are widowed of their
poets, they easily forget all the unpleasantness that had ever existed
between them and their dead husbands. It is then and only then that they
discover the good qualities of their dead consorts and go about telling
everybody "what a wonderful man he was." Their behaviour reminds me of a
picture I once saw in a French comic paper. It represented a widow who,
in order to hear her deceased husband's voice, had a gramophone put at
his empty place at the breakfast table. And every morning she sat
opposite that gramophone weeping quietly into her handkerchief, gazing
mournfully at the instrument--decorated with her dead hubby's tasselled
cap--and listening to the voice of the dear departed. But the only words
which came out of the gramophone every morning were:_ Mais fiche-moi
donc la paix--tu m'empeches de lire mon journal! _(For goodness' sake,
leave me alone and let me read my paper.) This, however, did not appear
to disturb the sentimental widow at all, as little indeed as a good
sentimental people resents being abused by its dead poet._

_And how our poet did abuse them during his life! And not only during
his life, for Heine would not have been a great poet if his loves and
hatreds, his censure and his praise had not outlasted his life, nay, had
not come to real life only after his death. Thus the shafts of wit and
satire which Heine levelled at his age and his country will seem
singularly modern to the reader of to-day. It is this peculiar modern
significance and application that has been one of the two reasons for
presenting to the English public the first popular edition of Heine's
lyrico-satiric masterpiece "Atta Troll." The other reason is the fine
quality of the translation, made by one who is himself well known as a
poet, my friend Herman Scheffauer. I venture to say that it renders in a
remarkable degree the elusive brilliance, wit, and tenderness of the
German original._

_The poem begins in a sprightly fashion full of airy mockery and
romantic lyricism. The reader is beguiled as with music and led on as in
a dance. Heine himself called it_ das letzte freie Waldlied der Romantik
_("The last free woodland-song of Romanticism"); and so we hear the
alluring sound of flutes and harps, we listen to the bells ringing from
lonely chapels in the forest, and many beautiful flowers nod to us, the
mysterious blue flower amongst them. Then our eyes rejoice at the sight
of fair maidens, whose nude an