“ He died in the asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna on the 22nd of August 1850. Lenau’s fame rests mainly upon his shorter poems; even his epics are essentially lyric in quality. He is the greatest modern lyric poet of Austria, and the typical representative in German literature of that pessimistic Weltschmerz which, beginning with Byron, reached its culmination in the poetry of Leopardi. ”

“ His father, a government official, died at Budapest in 1807, leaving his children to the care of an affectionate, but jealous and somewhat hysterical, mother, who in 1811 married again. In 1819 the boy went to the university of Vienna; he subsequently studied Hungarian law at Pressburg and then spent the best part of four years in qualifying himself in medicine. ”