A still stronger proof than these academic utterances of Börne's inability to appreciate simple, primitive poetry, is his indifference to the Old Testament. In a letter to Henriette Herz, written in his nineteenth year, we come upon a passage of absolutely alarming sterility, dry and senile as a joke on the Pentateuch by Voltaire-- and this after Goethe: "It has always appeared to me as if it had been the intention of the old Jews, from Abraham down to Solomon the Wise, to parody the history of the world. Read Joshua or the Book of Kings, and you will at once be struck by their resemblance to Blumau."[18] A comparison between these venerable compilations of memorable legends and historical events and a clumsy German parody of Virgil's _Æneid_ could only be instituted by a critic who, devoid of all appreciation of antique literary form, set himself to find in every work some modern sentimental, religious, or political moral. It is quite of a piece with this that Börne should end by blindly admiring the vague, half Biblical, half modern unctuous pathos of Lamennais' _Paroles d'un Croyant._ [1] Hermann Grimm: _Goethe_. [2] Gutzkow: _Börne's Leben_.--M. Holzmann: _Ludwig Börne. Sein Leben und Wirken_. [3] Steinthal: _Ludwig Börne. Illustrirte deutsche Monatshefte_, Juni 1881. [4] L. Börne: _Gesammelte Schriften_. Reclam. Leipzig, III. 112, 129, 167, 173, 209, 244, 259, 313. [5] See _Main Currents_, iii. chap. xiii. [6] "Was jeder Morgen brachte, was jeder Tag beschien, was jede Nacht bedeckte, dieses zu besprechen hatte ich Lust und Muth." What each morning brought, each day's sun shone on, each night covered--that was what I had the desire and the courage to discuss. [7] "Im Centrum seines Geistes trafen unzählige Strahlen zusammen, nur dass dieselben durch keine Peripherie verbunden waren." Countless rays were focussed in the central point of his mind, but no periphery united these rays. [8] So I said: Yes, my Lord, with God's help I can do it, can bring us all safe to land. Then I was unloosed, and took the helm and _steered honourably onward_. [9] Karl Hillebrand: "La société de Berlin," in _Revue des Deux Mondes_. [10] Fürst: _Henriette Herz_, p. 185. [11] _Briefe des jungen Börne an Henriette Herz_, 164, 167. "O, wenn ich dies bedenke, wie ein Sturm braust es in meinem Innersten, es möchte die Seele aus ihrem Wohnhaus stürzen, und sich den Leib eines Löwen suchen, dass sie den Frechen begegnen könnte mit Klauen und Gebiss." _Translation:_Oh, when I think of this, a storm rages within me; the soul struggles to burst from its lodging, that it may find for itself the body of a lion, and rush upon the shameless ones with claws and teeth.