Byron's pride and his contempt for political slavery meet us again in Platen; his aristocratic tone, his antipathy to prejudice, his taste for travel, his love of animals and of nature, his charm and his irony, live again in Prince Pückler. How enormously he influenced the formation of Heine's poetical ideal needs no insisting on, so forcibly does it strike every one who is familiar with the development of the modern literature of Europe. But it is both remarkable and instructive to observe the light in which he was looked upon by Börne, the first pioneer of the new German literary movement, a fundamentally different character from the English poet. One would naturally imagine that the vain, frivolous sides of Byron's personality would repel him, as these same qualities did in the case of Heine. Far from it. Note the expressions he employs in writing about him (_Briefe aus Paris_, No. 44) after reading Moore's _Life of Byron_. He calls the book wine that sends a glow of warmth through the poor German wayfarer, shivering on his journey through life. He feels almost ill with envy of such a life: "Like a comet that submits to no rules and regulations of the star community, Byron wandered through the world, wild and free; came without welcome, departed without farewell, preferring solitude to the thraldom of friendship. His feet never touched the dry earth; through storm and shipwreck he steered undauntedly onwards, and the first harbour he came to was the grave. Oh, how he was tossed about! But what islands of bliss did he not discover!... His was the kingly nature ... he is king who lives as he lists. When I hear people say that Byron only lived for thirty-seven years, I laugh; he lived for a thousand. And when they pity him because he was so melancholy! Is not God melancholy? Melancholy is God's gladness. Is it possible to be glad when one loves? Byron hated men because he loved mankind, hated life because he loved eternity. I would give all the joys of my life for a year of Byron's sorrows." We observe not only that Börne takes everything about Byron seriously, but that he is quite unconscious of the same self-indulgent temperament in Byron which repelled him so strongly in Goethe. And it is still more surprising that Börne should consider his own nature to be akin to Byron's. He writes:-- "Perhaps you ask me in surprise how such a beggarly fellow as I come to compare myself with Byron; in which case I must tell you something that you do not know. When Byron's genius on his journey through the firmament first came to this earth, he stayed for a night with me. But the lodging was not to his mind; he left again at once, and took up his quarters at the Hotel Byron. I sorrowed over this for many a year, grieved over my insignificance, my failure. But that is past now; I have forgotten it, and live contented in my poverty. My misfortune is that I was born in the middle class, for which I am not suited."