t down the Ganges from heaven.[196]

* * * * *

Heine's prose-writings also furnish abundant proofs of his interest in
and acquaintance with Sanskrit literature. In the opening chapters of
the _Buch Le Grand_ (c. 4, vol. v. p. 114) he brings before us another
vision of tropical Indic splendor. In his sketches from Italy (_Reiseb._
ii. vol. vi. p. 137) he draws a parallel between the priesthood of Italy
and that of India, which is anything but flattering to either. It is
also not correct; he notices, to be sure, that in the Sanskrit drama (of
which he knows only _Sakuntala_ and _Mrcchakatika_) the role of buffoon
is assigned invariably to a Brahman, but he is ignorant of the origin of
this singular custom.[197] In his essay on the Romantic School, when
speaking of Goethe's godlike repose, he introduces by way of
illustration the well-known episode from the Nala-story where Damayanti
distinguishes her lover from the gods who had assumed his form by the
blinking of his eyes (vol. ix. p. 52). In the same essay (ibid. pp. 49,
50), he bestows enthusiastic praise on Goethe's _Divan_, and this brings
us to the question of Persian influence upon Heine.

* * * * *

Starting as he did on his literary career at the time when Goethe's
_Divan_ and Rueckert's _Oestliche Rosen_ had inaugurated the Hafizian
movement in German literature, it would have been strange if he had
remained entirely outside of the sphere of its influence. As a matter of
fact, he took some interest in Persian poetry almost from the outset of
his poetical activity, as his letters clearly show. As early as 1821, he
mentions Sa'di with the epithet _herrlich_, calls him the Persian Goethe
and cites one of his couplets (_Gul._ ii. 48, _qit'ah_; K.S. p. 122) in
the version of Herder.[198] In April, 1823, he writes from Berlin that
during the preceding winter he has studied the non-Semitic part of
Asia,[199] and the following year in a letter to Moser[200] he speaks of
Persian as "die suesse, rosige, leuchtende Bulbulsprache," and goes on to
imagine himself a Persian poet in exile among Germans. "O Firdusi! O
Ischami! (sic for Jami) O Saadi! Wie elend ist euer Bruder! Ach wie
sehne ich mich nach den Rosen von Schiras." Such a rose he calls in one
of his _Nordsee_-poems "die Hafisbesungene Nachtigallbraut" ("Im Hafen,"
vol. i. p. 218).

Yet, judging from the familiar epigrams of Immermann, which Heine cit