Perhaps the most interesting passage in this connection, because so thoroughly characteristic of the Byronic pose in Heine, occurs in the “Baeder von Lucca”:  “Lieber Leser, gehoerst du vielleicht zu jenen frommen Voegeln, die da einstimmen in das Lied von Byronischer Zerrissenheit, das mir schon seit zehn Jahren in allen Weisen vorgepfiffen und vorgezwitschert worden ...?  Ach, teurer Leser, wenn du ueber jene Zerrissenheit klagen willst, so beklage lieber, dass die Welt selbst mitten entzwei gerissen ist.  Denn da das Herz des Dichters der Mittelpunkt der Welt ist, so musste es wohl in jetziger Zeit jaemmerlich zerrissen werden.  Wer von seinem Herzen ruehmt, es sei ganz geblieben, der gesteht nur, dass er ein prosaisches, weitabgelegenes Winkelherz hat.  Durch das meinige ging aber der grosse Weltriss, und eben deswegen weiss ich, dass die grossen Goetter mich vor vielen andern hoch begnadigt und des Dichtermaertyrtums wuerdig geachtet haben."[257] Here while vociferously disclaiming all kinship or sympathy with Byron, he pays him the flattering compliment of imitation.  Probably nowhere in Byron could we find a more pompous display of egoism under the guise of Weltschmerz.

Byron’s Weltschmerz, like Heine’s, had its first provocation in a purely personal experience.  “To a Lady"[258] and “Remembrance"[259] both give expression in passionate terms to the poet’s disappointed love for Mary Chaworth, the parallel in Heine’s case being his infatuation for his cousin Amalie.  The necessity for defending himself against a public opinion actively hostile to his earliest poems,[260] largely diverted Byron from this first painful theme, so that from this time on until he left England, he is almost incessantly engaged in a bitter warfare against the injustice of critics and of society.  To this second period Heine’s development also shows a general resemblance.  Thus far both poets exhibit a purely egoistic type of Weltschmerz.  But with his separation from his wife in 1816, and his final departure from England, that of Byron enters upon a third period and becomes cosmic.  Ostracized by English society, his relations with it finally severed, he disdains to defend himself further against its criticism, and espouses the cause of unhappy humanity.  No longer his own personal woes, but rather those of the nations of the earth are nearest his heart: 

What are our woes and sufferance?...
................................  Ye! 
Whose agonies are evils of a day—­
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.[261]

And in contemplating the ruins of the Palatine Hill: 

.....................  Upon such a shrine
What are our petty griefs?  Let me not number mine.[262]

Here we have the essential difference between these two types of Weltschmerz.  Heine does not, like Byron, make this transition from the personal to the universal stage.  Instead of becoming cosmic in his Weltschmerz, he remains for ever egoistic.