HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Martyr of Montmartre
striving after French vivacity of style. Stress was
put upon his hatred of England and everything
English. Though his own works were prohibited
in his native Prussia and though he had the reputation
of a liberal, he yet sought the downfall and
utter extinction of the English nation. He thereby
joined hands with the most bigoted champions
of absolutism against the people, whose manners
might be absurd from his viewpoint but who otherwise
little deserved his enmity.
Two years later, however. Eraser's Magazine
introduced Heine in more pompous terms as "the
proscribed Heine, the banished Heine, the Heine
whose satire has made kings repugn him, philosophers
hate him, statesmen prosecute him, and the
Romish Church excommunicate him." ^ In December,
1842, it printed the reminiscences of an
English officer who knew him in Paris and who
drew a vivid pen-portrait of him at the height of
his productive career, when he enjoyed his role as
the idol of Young Germany and the curse of Old
Germany.
The anonymous author of the Reminiscences
of Men and Things has been identified as Colonel
John Mitchell, an accomplished linguist, diplomat,
and traveller, the confidant and biographer of the
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