But no one of them offers any proof except Strodtmann's statement to this effect.

Now their contention may be substantially correct; but their method of contending is scientifically wrong. To accept, where verification is necessary, the unverified statement of any man is wrong. And, that is the case here. Elster's note is of peculiar interest. He says: "Heine schloss sich am nächsten an die Bearbeitung eines Stoffs an, die ein Graf Löben 1821 veröffentlichte." The expression "ein Graf Löben" is grammatical evidence, though not proof, of one of two things: that Loeben was to Elster himself in 1890 a mere name, or that Elster knew Loeben would be this to the readers of his edition of Heine's works. Brandes says: "Die Nachahmung ist unzweifelhaft."[55] His proof is Strodtmann's statement, and similarity of content and form, with special reference to the two rhymes "sitzet-blitzet" that occur in both. But this was a very common rhyme with both Heine and Loeben in other poems. How much importance can be attached then to similarity of content and form?

The verse and strophe form, the rhyme scheme, the accent, the melody, except for Heine's superiority, are the same in both. As to length, the two poems are exactly equal, each containing, by an unimportant but interesting coincidence, precisely 117 words.[56] But the contents of the two poems are not nearly so similar as they apparently seemed, at first blush, to Adolf Strodtmann. The melodious singing, the golden hair and the golden comb and the use that is made of both, the irresistibly sweet sadness, the time, "Aus alten Zeiten," and the subjectivity—Heine himself recites his poem—these indispensable essentials in Heine's poem are not in Loeben's. Indeed as to content and of course as to merit, the two poems are far removed from each other.

And, moreover, literary parallels are the ancestors of that undocile child, Conjecture. We must remember that sirenic and echo poetry are almost as old as the tide of the sea, certainly as old as the hills, while as to the general situation, there is a passage in Milton's Comus (ll. 880-84) analogous to Heine's ballad, as follows:

    And fair Ligea's golden comb,
    Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks,
    Sleeking her soft alluring locks,
    By all the nymphs that nightly dance
    Upon thy streams with wily glance,

and so on. And as to the pronounced similarity of form, we must remember that Heine was here employing his favorite measure, while Loeben was almost the equal of Ruckert in regard to the number of verse and strophe forms he effectively and easily controlled. In short, striking similarity in content is lacking, and as to the same sort of similarity in form to this but little if any significance can be attached.

And if the internal evidence is thin, the external is invisible, except for the fact that Loeben's ballad was published by Brockhaus, whom Heine knew by correspondence. But between the years 1818 and 1847, Heine never published anything in Urania,[57] which was used by so many of his contemporaries. Heine and Loeben never knew each other personally, and between the years 1821 and 1823 they were never regionally close together.[58] Heine never mentions Loeben in his letters; nor does he refer to him in his creative works, despite the fact that he had a habit of alluding to his brothers in Apollo, even in his poems.[59]

And therefore, though it is fashionable to say that Heine knew Loeben's ballad in 1823, and though the contention is plausible, it is impossible to prove it. Impossible also for this reason: Karl Simrock, Heine's intimate friend, included in his Rheinsagen (1836, 1837, 1841)[60] the ballads on the Lorelei by Brentano, Eichendorff, Heine, and himself. Why did he exclude the one by Loeben? He made an ardent appeal in his preface to his colleagues to inform him of any other ballads that had been written on these themes. The question must be referred to those who like to skate on flabby ice in things literary.

The most plausible theory in regard to the source of Heine's ballad is the one proposed by Oscar F. Walzel, who says: "Heine hat den Stoff wahrscheinlich aus dem ihm wohlbekannten Handbuch für Reisende am Rhein von Aloys Schreiber übernommen."[61] The only proof that Walzel gives that Heine knew Schreiber's manual is a reference[62] to it in Lutetia. But this was written in 1843, and proves nothing as to 1823. His contention, however, that Heine borrowed from Schreiber[63] has everything in its favor, from the point of view of both external and internal evidence and deserves, therefore, detailed elaboration.

As to internal evidence, there is only one slight difference between Heine's ballad and Schreiber's saga: where Heine's Lorelei combs her hair with a golden comb and has golden jewelry, Schreiber's "bindet einen Kranz für ihre goldenen Locken" and "hat eine Schnur von Bernstein in der Hand." Even here the color scheme is the same; otherwise there is no difference: time, place, and events are precisely the same in both. The mood and style are especially similar. The only words in Heine not found in Schreiber are "Kamm" and "bedeuten." Schreiber goes, to be sure, farther than does Heine: he continues the story after the death of the hero.[64] This, however, is of no significance, for Heine was simply interested in his favorite theme of unrequited or hindered love.

Now Heine must have derived his plot from somewhere, else this would be an uncanny case of coincidence. And the two expressions, "Aus alten Zeiten," and "Mit ihrem Singen," the latter of which is so important, Heine could have derived only from Schreiber. Heine was not jesting when he said it was a fairy tale from the days of old; he was following, it seems, Schreiber's saga, the first sentence of which reads as follows: "In alten Zeiten liess sich manchmal auf dem Lureloy um die Abenddämmerung und beym Mondschein eine Jungfrau sehen, die mit so anmuthiger Stimme sang, dass alle, die es hörten, davon bezaubert wurden." But Brentano's Lorelei does not sing at all, and Loeben's just a little, "Sie singt dir hold zum Ohre," while Heine, like Schreiber, puts his heroine in the prima donna class, and has her work her charms through her singing. And it seems that Heine was following Schreiber when the latter wrote as follows: "Viele, die vorüberschifften, gingen am Felsenriff oder im Strudel zu Grunde, weil sie nicht mehr auf den Lauf des Fahrzeugs achteten, sondern von den himmlischen Tönen der wunderbaren Jungfrau gleichsam vom Leben abgelöst wurden, wie das zarte Leben der Blume sich im süssen Duft verhaucht."

And as to her personal appearance, Brentano and Loeben simply tell us that she was beautiful, Brentano employing the Homeric method of proving her beauty by its effects. Heine and Schreiber not only comment upon her physical beauty, they also tell us how she enhanced her natural charms by zealously attending to her hair and her jewelry and religiously guarding the color scheme in so doing. In brief, the similarity is so striking that, if we can prove that Heine knew Schreiber in 1823, we can definitely assert that Schreiber[65] was his main, if not his unique, source.

Let us take up the various arguments in favor of the contention that Heine knew Schreiber's Handbuch in 1823, beginning with the least convincing. If Heine read Loeben's ballad and saga in "Urania für 1821," he could thereby have learned also of Schreiber's Rheinsagen, for, by a peculiar coincidence for our purpose, Brockhaus discusses[66] these in the introduction in connection with a tragedy by W. Usener, entitled Die Brüder, and based upon one of Schreiber's Sagen. Proof, then, that Heine knew Loeben in 1823 is almost proof that he also knew Schreiber.

But there is better proof than this. In