which appeared to us at that time peculiarly felicitous both as to
words and melody, and we used to sing it as a duet in all our walks
together--

"I think in the olden days
That a maiden was loved by me;
But my heart is sick and troubled,
It is all a dream may-be.

"I think in the olden days,
One was basking in sunny bliss;
But whether I or another?
I cannot be sure of this!

"I think in the olden days
That I sang--but know not what;
For I have forgotten all things
Since I've been by her forgot."

Dear and ridiculous season of youth! A poet of sixteen sings of the
"old myth" of his lost love-sorrow, and a musician of eighteen with all
possible gravity, sets the sobbing strophes to music with a piano-forte
accompaniment that seems to foreshadow the outburst of the world's
denunciation on the head of the inconstant fair!

We were, however, as I have already said, so especially pleased with
this melancholy progeny of our united talents, that we were not long
content to keep it to ourselves; we burned with desire to send it forth
to the public. At that time the "Dresden Evening Times" under the
editorship of, as I believe the late Robert Schneider, admitted poems
over which my critical self-esteem could not but shrug its shoulders.
To him, therefore, we sent our favourite--anonymously, of course--in
the full persuasion that it would appear in the forthcoming number,
text and music both, with the request that the unknown contributor
would delight the Evening Times with other admirable fruits of genius.
Full of a sweet shyness, spite of our incognito, we accordingly took to
haunting the eating-houses where that journal was taken in, and
blushingly looked out for our first-born. But week after week passed by
without satisfying our expectations. I myself after twice writing and
dignifiedly desiring the manuscript to be returned, gave up all hope,
and was so wounded and humiliated by this failure, as first to throw
down the gauntlet to an ungrateful contemporaneous world, and
contribute to the pleasure of more enlightened posterity in the form of
a longer poem; and then gradually to shun all mention of our unlucky
venture, even requesting Bastel (my friend's name being Sebastian) to
leave off humming the tune w