HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
teenth birthday he would quote the poems of
Heine ten at a time and the simple lyrics of the
Book of Songs filled his youthful heart with rapture.^
Throughout a long life he retained his interest
in the German poet. He read him in the
original and in translation. In 1849 he published
in the Monthly Observer his own rendering into
English of four Heine poems. In 1868 he referred
to Heine as the irritant exile who was able to interest
readers in his every mood as long as he Hved.
In The Tragic Comedians, a novel centering about
the love and death of Ferdinand Lassalle, the Socialist
agitator and admirer of Heine, the German
poet was eulogized as the "incomparable Heinrich."
Meredith also read various critical and biographical
studies on Heine, including those by
Matthew Arnold, William Stigand, and Wilham
Sharp. Almost half a century after his first acquaintance
with the works of the exiled poet, he
wrote to Sharp at the close of 1888: "Your Heine
gave me pleasure. I think it competently done; and
coming as a corrective of Stigand's work, it brings
the refreshment of the antidote. When I have the
pleasure of seeing you, we will converse upon
Heine. Too much of his — almost all of the Love
poems — draw both tenderness and tragic emotion
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