die Selbstachtung meiner Seele.”  But how he was able to preserve his self-respect, and at the same time be willing to employ any and all means to attain his end, perhaps no one less unscrupulous than he could comprehend.  He intimates that he has decided upon threats and public intimidation as being probably more effective than a servile attitude, which, he allows us to infer, he would be quite willing to take if advisable.  “Das Beste muss hier die Presse thun zur Intimidation, und die ersten Kotwuerfe auf Karl Heine und namentlich auf Adolf Halle werden schon wirken.  Die Leute sind an Dreck nicht gewoehnt, waehrend ich ganze Mistkarren vertragen kann, ja diese, wie auf Blumenbeeten, nur mein Gedeihen zeitigen."[240]

It is quite evident that this long drawn out quarrel aroused all that was mean and vindictive, all that was immoral in the man, and that the nervous excitement thereby induced had a most baneful effect upon his entire nature, physical as well as mental.  In a number of poems he has given expression to his anger and has masterfully cursed his adversaries, for example, “Es gab den Dolch in deine Hand,"[241] “Sie kuessten mich mit ihren falschen Lippen,"[242] and several following ones.  But here, too, his fancy is altogether too busy with the suitable characterization of his enemies and the invention of adequate tortures for them, to leave room for even a suggestion of the Weltschmerz which we might expect to result from such painful emotions.

It is scarcely necessary to theorize as to what would have been the attitude and conduct of a sensitive Hoelderlin or a proud-spirited Lenau in a similar position.  Lenau is too proud to protest, preferring to suffer.  Heine is too vain to appear as a sufferer, so he meets adversity, not in a spirit of admirable courage, but in a spirit of bravado.  In giving lyric utterance to his resentment, Heine is conscious that the world is looking on, and so he indulges, even in the expression of his Weltschmerz, in a vain ostentation which stands in marked contrast to Lenau’s dignified pride.  He is quite right when he says in a letter to his friend Moser:  “Ich bin nicht gross genug, um Erniedrigung zu tragen."[243]

As an illustration of the vain display which he makes of his sadness, his poem “Der Traurige” may be quoted in part: 

    Allen thut es weh in Herzen,
    Die den bleichen Knaben sehn,
    Dem die Leiden, dem die Schmerzen
    Auf’s Gesicht geschrieben stehn.[244]

A similar impression is made by the concluding numbers of the Intermezzo, “Die alten, boesen Lieder."[245] And here again the comparison,—­even if merely as to size,—­of a coffin with the “Heidelberger Fass” is most incongruous, to say the least, and tends very effectually to destroy the serious sentiment which the poem, with less definite exaggerations, might have conveyed.  Similarly overdone is his poetic preface to the “Rabbi” sent to his friend Moser:[246]