It would be unjust, however, in all cases to trace poetic fickleness to heartless or deliberate cruelty. May not the poet and the artist be regarded as martyrs to art and science—students of beauty, obliged to take a purely æsthetic, _disinterested interest_ in feminine charms—as they do in a picture or a landscape—without any desire of exclusive possession? They flirt, apparently, not to break hearts, but merely to educate their sense of beauty. For is not a woman’s face the compendium of all beauty in the world? and a woman’s eyes, expressing incipient Love, are they not so exquisitely beautiful that an epicure of Love could for ever be contented with that expression alone, feeling that marriage, which might alter it, if ever so little, would be a _bétise_? Perhaps some similar thought was in Heine’s mind when he wrote his famous "Du bist wie eine Blume So hold und schön und rein; Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmuth Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein. “Mir ist, als ob ich die Hände Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt‘, Betend, dass Gott dich erhalte So rein und schön und hold.” In quite a different kind of a poem Heine bluntly announces to his “Queen Mary IV.” his declaration of independence, and informs her that not a few who ruled before her have been unceremoniously deposed— “Manche die vor dir regierte Wurde schmählich abgesetzt.” And in his narrative of the sheriff’s daughter he says, “I shall not describe my love for Josepha in detail. This, however, I will confess, that it was after all only a prelude to the great tragedies of my riper years. Thus does Romeo become infatuated with Rosaline before he finds his Juliet.” Byron’s confession, in speaking of an early love, that he had been “attached fifty times since” has been referred to already; and although Byron loved to exaggerate his foibles, his record in this case does not belie his words. Of Burns, Principal Shairp writes that “There was not a comely girl in Tarbolton on whom he did not compose a song, and then he made one which included them all.” Burns himself confesses, “In my conscience, I believe that my heart has been so often on fire that it has been vitrified.” And Washington Irving remarks on Goldsmith’s first love as “a passion of that transient kind which grows up in idleness and exhales itself in poetry.”