to the highest
order of prose. And Heine has proved that it is possible to be witty
in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was
pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant
does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in
prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm
development which belongs to Goethe's style, for they are foreign
to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to
the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects.
Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates
between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and
daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness,
tenderness and grandeur which reveals the poet.

The introduction to this article contains a wise comparison of wit and
humor, and makes a subtle discrimination between them. German wit she finds
is heavy and lacking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only
nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of
European wit and humor" previous to the present century. In Heine she found
both in a marked degree, so that he is unlike the other writers of Germany,
having a flavor and a spirit quite his own.

Her essays on Dr. Cumming and the poet Young were largely of a theological
character. They are keen in their thrusts at dogmatic religion, sparkling
with witty hits at a make-believe piety, and full of biting sarcasm. Her
entire want of sympathy with the men she dissects, makes her sometimes
unjust to them, and she makes them worse than they really were. The
terrible vigor of her criticism may be seen in her description of Dr.
Cumming and his teaching. She brings three charges against him, and defends
each with ample quotation, wit, sarcasm, argument and eloquence. She finds
in his books unscrupulosity of statement, absence of genuine charity, and a
perverted moral judgment. These essays much resemble Thackeray's dissection
of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their
minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that
Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or
1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare
the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen
psychological insight was shown h