Wordsworth, Scott, and Keats have left admirable works; far more solid
and complete works than those which Byron and Shelley have left. But
their works have this defect,--they do not belong to that which is the
main current of the literature of modern epochs, they do not apply
modern ideas to life; they constitute, therefore, _minor currents_, and
all other literary work of our day, however popular, which has the same
defect, also constitutes but a minor current. Byron and Shelley will
long be remembered, long after the inadequacy of their actual work is
clearly recognized, for their passionate, their Titanic effort to flow
in the main stream of modern literature; their names will be greater
than their writings; _stat magni nominis umbra_.[156] Heine's literary
good fortune was superior to that of Byron and Shelley. His theatre of
operations was Germany, whose Philistinism does not consist in her want
of ideas, or in her inaccessibility to ideas, for she teems with them
and loves them, but, as I have said, in her feeble and hesitating
application of modern ideas to life.
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