happy. That a son can be as sick and miserable as I am, no mother would believe."

After this Heine became silent, and my soul was deeply moved when I saw him seal and send off to the post his letter, which was full of consoling news and assumed serenity.

This son, who upon his bed of torture, where he was lying for long years, deceives by a pious fraud his mother with regard to his sufferings; and this mother, who perhaps, in the seclusion of old age, may die without having ever heard of the sad condition of her son, which, except to her, is known to the whole world-do they not represent in their relations with each other a poem

?

The great love for his mother in itself should prove to Heine's critics, and to those who have so often heard him slandered, that his heart was noble and true, and that he was anything but a cold egotist, who only cared for pleasure and amusement. He yearned for love, and wandered through life hoping that he might find a soul to understand him, and in this very search after a sympathetic heart he often went astray, but

C

never without regretting it, and never without returning to the right path as soon as he had perceived his mistake.

In the gloomy labyrinth of his life it was a great consolation to him to know that his mother never misinterpreted his real feelings; her love was the star of hope shining through the darkness that surrounded him.

A similar effect was produced upon Byron by his sister Augusta's love, which remained unchanged although the world calumniated him, and which is so beautifully described in his well-known "Stanzas to Augusta," which we will quote here, as the sentiment they contain forms a parallel to the above-quoted sonnet which Heine addressed to his mother.

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.

Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,

Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrank not to share it with me.

And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,

I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;

And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd
To pain-it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me;

They may crush, but they shall not contemn; They may torture, but shall not subdue me; 'Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake.
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake;
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me ;
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one;
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

'Twas folly not sooner to shun ;

And if dearly that error hath cost me,

And more than I once could forsee,

I have found that, whatever it lost me.
It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd;
Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all.

In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

The first lyrical productions of Heinrich Heine, i.e., those poems which were written before his sixteenth year, are said to have been very clever, but without any special indication of talent. Only one poem of that period has been printed in the complete edition of his works, and this is perhaps fortunate; even Lord Byron's youthful poems, published under the title of "Hours of Idleness," scarcely adorn the volume containing his collected poetry.

Very remarkable, however, are the verses of Heine which were composed during his sixteenth and seventeenth years, some of which he wrote

under the nom de plume* "Sy Freudhold Riesenharf." In these productions—and we draw the attention of the reader especially to one beginning with the words: "Ein Traum gar seltsam schauerlich" (Leland's translation of Book of Songs, p. 2.)

- the powerful genius of the great poet may already be discerned, and we are startled by the striking originality and beauty of their language. The readers of the memoirs of Heine will easily discover the source from which the poet took the dark background and the ghastly element of these poems, when he comes to the passages describing the visits the young man paid to the daughter of the old "woman from Goch," to which we have already alluded, and which now, for the first time, are made known in detail to the literary world.

Among these early poems, which mostly treat of love, there is one of quite a different character, which, although Heine wrote it in his sixteenth year must be ranked among his best literary productions, and will not be forgotten as long as there exists a German literature.

* A rather clumsy anagram formed of the letters contained in the words Harry Heine, Düsseldorf."