all Platen's nearest friends (except Perglas and Gruber) long survived the poet's untimely and lonely end.
Just how far this intimacy with Bülow was "practically" homosexual is not clear. Not even so, in view of Platen's once declaring to us (after a certain night at the Streitberg) that he could praise God that he could admire Bülow's naked beauty of. body without "the least desire for it. mounting in me." There are contradictory passages to this calm mood. Platen begins, about this time, to be sexually reserved in his entries in the Diary. He does not analyze nor wrestle, as he did in recording his sentiments for Schmidtlein and Rotenhan. Besides, we cannot but suspect a sort of innocent insincerity, when he enters on this topic. Even after he was down, in Italy, troubled with small or no scruples of conscience as to homosexual love, he remained reticent as to the physical side of it—as we shall see.
Platen was now twenty-five years old. He had furnished his mind with a colossal, an encyclopaedic knowledge of philosophy, literature, aesthetics, languages, history, etc. etc. Already his verses and dramas were spoken of with great praise. But petty vanity never was among his weaknesses. There is no trace of this, first and last. Indeed Platen, like a great many other Uranians of genius, cared far more to be loved personally, than to be adr mired popularly for intellectual gifts. His happiness in success was in a great degree his pleasure that thus he was more an honour to his friends.
But now came a new emotional affair. In March 12, 1822, began the short but ardent intimacy between him and a student from Darmstadt named Justus Liebig, who afterward became the great chemist,—Liebig, whose name has passed into highest honour through his discoveries in laboratory-methods and preparations. Not only was young
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