Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/9



is much to say of a voluminous writer in prose as well as verse, that, though he may have left many a line which, for one reason or another, he might personally have wished to blot, he has left few that can be spared from the literature of the world. This may justly be said of Heine, but of how many others? Let us apply the same severe test to greater names than even Heine's. Take the man whose mission on the whole most nearly resembled his—Voltaire. Voltaire was in some sense the mouthpiece of his generation; he has through it produced the deepest effect on all generations to come; he has left immortal things behind him; but the project of a complete translation of Voltaire would kindle the enthusiasm of no publisher and no public. Take the greatest of German writers, Goethe, in whom we most cheerfully acknowledge a greater than Heine, but