the possession of the true Midas- of his life. He was enabled to keep touch, it exercises the power of trans- off the stress of heavy debts solely forming clay to gold without feeling through the generosity of his new any sense of obligation towards the countrymen. Although what he raw material. We read Burns in bliss- himself calls the foolish pride of a ful unconsciousness that the words German poet prevented him from are the words of Ferguson. Handel formally becoming a naturalised has lent immortality to the tunes of Frenchman, nevertheless both from many Lilliputian composers. Bois- personal interest and a native spirit robert and Cyrano are only known of good fellowship he was always to fame because Molière transferred striving to gratify his Parisian friends. some of their unpolished gems He worked hard both as a hackinto the setting of his masterpiece. writer, a task at which he asserts Disraeli (and this brother Jew sup- that he was worth "devilish little plies a nearer parallel) has been (verdamt wenig)," and also in the accused, and justly, of using for his guise of a French patriot. "It was most famous speech the sentiments, the great task of my life," he writes, almost the phrases, of a French "to labour at a hearty understanding orator, who in turn owed not a little between Germany and France." The to Cicero. The truth is, quotation announcement is made in his will marks are an ugly, inartistic, irritat- and must be taken with all the seriing insertion; acknowledgment by ousness that its setting implies. He word or by foot-note is clumsy, seems laboured very hard at this task, and unnecessary, and certainly can be partly for the excellence of his work overdone. A modern novelist does partly from the extreme generosity not acknowledge the services of his of the government of Louis Philippe, literary assistants, the hack-writers he was given an annual pension of who get up Indian scenery, or German 4,800 francs. Towards the gaining duels, or English polo. In the same of this pension no doubt the excelway there was no necessity laid on lent versions of Edouard Grenier Heine to proclaim the services of contributed in no small degree. Was Edouard Grenier. The translator it very wrong of Heine not to tell was paid not in gold but in coin M. Guizot that these translations were which he more appreciated, in chats really the work of that promising with Heine, the exiled genius, and young candidate for future admitin conversations with his friends in tance to the Academy, the embryo the Faubourg Poissonnière, all mate- writer of pretty verses, M. Edouard rials for a book of reminiscences. Grenier? But at the same time it must be admitted that Heine had special and peculiar reasons for earning a reputation as a French scholar. Owing to the drastic censorship in Berlin, and the miserable prices which his publisher Campe paid for what the censors left, Heine was in continual need of money. Exiled like Ovid, dogged with the ill-luck of a Spenser, and endowed with the generosity of a Goldsmith, poverty was a certainty The slip is the more excusable that, as a rule, jealous pride was foreign to Heine's nature. Once he was accused of passing off as his own the borrowed phrase pour l'amour de Voltaire, but it is the one instance of plagiarism, and as for envious desire of fame he generally showed himself remarkably free from it. But even in this reference the annalist speaks with disparagement. It seems that in his youthful enthusiasm Grenier was accustomed to congratulate Heine because he had followed in Goethe's steps, and like him given lucidity to German verse; a clumsy comparison at best and tactlessly conveyed, nor can we share the critic's surprise that Heine took exception to the comparison. A writer of a genius even more individual (though of course slighter) than Goethe's is not unjustified in taking umbrage at this sort of civil leer. It is a little disappointing to find that a friend of Heine has not more news to tell of the life in Paris. Grenier found Heine's room German and bourgeois, he thought the petite Nonotte (to use Heine's favourite endearment) a dull, unintelligent grisette whom the poet had picked up Heaven knows where. But the details of the furniture of Heine's flat are not interesting, and after all Mathilde Crescence Mirat, though she did not know her husband was a poet, and though she failed to learn German, loved Heine with a very full affection, and for those eight long years which he spent on his mattress-grave tended him with an inspiring cheerfulness worthy of a Beatrice. It is never fair to investigate the character of a poet in the light of common day. Though Heine's profession was journalism, and though poetry, if we may believe his own words, was but a holy plaything, he was of the stuff that poets are made of. He was moody and on the surface fickle; full of enthusiasm like Byron, but also full of a conflicting humour which prevented him from thinking, in Byron's words, that he was pious when he was only bilious. He has had many hard words thrown at his head. The Jews call him apostate because his Jew uncle persuaded him to be a Christian; the Germans call him regenade, because they drove him from his country; his free-thinking (and free-loving) friends branded him as hypocrite, because he was at last wedded in church to please the wife he loved. Politicians lay emphasis on his fickleness, because the opinions of his leading articles developed with the progress of the times. Lastly M. Edouard Grenier dubs him as a bourgeois impostor because he lived with a wife in a flat and did not advertise his indebtedness to his translator. But all these accusations, true enough when forced into illogical isolation, fail of their effect because they do not touch the essence of either Heine's genius or his character. His genius was the spark struck from dissimilar elements. As he himself says of Shakespeare, the Greek and Hebrew elements joined; but they did not fuse. They stood to each other as the Celtic and Teutonic elements in many English characters, a constant cause of unaccountable flashes. Hence comes the unceasing interest of his work. Like his life, we shall never get to the end of it, even when those autobiographical memoirs of his are dug up from the archives of the Austrian Government. Indeed his life and genius are bound up in a peculiar manner; we can get to the end of neither, and the beauty which is at the centre of both will never be spoiled, though it is sometimes veiled, by the eccentric ugliness of the outer hem. The mingled love, bitterness, and pathos of his songs, as of his career, strike home by virtue of an untameable reality. When other writers try to pull from the heart its deeper secrets they succeed only as those who rake water-weeds from the river. The plants, swinging there in their own element, looked full of native grace and beauty; but when gathered by clumsy hands to the bank they lie tangled into a repul sive heap of amorphous ugliness. Later on laborious talent can sort and separate the fibres and press the growths back to shape, if not to beauty; but the mobile grace, the natural beauty, is spoiled for ever. the Yet Heine, helped by the witchery of humour, can wrest these deeper habitants of the heart out of their home, and for a moment hold up their elusive grace in the element of a stranger world. So in respect of his genius no idle or envious tongue can rob his reputation of its gloss. Had he borrowed as much as Burns he would still, like Burns, be justified in the loan; and in respect of his character, even if he was moody and bourgeois (whatever that means) and acquisitive of another's fame, the essence of the man is still beyond the reach of cavil. For eight years of miserable pain he wrote regular and cheerful letters to his old mother that she might not suspect his illness, and before the friends about him he maintained a vivacious interest and manly fortitude which could only be the outcome of a heroic mind. When, dying on that pile of mattresses, he painfully lifted with his fingers the lid of his single seeing eye and saw the ruin of a great and gay man, he could still smile and jest. "Pouvez-vous siffler?" said the doctor to him on his death-bed. "Hélas! non," was the answer; pas même une comédie de M. Scribe." The jest needed a fine courage, and the humour gives the picture a truer pathos than the solemnity of a Marius on the ruined stones of Carthage. It is true Heine wrote in the intervals his Tristia; but if we can find an excuse for the lamentation of the exile at Tomi, even an annalist should have room for a genuine respect for the expatriated poet of the dreary Rue d'Amsterdam. Such humour as his is a sign of the victory of will. Like Kant he kept his mind, vigorous in spite of his body, through a long series of years, and he has kept alive for a world-long period his reputation, not only as a genius, but as a good courageous character. "Pas de talent mais un caractère," translates Grenier from ATTA TROLL, and wishes to write the reverse of the epitaph on Heine's tomb. It is a thin criticism for a self-constituted critic, and may be dissipated by a phrase. "The field of Honour is dirty," said Heine, when he was forced into the arena to fight a silly duel; and such a witticism so timed is as full a test of character as it is of talent; for the man who made it never in all his trials lost command either of his wit or of his will. W. BEACH THOMAS. 432 FEEDING "THE art of conquering," said Frederick the Great, "is unavailing apart from the art of subsisting," and stern experience has brought home. the truth of this and similar maxims to generals in the field. The provisioning of an army is, however, neither the most conspicuous nor the most picturesque part of war, nor is its importance immediately apparent. Hence the mind is disposed to pass lightly over it to the crash of arms, in which the blow, prepared by means not readily followed, is at length delivered and the victory declared. At the same time to have an intelligent appreciation of the conflict, to realise all that is contained in such expressions as lack of transport or exposure of communications, one must be conversant in some degree with the preliminaries and accessories of warfare; and of these the most important and difficult are concerned with the feeding of the troops. In medieval times the question was easily solved. An army lived off the country which it occupied, and when that could no longer support it, moved on to another region and there repeated the same process. In the terrible wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the unarmed population must have deemed itself fortunate when it escaped with this exhausting tax, and was not also ruined and decimated by the ferocious professional soldiery. If from any cause this one means of sustenance failed, an army speedily melted away. Nowadays the method of making war support itself is estopped partly by the vast size of modern armies, AN ARMY. partly by various considerations both humane and politic which did not occur to our rough and ready ancestors. Consequently the food-supplies of an army must now in great part be sent from home. During the Peninsular War this fact was only beginning to be recognised; and the burden thus imposed upon Wellington occupied so much of his time that he used humorously to say that, though he might not be a very good general, he prided himself upon being a first-rate commissariat officer. The easiest part in the feeding of an army is the preparation of supplies at home and the forwarding of them to the base. Yet this task requires two valuable qualities, foresight and care, for lack of which it has sometimes been disastrously mismanaged. The besetting weakness of a routine administration, that it is always inclined to work upon a stereotyped plan, has been a fruitful source of error. General rules may form a good basis of calculation, but they need to be modified according to particular circumstances. Thus if the error is to be avoided of sending coals to Newcastle, and in order to send them delaying supplies really needed, the quantity and character of the supplies procurable on the spot must be ascertained. Other points also must be taken into account; the disposition of the inhabitants, for example, the probable duration and character of the struggle, and so forth. An army engaged in the realities of war needs a greater supply of food than when taking part in apparently similar operations at home. During peace each soldier in the British army receives when in barracks one pound of bread, three quarters of a pound of meat (really about seven ounces of meat-food, as the meat is weighed uncooked and with the bone), and also groceries. When in camp at home he receives an extra quarter of a pound of meat, the daily cost of his food at this time, at contract prices, being about ninepence threefarthings. In the field his rations are estimated to consist of a pound and a half of bread or a pound of biscuit, one pound of meat, one third of an ounce of coffee, one sixth of an ounce of tea, two ounces of sugar, half an ounce of salt, and one thirtysixth of an ounce of pepper. Lord Wolseley considers that at times of marching, or other hard work, this ration should be increased by half a pound of meat and two ounces of compressed vegetables or four ounces of preserved potatoes, the total being three pounds and a half gross weight of food for each man. His Lordship also reckons that each soldier when marching will require from six to eight pints of water for drinking and cooking, and about the same amount for washing, but that in a stationary camp he will require for all purposes at least five gallons. The animals accompanying the expedition, namely, the horses of the cavalry, the horses and mules attached to the transport, and the cattle driven along with the forces, must also be fed. The daily rations for a horse are calculated at fourteen pounds of hay and twelve pounds of oats, these quantities, like those given above, may need augmenting. General Sherman, the well-known Federalist commander, considers that, to be in good condition, a soldier ordinarily needs daily three pounds gross of food, a horse or a mule twenty pounds. If, however, a No. 486.-VOL. LXXXI. chronic dearth of provisions is to be prevented, the amount supplied must considerably exceed the amount needed, for even under the most skilful management immense loss and waste and frequent miscalculation are inevitable. This fact constitutes an almost certain pitfall to the inexperienced; that it is well understood by the British Government appears from their resolve to keep four months' reserve always available in South Africa. This reserve, which at the outbreak of the war it was calculated would meet the needs of some hundred and twenty thousand men, included twelve million pounds of preserved meat, twelve million pounds of biscuit, four hundred thousand pounds of coffee, two hundred thousand pounds of tea, two million two hundred thousand pounds of sugar, eight hundred thousand pounds of compressed vegetables, four hundred thousand pounds of salt, three hundred and sixty thousand tins of condensed milk, one million four hundred and fifty thousand pounds of jam, eighty thousand gallons of rum, twelve thousand bottles of whisky, thirty two thousand bottles of port wine, four hundred thousand pounds weight of limejuice, a vast quantity of sparklets for making soda-water, eighty tons of alum for purifying water. For fifty thousand horses and mules there were provided twenty-five thousand tons of hay, thirty-one thousand tons of oats, and three thousand tons of bran. Within recent years it has been found advisable on several grounds to supply large quantities of prepared and preserved foods to armies in the field. In the first place, the need for fuel in order to cook the food is thus greatly reduced, it will be remembered that from nothing did the English army in the Crimea suffer so greatly as from the want of this FF |