside me,
Whispering, hand in hand.
Lay thy head on my bosom,
And have no fear of me;
For carelessly thou trustest
Daily the savage sea.
My heart is like the ocean,
With storm and ebb and flow;
And many a pearl lies hidden
Within its depths below.
THE Ocean hath its pearls,
The heaven hath its stars,
But oh! my heart, my heart,
My heart hath its love.
Great are the sea and the heavens,
But greater is my heart;
And fairer than pearls or stars
Glistens and glows my love.
7193
Thou little youthful maiden,
Come unto my mighty heart!
My heart, and the sea, and the heavens
Are melting away with love.
'Poems and Ballads': Translated, and copyright 1881, by Emma Lazarus.


## p. 7194 (#596) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
7194
MY HEART WITH HIDDEN TEARS IS SWELLING
Y HEART with hidden tears is swelling,
I muse upon the days long gone;
The world was then a cozy dwelling,
And people's lives flowed smoothly on.
Mỹ
Now all's at sixes and at sevens,
Our life's a whirl, a strife for bread;
There is no God in all the heavens,
And down below the Devil's dead.
And all things look so God-forsaken,
So topsy-turvy, cold, and bare;
And if our wee bit love were taken,
There'd be no living anywhere.
A
E
Translation of Ernest Beard.
WILL SHE COME?
VERY morning hears me query:
Will she come to-day?
Every evening answers, weary:
Still she stays away.
In my nights of lonely weeping,
Sleep I never know;
Dreaming, like a man half sleeping,
Through the day I go.
KATHARINA
Translation of Ernest Beard.
LUSTROUS star has risen on my night,
A star which beams sweet comfort from its light,
And brightens all my earthly lot;
Deceive me not!
Like as still moonward swells the heaving sea,
So swells and flows my soul, so wild and free,
Aloft to that resplendent spot,—
Deceive me not!
Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.


## p. 7195 (#597) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
7195
GOLD
From the Romances >
SAY
AY, my golden ducats, say,
Whither are you fled away?
Are ye with the golden fishes
In the little rushing river,
Gaily darting hither, thither?
Are ye with the golden blossoms.
On the meadows green and fair,
Sparkling in the dewy air?
Are ye with the golden songsters
Sweeping through the azure sky,
Flashing splendor to the eye?
Are ye with the golden stars,
Clusters of refulgent light.
Smiling through the summer night?
Well-a-day! my golden ducats
Do not in the river lie,
Do not sparkle in the dew,
Do not flash across the blue,
Do not twinkle in the sky:
But my creditors can tell
Where my golden ducats dwell.
GLIMPSES
Translation of Ernest Beard.
From the Romances >
HEN Spring with her sunshine revisits the Earth,
WHE The buds peep out and the blossoms shake;
W"
When the Moon on her nightly course sails forth,
The little stars swim in her shimmering wake;
When sweet eyes trouble the poet's gaze.
They touch the note of a thousand lays.
Yet eyes, and songs, and blossoming flowers,
And splendor of Sun or of Moon or of Star,
However beautiful such things are,
Are far from being this world of ours.
Translation of Ernest Beard.


## p. 7196 (#598) ###########################################

7196
HEINRICH HEINE
THE
THE FISHER'S HUT
HE ocean shimmered far around,
As the last sun-rays shone;
We sat beside the fisher's hut,
Silent and all alone.
The mist swam up, the water heaved,
The sea-mew round us screamed;
And from thy dark eyes, full of love,
The scalding tear-drops streamed.
I saw them fall upon thy hand;
Upon my knee I sank,
And from that white and yielding hand
The glittering tears I drank.
And since that hour I waste away,
Mid passion's hopes and fears:
O weeping girl! O weary heart! -
Thou'rt poisoned with her tears!
Translation of Charles G. Leland.
IN THE FISHER'S CABIN
WⓇ
E SAT in the fisher's cabin,
Looking out upon the sea;
Then came the mists of evening,
Ascending silently.
The lights began in the light-house
One after one to burn,
And on the far horizon
A ship we could still discern.
We spake of storm and shipwreck,
The sailor and how he thrives,
And how betwixt heaven and ocean,
And joy and sorrow he strives;
We spake of distant countries,
South, North, and everywhere,
And of the curious people
And curious customs there;


## p. 7197 (#599) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
The fragrance and light of the Ganges,
That giant trees embower,
Where a beautiful, tranquil people
Kneel to the lotus flower;
Of the unclean folk in Lapland,
Broad-mouthed and flat-headed and small,
Who cower upon the hearthstone,
Bake fish, and cackle, and squall.
The maidens listened gravely;
Then never a word was said.
The ship we could see no longer:
It was far too dark o'erhead.
'Poems and Ballads': Translated, and copyright 1881, by Emma Lazarus.
THE GRAMMAR OF THE STARS
A
THOUSAND years unmoving
The stars have stood above,
On one another gazing
With the pain of yearning love.
They speak a wondrous language
So sweet and rich and grand;
Yet none of the famous linguists
A word can understand.
But I have learned this language
Which naught from my heart can erase;
The grammar that I studied
Was my little sweetheart's face.
7197
Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.
SONNETS TO HIS MOTHER
O BEAR me proudly is my custom aye;
My spirit too unbending is, and high;
What though the King should look me in the eye?
I would not flinch, or turn my head away.
Yet, dearest mother, let me truly say:
Whatever else my stubborn pride deny,
When to thy loving, trustful side I fly,
Submissive awe possesses me alway.


## p. 7198 (#600) ###########################################

7198
HEINRICH HEINE
Is it the secret influence of thy soul,
Thy lofty soul, that reaches every goal
And like the lightning flashes to and fro ?
Or bitter pangs of memory, that proceed
From countless acts that caused thy heart to bleed,—
That dearest heart, that ever loved me so?
I LEFT thee lately in my frenzied state,
Resolved to wander all the wide world o'er,
To ask for love on every distant shore,-
Love that alone might ease my spirit's weight.
I sought for love from early morn till late;
With fevered hand I knocked at every door
In Love his name, a token to implore,
Yet never gathered aught but chilling hate.
And on, and ever on, with growing pain
I searched for Love through many a heavy mile;
Till, sick and weary, to my homestead turning,
Thou camest to greet me with a mother's smile,-
And there, upon thy dearest features burning,
I saw that Love I long had sought in vain.
Translation of Ernest Beard.
B
THE JEWELS
LUE sapphires are those eyes of thine,
Those eyes so sweet and tender:
Oh, three times happy is the man
Whom they shall happy render!
Thy heart's a diamond, pure and clear,
With radiance overflowing:
Oh, three times happy is the man
Who sets that heart a-glowing!
Red rubies are those lips of thine-
Love ne'er did fairer fashion:
Oh, three times happy is the man
Who hears their vows of passion!
Oh, could I know that fortunate man,
And meet him unattended
Beneath the forest trees so green
His luck would soon be ended!
Translation of Ernest Beard.


## p. 7199 (#601) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
VOICES FROM THE TOMB
From 'Dream Pictures >
I
WENT to the house of my lady fair,
I wandered in madness and dark despair;
And as by the church-yard I went my way,
Sadly the gravestones signed me to stay.
The minstrel's tombstone made me a sign,
In the glimmering light of the pale moon's shine:
"Good brother, I'm coming," wild whispering flow
Pale as a cloud from the grave it rose.
―
'Twas the harper himself: from the grave he flits;
High on the tombstone the harper sits;
O'er the strings of the cithern his fingers sweep,
And he sings, in a voice right harsh and deep:-
-
"What! know ye yet that song of old,
Which through the heart once deeply rolled,
Ye strings now slow to move?
The angels call it heaven's joy,
The devils call it hell's annoy,
But mortals call it love! "
"Love, Love, it was thy might
Laid us in these beds with right,
Closed our eyelids from the light:
Wherefore call'st thou in the night? "
7199
Scarce had sounded the last word's tone,
Ere the graves were opened, every one,
And airy figures came pressing out,
And sweep round the minstrel, while shrill they shout:-
Translation of Charles G. Leland.


## p.