ys that it knows neither shame nor grief."

The contradiction between the two judgments is too obvious to need
explanation; it is an interesting illustration of the common experience
that critics go astray when dealing with Heine.

II

When, as Heine puts it, "a great hand solicitously beckoned," he left
his German fatherland in his prime, and went to Paris. In its sociable
atmosphere, he felt more comfortable, more free, than in his own home,
where the Jew, the author, the liberal, had encountered only prejudices.
The removal to Paris was an inauspicious change for the poet, and that
he remained there until his end was still less calculated to redound to
his good fortune. He gave much to France, and Paris did little during
his life to pay off the debt. The charm exercised upon every stranger by
Babylon on the Seine, wrought havoc in his character and his work, and
gives us the sole criterion for the rest of his days. Yet, despite his
devotion to Paris, home-sickness, yearning for Germany, was henceforth
the dominant note of his works. At that time Heine considered Judaism "a
long lost cause." Of the God of Judaism, the philosophical
demonstrations of Hegel and his disciples had robbed him; his knowledge
of doctrinal Judaism was a minimum; and his keen race-feeling, his
historical instinct, was forced into the background by other sympathies
and antipathies. He was at that time harping upon the long cherished
idea that men can be divided into _Hellenists_ and _Nazarenes_. Himself,
for instance, he looked upon as a well-fed Hellenist, while Boerne was a
Nazarene, an ascetic. It is interesting, and bears upon our subject,
that most of the verdicts, views, and witticisms which Heine fathers
upon Boerne in the famous imaginary conversation in the Frankfort
_Judengasse_, might have been uttered by Heine himself. In fact, many of
them are repeated, partly in the same or in similar words, in the
jottings found after his death.

This conversation is represented as having taken place during the Feast
of _Chanukka_. Heine who, as said above, took pleasure at that time in
impersonating a Hellenist, gets Boerne to explain to him that this feast
was instituted to commemorate the victory of the valiant Maccabees over
the king of Syria. After expatiating on the heroism of the Maccabees,
and the cowardice of modern Jews, Boerne says:[103]

"Baptism is the order of the day among the wealthy Jews. The evangel
vainly announced to th