HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
land. He confessed: "I do not know what possessed
me to dislike the English, and to be so spiteful
towards them, but it really was only petulance.
I never hated them; indeed, I never knew them. I
was only once in England, but knew no one, and
found London very dreary, and the people in the
streets odious. But England has revenged herself
well; she has sent me most excellent friends —
thyself and Milnes — that good Milnes — and
others." ''
The first article of Milnes on Heine appeared
only a few months after that of Julian Fane, yet
whereas the latter had to make a concession to Victorian
public opinion by mentioning Heine's moral
turpitude, the former dared to speak of Heine's
moral greatness and to plead for a juster appreciation
of Heine's rare talents, which gave glory to his
youth and which did not desert him in the bitterest
sufferings of his maturity. Milnes claimed that the
martyr of Montmartre was misunderstood by his
time: "With so acute a sense of classical forms and
antique grace as to make him often well content to
live 'A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,' he was
regarded as a chief of the Romantic School; with a
genial and pleasure-loving temperament, he was
mortified by physical infirmity and moral disap-
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