since the invention of printing, and the nobility, who had been levelled to the ground by the invention of gunpowder, were now compelled to realise that the power which they had held for a thousand years was now passing from their proud but weak hands,[1] and going to the despised yet vigorous grasp of scholars and labourers. And they should now have perceived that they could only regain the lost power in common with those labourers and learned men, but they would not perceive it; they warred foolishly against the unavoidable, and there began a painful and absurd battle, in which crawling, windy falsehood and decaying, diseased pride fought with iron necessity against the guillotine and truth, against life and inspiration, and we still stand on the ground of conflict.
There was a miserable Minister, a respectable banker, a good father of a family, good Christian,
- ↑ Melancthon has given some curious testimony to the fact that the Catholic Church perceived from the beginning that the art of printing would be indeed a black art, and one full of evil for it. It is very amusing to contrast the exultation which Heine here displays over the power of gunpowder as destructive to chivalry, with his scornful and bitter contempt of "base villanous saltpetre" when it was employed in cannon at Cressy against French nobility, as is most amusingly set forth in "Shakespeare's Mädchen und Frauen." The contempt which Heine evinces in that work, for common soldiers is only to be paralleled by his unbounded love for them elsewhere.—Translator.
