ust have a twin melody born in the same moment and by the same
inspiration. Heine is too impressible and mercurial for any sustained
production; even in his short lyrics his tears sometimes pass into
laughter and his laughter into tears; and his longer poems, "Atta Troll"
and "Deutschland," are full of Ariosto-like transitions. His song has a
wide compass of notes; he can take us to the shores of the Northern Sea
and thrill us by the sombre sublimity of his pictures and dreamy fancies;
he can draw forth our tears by the voice he gives to our own sorrows, or
to the sorrows of "Poor Peter;" he can throw a cold shudder over us by a
mysterious legend, a ghost story, or a still more ghastly rendering of
hard reality; he can charm us by a quiet idyl, shake us with laughter at
his overflowing fun, or give us a piquant sensation of surprise by the
ingenuity of his transitions from the lofty to the ludicrous. This last
power is not, indeed, essentially poetical; but only a poet can use it
with the same success as Heine, for only a poet can poise our emotion and
expectation at such a height as to give effect to the sudden fall.
Heine's greatest power as a poet lies in his simple pathos, in the
ever-varied but always natural expression he has given to the tender
emotions. We may perhaps indicate this phase of his genius by referring
to Wordsworth's beautiful little poem, "She dwelt among the untrodden
ways;" the conclusion--

"She dwelt alone, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh!
The difference to me"--

is entirely in Heine's manner; and so is Tennyson's poem of a dozen
lines, called "Circumstance." Both these poems have Heine's pregnant
simplicity. But, lest this comparison should mislead, we must say that
there is no general resemblance between either Wordsworth, or Tennyson,
and Heine. Their greatest qualities lie quite a way from the light,
delicate lucidity, the easy, rippling music, of Heine's style. The
distinctive charm of his lyrics may best be seen by comparing them with
Goethe's. Both have the same masterly, finished simplicity and rhythmic
grace; but there is more thought mingled with Goethe's feeling--his
lyrical genius is a vessel that draws more water than Heine's, and,
though it seems to glide along with equal ease, we have a sense of
greater weight and force, accompanying the grace of its movements.

But for this very reason Heine touches o