A new edition of this work having been called for, owing to the first edition having been for some time out of print, I have taken advantage of the opportunity to add translations of a remarkable collection of Poems by Heine, published for the first time since the appearance of my work in 1859. They consist of as many as twelve hundred lines, described partly as “Early Poems,” which will be found at the beginning of the volume, and partly as “Posthumous Poems,” which are placed at the end. The metres of the original have been again retained throughout. Various errors discovered by me in the first edition have now been corrected; and it only remains for me to express my thanks for the kind manner in which the critical and the general public, both in England and abroad, have received the work, and for the indulgence extended by them to its many imperfections. E. A. B. PREFACE. 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.