his birthright he found that he had absolutely no use for the mess of pottage which he had purchased.

In the summer of 1825, Heine, having just succeeded in passing his degree, proceeded to the little island of Norderney, off the coast of Holland, to recuperate. Living ardently the simple life and indulging to the full his passion for the sea, he now wrote not only the second part of the Reisebilder, entitled Norderney, but the far greater Nordsee Cyklus, which in its irregular swinging metre expresses with such marvellous efficiency the whole roar and grandeur of the ocean. Speaking generally, of course, Heine was too subjective to be a real nature poet. No writer, it is true, fills up so freely and with so fantastic an elegance the blank cheques of nightingales and violets, lilies and roses, stars and moonshine, yet none the less these rather served to grace his measure than as his real flame. His one genuine love was the sea. With the sea he felt a deep psychological affinity. The sea was the symbol of his own infinite restlessness, of his own divine discontent, and mirrored in the sea's ever-changing waters he beheld the incessant smiles and storms of his own soul.

"I love the sea, even as my own soul," he writes. "Often do I fancy that the sea is in truth my very soul; and as in the sea there are hidden water-plants that only swim up to the surface at the moment of their bloom and sink down again at the moment of their decay, even so do wondrous flower-pictures swim up out of the depths of my soul, spread their light and fragrance, and again vanish."

In 1826 Heine published the Heimkehr, the Nordsee Cyklus, the airy and sparkling Harzreise, and the first part of the Reisebilder.

From Norderney Heine moved to Hamburg, avowedly to practise, though it does not appear that he took his profession with much seriousness. At any rate, until 1831, when he migrated to Paris, his career is excessively erratic. At one moment he is paying a flying visit to England, "the land of roast beef and Yorkshire plum-pudding, where the machines behave like men and the men like machines"; at another he is on the staff of the Allgemeinen Politischen Annalen and the Morgenblatt of Munich; he is now in Hamburg, now in Frankfurt, and now in Italy, where his sojourn inspired the racy and brilliant Italy and Baths of Lucca, both of which works obtained the gratuitous and well-merited state advertisement of prohibition, and achieved a most undeniable succès de scandale.

The departure to Paris marks an entirely new epoch in Heine's life, and offers a convenient stopping-place at which to give some account of his early poetry and prose, as exemplified in the Book of Songs, which was published in 1827, and the Reisebilder, the last part of which, the Baths of Lucca, was published in 1831.

Though neither the Book of Songs nor the Reisebilder is as great or as characteristic as the Romanzero and Poetische Nachlese on the one hand, or the Salon on the other, they are yet by far the most popular of his works and contain some of his most delightful writing. One of the first traits that strikes us in the Book of Songs is the Romantic tendency to bizarre and exotic themes. In the Junge Leiden and Lyrisches Intermezzo in particular we move in a ghostly atmosphere of apparitions, sea-maidens, skeletons, and midnight churchyards. Another interesting characteristic of these poems is his deep love of the East, a love which is to be probably ascribed more to the general eastward gravitation of the Romantic school than to the poet's Oriental blood. This tendency is responsible for two of the most charming poems in the book, the exquisite lyric starting:

"Auf Flügeln des Gesanges
Herzliebchen trag ich dich fort
Fort nach den Fluren des Ganges
Dort weiss ich den schönsten Ort."

"Dort liegt ein rotblühender Garten
Im stillen Mondenschein;
Die Lotosblumen erwarten
Ihr trautes Schwesterlein."

And—

"Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kabler Höh',
Ihn schläfert; mit weisser Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.
Er traumt von einer Palme,
Die fern im Morgenland
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Auf brennender Felsenwand."

This latter poem in particular illustrates admirably the vague melting, infinite yearning which Heine at first experienced as deeply as did any of the Romanticists. There are not wanting, however, and especially towards the end of the book, examples of his later manner, of that note of rebellion which he was afterwards to strike with such inimitable precision. Occasionally his wistful pessimism suddenly changes into cynicism, and in reaction from his morbid sensitiveness he derives a sardonic satisfaction from probing his own wounds as in the already quoted "Wer zum erstenmale liebt," while in the mock-heroic Donna Clara and in the Frieden we see that artistic use of the anti-climax of which he was afterwards to acquire an even greater mastery. Even in the comparatively early Lyrisches Intermezzo we see him constantly playing on that contrast between the Real and the Ideal, between Dream Life and Waking Life, which formed so integral a part of his subsequent life-outlook. Speaking generally, however, the Book of Songs exhibits the sentimental rather than the cynical side of Heine's mind. It possesses moreover those qualities which remained in Heine throughout his life, the light, airy touch, the intimate personal note, the delicate lyric sweetness, and that concision which is found in poetry with such extreme rarity.

Let us turn now to the Reisebilder. Its most dominant characteristics are its inimitable swing and the absolute irresponsibility of its transitions. The grave, the gay; the lively, the severe; the sublime, the ridiculous; the reverent, the frivolous; the refined, the crude; the poetic, the obscene, all jostle pell-mell against each other in this most fascinating of literary kaleidoscopes. It is no mere guide-book, this record of his wanderings in the Harz, in Norderney, in England, and in Italy, but rather a description of those reflections on men and things which were suggested by his various adventures. In style the Reisebilder marks a new epoch in German prose, or, as has been said, showed for the first time since Lessing and Goethe that such a thing as German prose really did exist. Heine was the first to show convincingly that a Gallic grace and flexibility could be imparted into the cumbrous and heavy-footed Teutonic language.

Psychologically the most interesting part of the Reisebilder is the fervent Napoleonic worship which, combined with his love of liberty and revolt against reaction, largely contributed to mould his life. The general tone, moreover, of political, sexual, and religious freedom that characterises the latter part of the Reisebilder rendered Heine not a little obnoxious to official Germany, not only because of the intrinsic heresy of the sentiments themselves, but of the joyous rollicking insolence with which they were paraded.

It is small wonder, then, that the Paris July Revolution of 1830 made the poet feel "as if he could set the whole ocean up to the very North Pole on fire with the red-heat of enthusiasm and mad joy that worked in him," and that in the spring of 1831 he migrated finally and definitely from Germany to Paris.

This migration to Paris marks the turning-point in Heine's life. His career in Germany had throughout been erratic, unsatisfactory, and hampered by political