ounding upward to recline on the clouds.

"A mixture of description of nature, wit, poetry, and observation a la
Washington Irving" Heine himself called the _Journey to the Hartz_.
The novelty lay in the mixture, and in the fact that though the
ingredients are, so to speak, potentized in the highest degree, they
are brought to nearly perfect congruence and fusion by the
irresistible solvent of the second named. The _Journey to the Hartz_
is a work of wit, in the present sense, and in the older sense of
that word. It is a product of superior intelligence--not a _Sketch
Book_, but a single canvas with an infinitude of details; not a
_Sentimental Journey_--although Heine can outdo Sterne in
sentimentality, he too persistently outdoes him also in satire--the
work, fragmentary and outwardly formless, is in essence thoroughly
informed by a two-fold purpose: to ridicule pedantry and philistinism,
and to extol nature and the life of those uncorrupted by the world.

A similar unity is unmistakable in the _Book of Songs_. It would be
difficult to find another volume of poems so cunningly composed. If we
examine the book in its most obvious aspect, we find it beginning with
_Youthful Sorrows_ and ending with hymns to the North Sea; passing,
that is to say, from the most subjective to the most objective of
Heine's poetic expressions. The first of the _Youthful Sorrows_ are
_Dream Pictures_, crude and grotesque imitations of an inferior
romantic _genre_; the _North Sea Pictures_ are magnificent attempts in
highly original form to catch the elusive moods of a great natural
element which before Heine had played but little part in German
poetry. From the _Dream Pictures_ we proceed to _Songs_ (a very simple
love story told in forms as nearly conventional as Heine ever used),
to _Romances_ which, with the notable exception of _The Two
Grenadiers_ and _Belshazzar_, are relatively feeble attempts at the
objectivation of personal suffering; and thence to _Sonnets_, direct
communications to particular persons. Thereupon follow the _Lyrical
Intermezzo_ and the _Return Home_, each with a prologue and an
epilogue, and with several series of pieces which, like the _Songs_
above mentioned, are printed without titles and are successive
sentences or paragraphs in the poet's own love story. This he tells
over and over again, without monotony, because the story gains in
significance as the lover gains in experience, because each time he
finds for