Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/12

viii this is one very good reason for translating him—that Heine affords a very potent stimulus towards the acquisition of knowledge. The reader of his "Romantic School," for instance, who may not have previously heard of Tieck and Novalis, must be a dull sort of person if he does not henceforth feel a curiosity respecting them.

A still more important aspect of Heine is his relation to the creeds and circumstances of his century, and his influence in shaping European thought. The reader who would wish to determine how far Heine will repay his attention in this respect is advised to consult the masterly criticism upon him in Matthew Arnold's essays. Mr. Arnold regards Heine as a great liberator, not a man of consummate achievement as a thinker, or one by any means to be implicitly followed or unreservedly extolled, but invaluable as a dissolvent, breaking up and abolishing opinions and habits which have become mere petrified formulas, and thus preparing the way for new things which he did not create and did not always rightly conceive. He liked to be called the German Aristophanes, but he was even more of a Socrates, whose mission, apart from his poetical gift, it was to make men consider whether they really meant