[32] The superficial similarity of those two poems can easily be exaggerated. The rhyme "sitzet-blitzet" is perfectly natural: the Lorelei had to be portrayed as "sitzen"; what is then easier than "blitzen"? In "Ritter Peter von Stauffenberg und die Meerfeye" (Des Knaben Wunderhorn, ed. of Eduard Grisebach, p. 277) we have this couplet: Er sieht ein schönes Weib da sitzen. Von Gold und Silber herrlich blitzen. For more detailed illustrations, see below. [33] It is worth while to note the actual date of Heine's composition of his ballad, since so eminent an authority as Wilhelm Scherer (_Ges. d. deut. Lit._, 8th ed., p. 662) says that Heine wrote the poem in 1824. And Eduard Thorn (_Heinrich Heines Beziehungen zu Clemens Brentano_, p. 90.) says that he published it in 1826. This is incorrect, as is also Thorn's statement, p. 88, that Brentano wrote his ballad in 1802. For the correct date of Heine's ballad, see _Sämtliche Werke_, Hamburg, 1865, XV, 200.] [34] An instance of this is seen in _Selections from Heine's Poems_, edited by H.S. White, D.C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1900, p. 182. Professor White does, to be sure, refer to Strodtmann for the details; but Strodtmann does not prove anything. And in _Heines Werke in fünfzehn Teilen_, edited by Hermann Friedeman, Helene Herrmann. Erwin Kaliseher. Raimund Pissin, and Veit Valentin, we have the comment by Helene Herrmann, who follows Pissin: "Die Loreleysage, erfunden von Clemens Brentano; vielfach von Romantikern gestaltet. Zwischen Brentanos Romanze und Heines Situationsbild steht die Behandlung durch den Grafen Loeben, einen unbedeutenden romantischen Dichter." [35] The best finished collection of Heine's letters is the one by Hans Daffis, Berlin, 1907, 2 vols. This collection will, however, soon be superseded by _Heinrich Heines Briefwechsel_, edited by Friedrich Hirth, München and Berlin, 1914. The first volume covers Heine's life up to 1831. In neither of these collections is either Brentano or Loeben mentioned. There are 643 pages in Hirth's first volume. [36] For a discussion of _Godwi_, see _Clemens Brentano: Ein Lebensbild_, by Johannes Baptista Diel and Wilhelm Kreiten, Freiburg i.B., 1877, two volumes in one, pp. 104-25. As to the obscurity of Brentano's work, one sentence (p. 116) is significant: "_Godwi_ spukt heutzutage nur mehr in den Köpfen der liberalen Literaturgeschichtsschreiber, denen er einen willkommenen Vorwand an die Hand gibt, mit einigen stereotyp abgeschriebenen Phrasen den Stab über den phantastischen, verschwommenen, unsittlichen u.s.w., u.s.w. Dichter zu brechen."