The voice followed by Heyse as an author is unquestionably the voice of instinct. North German though he is, nothing is farther removed from him than cool deliberation and premeditation. Born in Berlin, he nevertheless takes root in Munich, and finds in the ardent South German race and in the throbbing South German life the surroundings most congenial to his temperament; at home in South Germany, he yet feels constantly drawn to Italy, as the land where the human plant has attained a more beautiful and luxuriant growth than elsewhere, one that is less disturbed by reflex action, and where the voice of the blood speaks most distinctly, most powerfully. This voice is the siren voice which allures Heyse. Nature! Nature! keeps ringing in his ear. Germany has authors who appear almost wholly devoid of inspiration, and who have only been made what they are by a vigorous North German will (as Karl Gutzkow, for instance); others (as Fanny Lewald) whose works bear the impress of an active North German intellect. Neither through volition nor deliberation does Heyse create and fashion his works, but simply by heeding the inner impulse.
Many an author is tempted to impart to his reader an idea of himself differing somewhat from the correct one. He takes pleasure in representing himself as that which he _would like_ to be,--in former times, as being endowed either with keener sensibilities or deeper melancholy than he ever possessed, in our day as being now more experienced, now colder or harsher, than he really is. More than one distinguished author, as Mérimée, or Lecomte de Lisle, has so shrunk from manifesting his emotions that he has succeeded, on the other hand, in exhibiting an appearance of lack of feeling by no means natural to him. Such people make it a point of honor not to breathe freely and easily until they have crossed the snow-line where the human element in our natures ends, and their contempt for those who lay claim to the sympathy of the multitude on the plane below leads them to yield to the temptation to force their way up to a height whither pride, not instinct, bids them ascend. For Heyse this temptation does not exist. He has never for a moment been able or willing to write himself into either greater warmth or coldness than he actually felt. He has never professed to be writing with his heart's blood when he was fashioning calmly as an artist, and he has patiently submitted when the critics censured him for lack of warmth. On the other hand, he has never been able to report, as so many of the most eminent French authors have done, a horrible or revolting occurrence with the same stoic tranquillity, and in the same tone that would be suitable in stating where a man of the world purchases his cigars, or where the best champagne could be obtained. He aims neither at the ardent style of passionate temperaments, nor at the self-control of the worldling. In comparison with Swinburne he seems rather cold, and in comparison with Flaubert naïve. But the narrow path in which he wanders is precisely that which is pointed out to him by the instinct of his innermost being, by the purely individual and yet so complicated being which is the result of his nature.