forest-shade, they are still more bewildered, for they hear familiar words in changed sense, and so they swear that these people know nothing of flaming feeling, and the great passion. What they had ordered for refreshment was witty water- ice, not a blazing bowl of love-drink. Nor do they observe that these people are only disguised doves, who converse in a jargon of their own,[1] which one can only learn in dreams or in earliest infancy. But it is worst of all for the French standing outside the grated gate of Shakespearean comedy, when ever and anon a pleasant west wind sweeps over a garden-bed and wafts to their noses most unknown perfume "What's that?"
Justice demands that I here mention a French writer who, with a cleverness quite his own, imitated Shakespearean comedies, and manifested even in the choice of his models a strange susceptibility to true poetry. This is Alfred de Musset. He wrote, about five years ago, several small dramas which, so far as construction and style are concerned, are altogether after the comedies of Shakespeare. And he has with French facility mastered the caprice, not the humour, of his original. And what is more,
- ↑ Koteriesprache, the peculiar language of a set. "Society slang," and, as Heine here suggests, nursery-talk. Jargoning is specially applied to the language of birds by old English poets. Liebestrunk or Liebestrank, "love-drink," also means a philtre to cause love.—Translator.
