Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/129

 Weigand 123 the lights and the shadows, never colors things with his own mood and depicts the country and men in their true outlines and true colors with which God clothed them " (III, 99). Similarly, in discussing the nobility and the petty princes, whose sovereignty had been reduced to a state of vassalage by the events of 1803, Heine speaks with a studied moderation of tone and viewpoint such as cannot fail to be surprising after the invec- tives of the 'Harzreise' against these "privileged vultures. " How objective is a remark like the following, by way of contrast : "These people have suffered a great misfortune in recent times by being deprived of a sovereignty which they claim with the same right as the more powerful potentates, unless one is willing to grant that what cannot maintain itself by its own strength has no right too exist" (III, 110). But most impressive is Heine's attempt to preserve at least the appearance of philosophic calm in approaching the topic which later was wont to make every fibre of his being tingle with unre- strained enthusiasm, in speaking of Napoleon, the shaper of the destinies of Europe. With the eye of a Hegelian he sees in Napo- leon the mediator between the revolutionary and the counter- revolutionary principle, the synthesis of two extremes; and in this role of mediator Heine finds the proof of his greatness, "Darum handelte er bestandig naturgemass, einfach, gross, nie krampfhaft barsch,immerruhigmilde" (III, 114). Accordingly it is simply consistent with the spirit of the whole essay, and scarcely an act of calculated treason, as has been claimed, 9 when Heine proceeds a little later to pronounce the sever- est condemnation of Lord Byron as the incarnate principle of destruction, while he feels sympathetically drawn to Walter Scott, who pictures the institutions of a past or rapidly passing civilization in the romantic colors shed upon them by the light of the setting sun (III, 117). There is no need of supposing that Heine adopted this tone of studied objectivity in the 'Nordsee' from purely disinterested motives. Very likely he speculated on the possibility of impressing the ruling powers by his political moderation; for the hope of re- ceiving a political appointment was still lingering in the back- ground of his mind. But that does not alter the fact that in the 9 Melchior: Heine's Verhaltnis zu Lord Byron, Berlin, 1903, p. 15.