its charms. Startled by the sight, moved, pierced to the heart, almost horrified, the invalid tottered back and fell into a chair, hot and bitter tears pouring down his cheeks. The lovely lips of the goddess, which seemed to breathe, smiled on, and beneath stood her miserable victim. That single moment contains a whole

world of agony.

Heine, while confined to his bed, did not neglect his studies, as far as his eyesight would permit, and one morning M. Meissner found him highly amused in reading Tacitus, a book which does not generally produce humorous notions. The description given of the Jews as lepers, who pay divine honours to a donkey in their temple, had struck him as excessively comical. Our author was aware of a sporadic instance in his own town of a Jewess worshipping an ass, but then he was her husband, and all attempts to convert him into a horned ass, such as are to be met with in Ceylon, had hitherto failed. As a general rule, however, the Jewish nation comprises but few donkeys, and those are usually despised. A long conversation ensued, in which Heine did full justice to the perseverance of the Jews and their devotion to their God. It ended, of course, in an anecdote:

"When little Weill visits us soon, you shall have a specimen of my reverence for the primitive Mosaicism," said Heine. "He was formerly leader of the choir in a synagogue, and has a splendid tenor voice. "My good wife, who has not a notion that I am a Jew, is no little surprised when these melancholy tunes are struck up. When Weill first began, the poodle crept under the sofa, and Cocotte, the parrot, tried to throttle himself between the bars of his cage. 'M. Weill! M. Weill' Mathilde cried in her terror, do not carry the joke too far.' But Weill continued, and the good girl turned to me, asking: Henri, tell me what songs those are?' They are our German national songs,' I replied, and adhered obstinately to my story."

6

One of the noblest traits in Heine's character was the affection he bore his mother. We meet with the feeling in the "Book of Songs," and that lovely piece called "Night Thoughts" must be known to everybody as one of the most charming of his pieces. He never failed in writing to her once a month, but she was not allowed to know the terrible condition he was in. Lest she might be startled at the letter being only signed by himself, it was always pretended that he was suffering in his eyes, but that it would soon pass away. This son, who on his tedious martyr's couch piously deceives his mother as to his sufferings, and this mother who, in the retirement of her extreme old age, will probably sink into the grave without ever hearing the terrible truth, which all the world, except herself, knows-these two, in their relation to each other, form a perfect poem.

Even Heine's marriage had something peculiar and poetical about it. He and Mathilde had lived for years in that sort of connexion known as "ménages Parisiens." Marriages of this nature are innumerable, especially among professional men: the beloved lady enjoys all the privileges of a legitimate wife, and only the most intimate friends are aware that the blessing of the Church and the civil contract are wanting. These connexions generally terminate in the bond of holy matrimony when the birth of children draws the parents together; and then, as Béranger sings:

Ces deux époux ont mis enfin,
De l'eau bénite dans leur vin.

Heine had no children, but a duel induced him to marry Mathilde, that she might have some claim on his relations in case he fell. It must have been a troublesome step for the author of "Free Love," but he carried it through in a peculiar form. He invited to the marriage only those friends of his who lived in a similar connexion, and tried to induce them to take the same daring step. We are afraid, however, that not a single guest was converted. Mathilde's temper was most naïve, and her way of passing her time extremely harmless. Her life was spent in chattering with her parrot, driving out daily in the Champs Elysées, and describing what she had seen. Heine had an utter horror of blue-stockings and strong-minded women. Mathilde enchained him by her harmless gossip, her cheerful temper, and excellent heart. His chief amusement was in teasing her, and causing her to give way to a fit of passion almost as alarming as a canary-bird's. One day he said very solemnly that he intended to put a clause in his will that Mathilde should marry again immediately on his death, for then there would be some one in the world who would honestly lament his decease twice or thrice a day. Heine was not jealous, and, indeed, had no occasion for being so; still he had some apprehension for Mathilde, all alone as she was in that Babel, Paris. He discharged this fear in ballads. "Ah!" he would sigh, "what can I do? I must leave all to fate and le bon Dieu. How can I, a sick man, hope to rival half a million of men?" On one occasion his restlessness in this matter attained such a pitch that he mentioned it openly. "I was very uncomfortable yesterday. My wife finished dressing and went out at two, promising to be home by four. But eight o'clock arrived, and she had not returned. Could she have grown tired of her invalid, and yielded to some practised seducer? In my nervous anxiety I sent a nurse into her room to see if Cocotte, the parrot, were still there. The bird was there, and a load fell from my heart, for the good creature would never have consented to leave Cocotte behind." It is probable, however, that the poet loved his wife more than any other being on earth. His thoughts were ever directed to protect her honour before the world, and keep her in comfort for the remainder of her life. She was his doll, whom he liked to dress elegantly and send to balls and concerts. She never knew one of the contests he underwent, but she lived through him, and stood by his side for twenty long years. He was wont to say, laughingly, that she had never read a single line of his, and this neglect only amused him. Madame Mathilde then did not see in her husband the great poet whom all the world recognised, but she saw what the world persisted in denying-the best, the most honest, and kindest of men.

Another long interval! Three years passed before our author was enabled to return to Paris and his friend Heine, whom he found in August, 1854, busily engaged in preparing a French translation of his poetry, in which De Nerval assisted him. In the mean time he had become more isolated. Like Job stretched out on his bed, Heine hurled the wildest complaints to Heaven, and seemed to be quarrelling with all nature. Men, too, augmented his torture, and assailed him in the only vulnerable spot. Uninterrupted attacks on his person and works were made in Germany with a fury and perseverance never before displayed. While his reputation was increasing in France, and North America be

gan to appreciate his powers, Germany reviled him, and strove to lower him. This had a prejudicial effect upon him.

Heine's only exertion was to be carried from his bed to his fauteuil, where he sat writing the Memoirs which have still to be published. He wrote widely, in large letters, and hence an immense quantity of MS. was found on his death. When tired of work, or not in the humour, Mathilde was accustomed to read to him. She had gone through the whole of Dumas's romances, for Heine excessively admired his fertile, lively, and inventive talent. But the hours devoted to reading were also frequently given up to serious pursuits. He had studied during the last years of his life every book relating to the physiology and pathology of his illness, but even on this subject he was wont to be satirical, and that his studies would avail him little in this world; perhaps he could give lectures in another world, and prove to his hearers the inefficiency of doctors on earth.

say

Heine's last residence in Paris was in the Avenue Matignon, in the Champs Elysées, where he enjoyed what he had so long sought-seclusion, fresh air, and prospect of verdure. His isolation increased here, however, and he felt that his agony lasted too long. When Berlioz was one day announced, he said, bitterly, What, some one visit me? Berlioz is always original!" But he was compensated by the presence of a young lady, an intense admirer of his from her earliest youth, and who soon became his inseparable ally. More than a hundred notes, written in pencil, still exist, which Heine sent to urge her to come, as he felt so miserable without her presence. A few of these letters are quoted by M. Meissner, and they betray the wonderful temperament of the writer. A poem, too, written but three weeks before Heine's death, is full of the most weird-like phantasy and horrible imagery. When he wrote these lines, however, he was far from believing that death was so near, but a sudden access of illness utterly prostrated his strength. Even in his last moments he remained true to himself. A friend asked him whether he had reconciled himself with his Creator, and Heine replied, smilingly, "Do not be alarmed. Dieu me pardonnera, c'est son métier." On the morning of the 17th of February he died with perfect calmness, and retaining his consciousness to the last. The daily press only devoted a few lines to the death of the greatest poet of modern times, and not a word was uttered over his tomb. As he had himself sung long previously:

Keine Messe wird man singen,
Keinen Kadosch wird man sagen,
Nichts gesagt und nichts gesungen,
Wird an meinen Sterbetagen.

Heine lies in the cemetery of Montmartre, and we believe, with our author, that "his death will be the commencement of his apotheosis."

A CENTURY OF LEGENDS.*

WERE quantity the sole criterion by which poetry should be judged, we would have no hesitation in saying that Victor Hugo is the first poet of his age-perhaps of any age. In addition to the many miles of verse he has already spun out, he has now produced two octavo volumes, containing eight hundred pages of poetry, and, worse still, promises two further instalments of the same length. Now that politics are shelved, we would recommend those ingenious gentlemen who periodically solve problems with reference to the circumference of the globe and various trade productions, to try how far the verses contained in these two volumes would extend.

Unfortunately, such a copia verborum must be imperfect it is the necessity of humanity to be fallible, and Homer, we are told on good authority, sometimes nods. Victor Hugo is not free from this prevailing epidemic, and, while we find much in his volumes to admire, there is much again which we could see omitted without regret. Few poets, indeed, excel this author in his manner of blending pathos and bathos: you come across lines which stir the heart like the sound of the trumpet, and then your enthusiasm is damped by some common-place expression, which jars on the senses like the sound of Big Ben after he was cracked. No poet could so well bear being cut up into "specimens" as the gentleman we have now under notice, and we could cull from his voluminous verse a small volume of extracts which would obtain him his true position as a poet. As it is, we must take him with all his faults, and, regarded in that way, he does not fulfil all that the English reader more especially demands from the Vates, who, by the magic power of his verse, is expected to exercise a beneficent influence on humanity.

It is, however, hardly fair for an Englishman to criticise French poetry, for the conditions demanded in the two countries essentially differ. Where our poets appeal to the heart the French appeal to the senses, and such authors as Victor Hugo are satisfied with producing a flaunting bed of poppies, gratifying to the eye, where we desire the fragrance and sweetness of the violet. Then, again, there is an awful monotony in French versification: it seems to walk on stilts, and you fear every moment lest the performer should fall from his altitude-as indeed he too often does. The ampullas et sesquipedalia verba are not confined to the versifiers whom Horace objurgates. In England, too, great-perhaps undue stress is laid on the correctness of the rhyme, and if a slipshod stanza be allowed to creep in, none are so ready as the English to raise the cry of "Cockney." In France this is disregarded; so long as the poet can produce a rhyming jingle he is satisfied. Thus, one of the most successful pieces in the two volumes we have now under notice is "The Song of the Sea Adventurers," with its ever-recurring chorus:

En partant du golfe d'Otrante,

Nous étions trente;

Mais, en arrivant à Cadiz,

Nous étions dix.

* La Légende des Siècles. Par Victor Hugo. Two Vols. Paris: 1859.

Here we have the fault to which we allude twice repeated: Otrante is not a rhyme to trente, nor is Cadiz to dix. We should not lay such stress on this vice, were it not continually occurring throughout the two volumes.

And now for the work itself, and its motive. In a purposely obscure preface the author tells us it is a beginning and an end, something perfect in itself, and yet forming part of a whole, which he exemplifies by comparing it to the peristyle of an edifice or to a tree in a forest. His object in composing it is, he tells us, "to reproduce the types of the human profile, date by date, from Eve, mother of mankind, to the Revolution, mother of peoples." These types are selected haphazard from barbarism as from civilisation, and are moulded on the mask of centuries. His choice of the legendary form he justifies by stating that the collector of legends occupies a certain distinct place in the history of ages: "while Herodotus writes history, Homer composes legends.' In a word, his work is a "tentative towards the ideal," which he explains by saying that when his two other poems, now on the point of completion, “La Fin de Satan" and "Dieu," are published, the reader will perceive the link connecting "La Légende des Siècles" to them. And here he becomes almost too grand: he proposes "to regard Being under its triple face-Humanity, Evil, and the Infinite-the progressive, the relative, and the absolute. . . . . The intention of the book is good: the expansion of the human race from age to age; man ascending from darkness to the ideal; the paradisaic transfiguration of the terrestrial hill; the slow and supreme germination of liberty; right in this life and responsibility in the other; a species of religious hymn with a thousand strophes, bearing in its entrails a profound faith and on its summit a lofty prayer; the drama of creation illumined by the countenance of the Creator-such this poem will be in its entirety when terminated." We really must stop a moment, after noting down those tall words, to try and find out their meaning. But no, the task is beyond us, and would even puzzle a Grotofried, though he could read cuneiform inscriptions as easily as his alphabet.

The first volume opens with the "Sacre de la Femme,” which is strongly suggestive of the Book of Genesis and Milton strangely jumbled together. Still it contains some charming lines, as witness the following:

Eve offrait au ciel bleu la sainte nudité;

Eve blonde admirait l'aube, sa sœur vermeille.
Chair de la femme! argile idéale! ô merveille!
O pénétration sublime de l'esprit

Dans le limon que l'Etre ineffable pétrit!
Matière où l'âme brille à travers son suaire!
Boue où l'on voit les doigts du divin statuaire !
Fange auguste appelant le baiser et le cœur,

Si sainte, qu'on ne sait, tant l'amour est vainqueur,
Tant l'âme est vers ce lit mystérieux poussée,
Si cette volupté n'est pas une pensée,

Et qu'on ne peut, à l'heure où les sens sont en feu,
Etreindre la beauté sans croire embrasser Dieu!
Eve laissait errer ses yeux sur la nature.

Et, sous les verts palmiers à la haute stature,