hter, is the
continuator of that which, in Goethe's varied activity, is the most
powerful and vital; on Heine, of all German authors who survived Goethe,
incomparably the largest portion of Goethe's mantle fell. I do not
forget that when Mr. Carlyle was dealing with German literature, Heine,
though he was clearly risen above the horizon, had not shone forth with
all his strength; I do not forget, too, that after ten or twenty years
many things may come out plain before the critic which before were hard
to be discerned by him; and assuredly no one would dream of imputing it
as a fault to Mr. Carlyle that twenty years ago he mistook the central
current in German literature, overlooked the rising Heine, and attached
undue importance to that romantic school which Heine was to destroy; one
may rather note it as a misfortune, sent perhaps as a delicate
chastisement to a critic, who--man of genius as he is, and no one
recognizes his genius more admirably than I do--has, for the functions
of the critic, a little too much of the self-will and eccentricity of a
genuine son of Great Britain.

Heine is noteworthy, because he is the most important German successor
and continuator of Goethe in Goethe's most important line of activity.
And which of Goethe's lines of activity is this?--His line of activity
as "a soldier in the war of liberation of humanity."

Heine himself would hardly have admitted this affiliation, though he was
far too powerful-minded a man to decry, with some of the vulgar German
liberals, Goethe's genius. "The wind of the Paris Revolution," he writes
after the three days of 1830, "blew about the candles a little in the
dark night of Germany, so that the red curtains of a German throne or
two caught fire; but the old watchmen, who do the police of the German
kingdoms, are already bringing out the fire engines, and will keep the
candles closer snuffed for the future. Poor, fast-bound German people,
lose not all heart in thy bonds! The fashionable coating of ice melts
off from my heart, my soul quivers and my eyes burn, and that is a
disadvantageous state of things for a writer, who should control his
subject-matter and keep himself beautifully objective, as the artistic
school would have us, and as Goethe has done; he has come to be eighty
years old doing this, and minister, and in good condition:--poor German
people! that is thy greatest man!"[138]

But hear Goethe himself: "If I were to say what I had really bee