Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/7

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"HEU! QUANTO MINUS EST CUM RELIQUIS VERSARI QUAM TUI MEMINISSE!" SHENSTONE.

("TO LIVE WITH THEM IS FAR LESS SWEET THAN TO REMEMBER THEE.") TH. MOORE.

As I perused a copy of Thomas Moore's "Irish Melodies," bequeathed to me, with some more favourite books (English and German classics), by my late friend Harold Fenger, I found this "exquisite inscription" strongly underlined with pencil. So I thought it fit to place it as a motto at the head of these recollections of his love-story, the manuscript of which he confided to my care before he died in London. His death, I am half-happy, half-sorry to say, took place not many years after he had lost his beloved Minna. Indeed the fear which she mentioned in her letter to Stephensen, that Fenger's chest was not strong, proved to be less unfounded than he himself supposed. It was also thought probable by his doctor that the heart-wound, of which these pages tell, added fuel to the complaint from which he was already suffering.

KARL GJELLERUP.

Dresden, August 1912.