Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/263

With his errors its is another affair, and one of these glides so subtly into all his works, and into every expression of opinion, be it on subjects social, political, or aesthetic, that the reader should be in all fairness now and then reminded of it. This error is the inconsistency which sprang from his education and life. Professedly a revolutionary or radical, ami du peuple or socialist, more or less here and there—or now and then and an exile for liberty, et cetera, there seldom lived a man who loved aristocracy or "gentility" more, and this is shown in an absolutely amusing manner in several passages in this work, especially in his comments on Queen Margaret, where he taunts English chivalry as being tainted with the shop-keeping spirit, and sneers at the battle of Cressy, as I have pointed out in a note. Bearing this in mind, the reader need not be puzzled, as many have been, with apparent contradictions. With less genius and more settled principles Heine would have been unquestionably a far greater man, and probably not less brilliant. There is a popular belief that without some inconsistency or eccentricity there can be no genius; but Shakespeare, the very type of genius, is a proof to the contrary.

THE TRANSLATOR.