IT may perhaps be thought that I exhibit something of the brazen-facedness of a hardened offender in venturing once more (but, I hope, for the last time) to present myself to the public in the guise of a translator,—and, what is more, a translator of a great poet. The favourable reception, however, that my previous translations of the Poems of Schiller and Goethe have met with at the hands of the public, may possibly be admitted as some excuse for this new attempt to make that public acquainted with the works of a third great German minstrel. Comparatively little known and little appreciated in England, the name of Heine is in Germany familiar as a household word; and while, on the one hand, many of his charming minor poems have become dear to the hearts of thousands and tens of thousands of his fellow-countrymen, and are sung alike in the palace and the cottage, in the country and the town, on the other his sterner works have done much to influence the political and religious tendencies of the modern German school.

Having prefixed to this Volume a brief memoir of Heine, accompanied by a few observations on his various works and their distinguishing characteristics, I will here confine myself to stating that I have adhered with the utmost strictness to the principles laid down by me for my guidance in the case of the previous translations attempted by me,—those principles being (1) As close and literal an adherence to the original as is consistent with good English and with poetry, and (2) the preservation throughout the work of the original metres, of which Heine presents an almost unprecedented variety. I have, on the occasion of my former publications, fully explained my reasons for adopting this course, and will not weary the reader with repeating them. I have sufficient evidence before me of the approval of the public in this respect to induce me to frame my translation of Heine’s Poems on the same model.

In addition to thus preserving both the language and the metre of the original, I have in one other respect endeavoured to reproduce my author precisely as I found him, and that is in the important particular of completeness. There are doubtless many poems written by Heine that one could wish had never been written, and that one would willingly refrain from translating. But the omission of these would hide from the reader some of Heine’s chief peculiarities, and would tend to give him an incomplete if not incorrect notion of what the poet was. A translator no more assumes the responsibility of his author’s words than a faithful Editor does, and he goes beyond his province if he omits whatever does not happen to agree with his own notions.

In claiming for the present work (extending over more than 20,000 verses) the abstract merits of literalness, completeness, and rigid adherence to the metrical peculiarities of the original, it is very far from my intention to claim any credit for the manner in which I have executed that difficult task, or to pretend that I have been successful in it. That is a question for the reader alone to decide. The credit of conscientiousness and close application in the matter is all that I would venture to assert for myself. All beyond is left exclusively to the candid, and, I would fain hope, generous, appreciation of those whom I now voluntarily constitute my judges.