HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Martyr of Montmartre
pointment into a harsh and sometimes cruel satirist;
with a deep religious sentiment, and even narrow
theological system, he was thrust into the chair of
an apostle of scepticism; with no clear political convictions
or care for theories of government, he had
to bear all the pains and penalties of political exile,
the exclusion from the commerce of the society he
best enjoyed, and the inclusion among men from
whom he shrank with an instinctive dislike." ^^
Milnes called Heine "the living shade of the
Champs Elysees" and to many an Englishman the
German poet was indeed a living shade ever since
1847 when the false rumor of his death went the
rounds of the press. It was this rumor which Heine
denied in the epilogue to Romancero, when he reported
that the measure had already been taken for
his coffin and for his obituary but that he was dying
so slowly that his friends were becoming more and
more bored.
The most important of the premature obituaries
was penned by Henry Fothergill Chorley for the
Athenaeum of December 4, 1847. It was reprinted
in Gentleman's Magazine in January, 1848, and
formed the basis for the pseudobiographic sketch
by W. H. Hurlbut in the North American Review
a year later. Chorley mirrored the opinions of the
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