Such is calf—beg pardon—first Love. And is this first Love best of all? Perhaps, in one respect, and in one only: it believes in its own unchangeableness. Goethe remarks in his autobiography that nothing is so calculated to make us disgusted with life “as a return of Love.... The notion of the eternal and infinite, which forms its basis and support, is destroyed; it appears to us transitory, like everything that recurs.”
Heine on First Love.—Heinrich Heine, whose poetry is next to Shakspere’s the most valuable depository of Modern Love, enlarges on this question in his fragmentary but admirable Analysis of Shakspere’s Female Characters: "Love is a flickering flame between two darknesses ... [the dots are in the original]. Whence comes it?... From sparks incredibly small.... How does it end?... In nothingness equally incredible.... The more raging the flame, the sooner it is burnt out.... Yet that does not prevent it from abandoning itself entirely to its fiery impulses, as if this flame were to burn eternally....
"Alas, when we are seized a second time in life by the grand passion, we lack this faith in its immortality, and painful memories tell us that in the end it will consume itself. Hence the melancholy by which second differs from first love.... In first love we fancy our passion can only end with death; and indeed, if the threatening difficulties in our way cannot be removed in any other manner, we readily make up our mind to accompany our beloved to the grave.... But in second love the thought occurs to us that time will change our wildest and most ecstatic feelings to a tame, apathetic state; that these eyes, these lips, these contours, which now throw us into transports of rapture, will some day be regarded with indifference. This thought, alas! is more melancholy than a presentiment of death.... It is a disconsolate feeling, in the midst of intoxication, to think of the sober, frigid moments that will follow, and to know from experience that these ultra-poetic, heroic passions will have such a lamentably prosaic ending....
“I do not, in the least, presume to find fault with Shakspere, yet cannot but express my surprise that he makes Romeo enamoured of Rosaline before he brings him face to face with Juliet. Though absolutely devoted to his second love, there yet dwells in his soul a certain scepticism, which finds utterance in ironic expressions, and not rarely reminds one of Hamlet. Or is second love the stronger in a man for the very reason that it is paired with lucid self-consciousness? A woman cannot love twice, her nature is too tender to endure a second time the terrific emotional earthquake. Look at Juliet! Would she be able a second time to endure those ecstatic delights and horrors, a second time suppress her fear and empty the dreadful cup? In my opinion once is enough for this poor, blessed creature, this pure martyr to a great passion.”
First Love is not best.—Thus even Heine, while lamenting the transitoriness of Love, cannot help suggesting that in man, at any rate, second Love may be stronger than first. On this point it is curious to note the difference of opinion among thoughtful writers. La Bruyère declares that “we can love well once only—the first time; the loves which follow are less involuntary.” Another French author, Letourneau, on the contrary, thinks that one love-affair only whets the appetite for more: “on a besoin de vivre fort;” and hence “an expiring passion ordinarily leaves the ground admirably prepared for the germination of another passion.” Stendhal held that a young girl of eighteen, “owing to her inadequate experience of life, is not comprehensive enough in her desires to be able to love with as much passion as a woman of twenty-eight;”[twenty-eight;”] and a lady-friend having objected to this on the ground that in her first love a girl must love more ardently because her feelings are not distracted by doubt and distrust, as they are subsequently, he replied that this very méfiance, in its struggle with love, will make it come out a thousand times more brilliant and substantial than the gay and thoughtless first love.”[love.”] Mr. P. G. Hamerton seems to cast his vote in the same urn, for he thinks, “it is, indeed, one of the signs of a healthy nature to retain for many years the freshness of the heart which makes one liable to fall in love, as a healthy palate retains the natural early taste for delicious fruits.” And, finally, George Eliot asks: “How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy’s flute-like voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer, deeper music.”
So doctors evidently disagree. But the facts that Heine is in doubt, that the greatest authority makes Romeo’s unparalleled passion his second love, and that even Werther’s famous love, notwithstanding Goethe’s theory, is not his first, certainly make the scale incline in favour of a second or later passion.
“Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,
And young affection gapes to be his heir;
That fair for which love groaned for, and would die,
With tender Juliet matched, is now not fair.”