have left.  But their works have this defect,—­they do not belong to that which is the main current of the literature of modern epochs, they do not apply modern ideas to life; they constitute, therefore, minor currents, and all other literary work of our day, however popular, which has the same defect, also constitutes but a minor current.  Byron and Shelley will long be remembered, long after the inadequacy of their actual work is clearly recognized, for their passionate, their Titanic effort to flow in the main stream of modern literature; their names will be greater than their writings; stat magni nominis umbra.[156] Heine’s literary good fortune was superior to that of Byron and Shelley.  His theatre of operations was Germany, whose Philistinism does not consist in her want of ideas, or in her inaccessibility to ideas, for she teems with them and loves them, but, as I have said, in her feeble and hesitating application of modern ideas to life.  Heine’s intense modernism, his absolute freedom, his utter rejection of stock classicism and stock romanticism, his bringing all things under the point of view of the nineteenth century, were understood and laid to heart by Germany, through virtue of her immense, tolerant intellectualism, much as there was in all Heine said to affront and wound Germany.  The wit and ardent modern spirit of France Heine joined to the culture, the sentiment, the thought of Germany.  This is what makes him so remarkable:  his wonderful clearness, lightness, and freedom, united with such power of feeling, and width of range.  Is there anywhere keener wit than in his story of the French abbe who was his tutor, and who wanted to get from him that la religion is French for der Glaube:  “Six times did he ask me the question:  ‘Henry, what is der Glaube in French?’ and six times, and each time with a greater burst of tears, did I answer him—­’It is le credit’ And at the seventh time, his face purple with rage, the infuriated questioner screamed out:  ‘It is la religion’; and a rain of cuffs descended upon me, and all the other boys burst out laughing.  Since that day I have never been able to hear la religion mentioned, without feeling a tremor run through my back, and my cheeks grow red with shame."[157] Or in that comment on the fate of Professor Saalfeld, who had been addicted to writing furious pamphlets against Napoleon, and who was a professor at Goettingen, a great seat, according to Heine, of pedantry and Philistinism.  “It is curious,” says Heine, “the three greatest adversaries of Napoleon have all of them ended miserably.  Castlereagh[158] cut his own throat; Louis the Eighteenth rotted upon his throne; and Professor Saalfeld is still a professor at Goettingen.” [159] It is impossible to go beyond that.

What wit, again, in that saying which every one has heard:  “The Englishman loves liberty like his lawful wife, the Frenchman loves her like his mistress, the German loves her like his old grandmother.”  But the turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying is not so well known; and it is by that turn he shows himself the born poet he is,—­full of delicacy and tenderness, of inexhaustible resource, infinitely new and striking:—­