But on this negative side of
one's criticism of a man of great genius, I for my part, when I have
once clearly marked that this negative side is and must be there, have
no pleasure in dwelling. I prefer to say of Heine something positive. He
is not an adequate interpreter of the modern world. He is only a
brilliant soldier in the Liberation War of humanity. But, such as he is,
he is (and posterity too, I am quite sure, will say this), in the
European poetry of that quarter of a century which follows the death of
Goethe, incomparably the most important figure.
What a spendthrift, one is tempted to cry, is Nature! With what
prodigality, in the march of generations, she employs human power,
content to gather almost always little result from it, sometimes none!
Look at Byron, that Byron whom the present generation of Englishmen are
forgetting; Byron, the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary
power, I cannot but think, which has appeared in our literature since
Shakespeare. And what became of this wonderful production of nature? He
shattered himself, he inevitably shattered himself to pieces against the
huge, black, cloud-topped, interminable precipice of British
Philistinism.
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