to be with him, partly because of Oriental literature accessible in Paris. But the projects came to nothing. In course of the summer, Platen visited Liebig's city of Darmstadt; a visit that chanced to be most unlucky and disturbed, owing to Liebig's being under military "house-arrest" because of the affair just mentioned. This Darmstadt meeting turned out to be their last. They corresponded regularly and much, and Liebig's letters we know were glowing with homosexual love, jealousy, yearning for Platen and so on, to an ample degree; not to speak of Platen's missives. To the last, the bodily beauty of Justus Liebig haunted Platen. Liebig ever held a distinct post in Platen's roomy heart. Late in the Diary, we find Platen even speaking of Liebig as "the only being who ever has really loved me." The relations between Platen and Justus Liebig have formed the topic of an interesting volume (including correspondence) lately printed. It is strange to think of the eminent scientist Liebig as once upon a time so ardent a young similisexual.
We now reach the last, except one, of what we may term the series of the grandes passions of Platten: that is to say of what we find recorded as such by himself, and distinctively. The first is his wild, short, unhappy love for another young student at Erlangen, whom he names in the Journal as only "Cardenio," mentions in the poems addressed to him as only "Cardenio"; but who is identified with probabilty as a youth named Hoffman. "Cardenio" was, like Eduard Schmidtlein, a law-student. His beauty—merely this, for "Cardenio" was neither intellectual, interesting nor really friendly to Platen—terribly upset poor Platen for about four months. The affair has a considerable share in his verse and Diary. Of course, hero came in Platen's tendency to idealize a person whom he did not know, during a good while; and never (we are certain) would have found psychically companionable. Platen has immortalized "Cardenio" in the deeply-passionate "Epistles
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