Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) was one of the most prominent of the German romanticists.  He was especially felicitous in the rehandling of the old German fairy tales.  The passage quoted above is from Heine’s Germany, Part II, book II, chap.  II.  The following is the translation of C.G.  Leland, slightly altered:  “In these compositions we feel a mysterious depth of meaning, a marvellous union with nature, especially with the realm of plants and stones.  The reader seems to be in an enchanted forest; he hears subterranean springs and streams rustling melodiously and his own name whispered by the trees.  Broad-leaved clinging plants wind vexingly about his feet, wild and strange wonderflowers look at him with vari-colored longing eyes, invisible lips kiss his cheeks with mocking tenderness, great funguses like golden bells grow singing about the roots of trees.”

[278] Winter’s Tale, IV, iii, 118-20.

[279] Arnold doubtless refers to the passage in The Solitary Reaper referred to in a similar connection in the essay on Maurice de Guerin, though Wordsworth has written two poems To the Cuckoo.

[280] The passage on the mountain birch-tree, which is quoted in the essay on Maurice de Guerin, is from Senancour’s Obermann, letter 11.  For his delicate appreciation of the Easter daisy see Obermann, letter 91.

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[281].  Pope’s Iliad, VIII, 687.

[282] Propertius, Elegies, book I, 20, 21-22:  “The band of heroes covered the pleasant beach with leaves and branches woven together.”

[283] Idylls, XIII, 34.  The present reading of the line gives[Greek:  hekeito, mega]:  “A meadow lay before them, very good for beds.”

[284] From the Ode to a Grecian Urn.

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[285] That is, Dedication.

[286] From the Ode to a Nightingale.

[287] Ibid.

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[288] Virgil, Eclogues, VII, 45.

[289] Ibid., II, 47-48:  “Plucking pale violets and the tallest poppies, she joins with them the narcissus and the flower of the fragrant dill.”

[290] Ibid., II, 51-52:  “I will gather quinces, white with delicate down, and chestnuts.”

[291] Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, i, 249-52.

[292] Merchant of Venice, V, i, 58-59.

[293] Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, i, 83-85.

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[294] Merchant of Venice, V, i, 1 ff.

GEORGE SAND

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[295] Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review for June, 1877, in Mixed Essays, Smith, Elder & Co., 1879. Amandine Lucile Aurore Dudevant, nee Dupin (1804-76), was the most prolific woman writer of France.  The pseudonym George Sand was a combination of George, the typical Berrichon name, and Sand, abbreviated from (Jules) Sandeau, in collaboration with whom she began her literary career.