One has only to turn over the pages of his Romancero,[164]—a collection of poems written in the first years of his illness, with his whole power and charm still in them, and not, like his latest poems of all, painfully touched by the air of his Matrazzen-gruft, his "mattress-grave,"—to see Heine's width of range; the most varied figures succeed one another,—Rhampsinitus,[165] Edith with the Swan Neck,[166] Charles the First, Marie Antoinette, King David, a heroine of Mabille, Melisanda of Tripoli,[167] Richard Coeur de Lion, Pedro the Cruel[168], Firdusi[169], Cortes, Dr. Döllinger[170];—but never does Heine attempt to be hubsch objectiv, "beautifully objective," to become in spirit an old Egyptian, or an old Hebrew, or a Middle-Age knight, or a Spanish adventurer, or an English royalist; he always remains Heinrich Heine, a son of the nineteenth century. To give a notion of his tone, I will quote a few stanzas at the end of the Spanish Atridæ[171] in which he describes, in the character of a visitor at the court of Henry of Transtamare[172] at Segovia, Henry's treatment of the children of his brother, Pedro the Cruel. Don Diego Albuquerque, his neighbor, strolls after dinner through the castle with him:—
"In the cloister-passage, which leads to the kennels where are kept the king's hounds, that with their growling and yelping let you know a long way off where they are,
"There I saw, built into the wall, and with a strong iron grating for its outer face, a cell like a cage.
"Two human figures sate therein, two young boys; chained by the leg, they crouched in the dirty straw.
"Hardly twelve years old seemed the one, the other not much older; their faces fair and noble, but pale and wan with sickness.
"They were all in rags, almost naked; and their lean bodies showed wounds, the marks of ill-usage; both of them shivered with fever.
"They looked up at me out of the depth of their misery; 'Who,' I cried in horror to Don Diego, 'are these pictures of wretchedness?'
"Don Diego seemed embarrassed; he looked round to see that no one was listening; then he gave a deep sigh; and at last, putting on the easy tone of a man of the world, he said:—
"'These are a pair of king's sons, who were early left orphans; the name of their father was King Pedro, the name of their mother, Maria de Padilla.
"'After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry of Transtamare had relieved his brother, King Pedro, of the troublesome burden of the crown,