have told us: Primus amat Secundam, quæ Tertium, qui Quartam, quæ Quintum, qui Sextam … (cætera desiderantur)—which, at any rate, would have had the merit of clearness; and, on remarking immediately that the species contained three feminine terminations and three masculine, he would have celebrated three marriages.
Even the genius of Goethe, which imagined the Elective affinities, would never have sufficed to create these Repulsive affinities. But the one most to be pitied is the unfortunate Schumann, who had condemned himself to set this theory of Elective Repulsions to music. In his place one would have preferred, like Rameau, to seek one’s inspirations fron the Gazette de Hollande.
Henri Heine, after this tour de force, has nothing left but to kill his poet; and he kills him accordingly. After a few more insipidities which fill the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Lieder, the poet will order his coffin—
“Of wood encircled with iron,
Bigger than the tun of Heidelberg,
Longer than the bridge of Treves
Or that of Frankfort,” etc.
The last feature might have been touching, if it had been better managed. “Know you,” asks the poet, “what makes my coffin so heavy?
“It is that it contains my joy,
My sorrow, and my love.”