He himself had in him both the spirit of Greece and the spirit of Judaea;
both these spirits reach the infinite, which is the true goal of all
poetry and all art,--the Greek spirit by beauty, the Hebrew spirit by
sublimity. By his perfection of literary form, by his love of clearness,
by his love of beauty, Heine is Greek; by his intensity, by his
untamableness, by his "longing which cannot be uttered,"[174] he is
Hebrew. Yet what Hebrew ever treated the things of the Hebrews like
this?--"There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodging in the Baker's
Broad Walk, a man whose name is Moses Lump; all the week he goes about
in wind and rain, with his pack on his back, to earn his few shillings;
but when on Friday evening he comes home, he finds the candlestick with
seven candles lighted, and the table covered with a fair white cloth,
and he puts away from him his pack and his cares, and he sits down to
table with his squinting wife and yet more squinting daughter, and eats
fish with them, fish which has been dressed in beautiful white garlic
sauce, sings therewith the grandest psalms of King David, rejoices with
his whole heart over the deliverance of the children of Israel out of
Egypt, rejoices, too, that all the wicked ones who have done the
children of Israel hurt, have ended by taking themselves off; that King
Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Antiochus, Titus, and all such people,
are well dead, while he, Moses Lump, is yet alive, and eating fish with
wife and daughter; and I can tell you, Doctor, the fish is delicate and
the man is happy, he has no call to torment himself about culture, he
sits contented in his religion and in his green bedgown, like Diogenes
in his tub, he contemplates with satisfaction his candles, which he on
no account will snuff for himself; and I can tell you, if the candles
burn a little dim, and the snuffers-woman, whose business it is to snuff
them, is not at hand, and Rothschild the Great were at that moment to
come in, with all his brokers, bill discounters, agents, and chief
clerks, with whom he conquers the world, and Rothschild were to say:
'Moses Lump, ask of me what favor you will, and it shall be granted
you';--Doctor, I am convinced, Moses Lump would quietly answer: 'Snuff
me those candles!' and Rothschild the Great would exclaim with
admiration: 'If I were not Rothschild, I would be Moses Lump.
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