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LXII. 



HUMBOLDT TO VARNIIAGEN. 



Berlin, Monday, 2Sth February, 1842. 

 I should be glad, my dear friend, to have a couple 

 of lines to relieve me from the anxiety I am in about 

 your health. I have secured a pension of 300 thalers 

 (a miserable sum, but one likely to increase) for the 

 right gifted poet Freiligrath,* of Darmstadt, who is 

 much impoverished, and living abroad without any 

 settled means of support. Can you lend me his 

 poems ? 



A. HT. 



Note ly Varnhagen. On Tuesday Humboldt sent me the follow- 

 ing, together with the feidlleton of the "Journal des Debate," in 

 which Philarete Chasles rails and scoifs in a vulgar way at German 

 literature, and the greatest German writers : 



And this wretch has, under Guizot's administration 

 become Professeur des Langues du Nord (litt. Anglaise- 

 Allemande) au College de France. Keep this silly and 

 insipid piece of rascality. 



A. HT. 



* Humboldt seems to have had but an imperfect knowledge of Freiligrath's 

 circumstances at the time. The poet certainly depended on his literary 

 labours as a means of subsistence, but he was not " impoverished," and, at 

 all events, accepted the pension (returned by him, two years later) only as 

 an encouragement to his talent, having no idea that it could be meant, as 

 would appear from this letter, as a royal alms-giving. Humboldt, it must 

 be borne in mind, interested himself for Freiligrath not at the request of 

 Freiligrath himself, but at the desire of the late Chancellor von Miiller, at 

 Weimar, who, without Freiligrath's knowledge, had asked Humboldt to use 

 his inflence in the poet's favour. TR. 



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