Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt‘,
Betend, dass Gott dich erhalte
So rein und schön und hold.”
In quite a different kind of a poem Heine bluntly announces to his “Queen Mary IV.” his declaration of independence, and informs her that not a few who ruled before her have been unceremoniously deposed—
“Manche die vor dir regierte
Wurde schmählich abgesetzt.”
And in his narrative of the sheriff’s daughter he says, “I shall not describe my love for Josepha in detail. This, however, I will confess, that it was after all only a prelude to the great tragedies of my riper years. Thus does Romeo become infatuated with Rosaline before he finds his Juliet.”
Byron’s confession, in speaking of an early love, that he had been “attached fifty times since” has been referred to already; and although Byron loved to exaggerate his foibles, his record in this case does not belie his words. Of Burns, Principal Shairp writes that “There was not a comely girl in Tarbolton on whom he did not compose a song, and then he made one which included them all.” Burns himself confesses, “In my conscience, I believe that my heart has been so often on fire that it has been vitrified.” And Washington Irving remarks on Goldsmith’s first love as “a passion of that transient kind which grows up in idleness and exhales itself in poetry.”
Of this kind were two passions of Lamb, concerning which a biographer says, “A youthful passion, which lasted only a few months, and which he afterwards attempted to regard lightly as a folly past, inspired a few sonnets of very delicate feeling and exquisite music.” And of his second flame, “His stay at Pentonville is remarkable for the fugitive passion conceived by Lamb for a young Quakeress named Hester Savory, which he has enshrined and immortalised in the little poem of Hester.”
Goethe has the reputation of having been of all famous lovers the most fickle. Like Byron, Goethe appears to have endeavoured to make himself appear more frivolous than he was. His amorous Roman Elegies, which have given so much offence, were in reality written in Thuringia, after his return from Italy; and their heroine was no one but the girl who subsequently became his wife.