anticipation of coming old age and death. It is a commonplace of
psychology that in shocks and contrasts of this kind the liveliest
workings of the imagination and the emotions are to be expected. If we
once establish the contact and complete the circle, and feel something
of the actual thrill that animated the author, we shall, I think, feel
disposed to forgive Corinne many things - from the dress and attitude
which recall that admirable frontispiece of Pickersgill's to Miss
Austen's _Emma_, where Harriet Smith poses in rapt attitude with
"schall" or scarf complete, to that more terrible portrait of Madame de
Stael herself which editors with remorseless ferocity will persist in
prefixing to her works, and especially to _Corinne_. We shall consent to
sweep away all the _fatras_ and paraphernalia of the work, and to see in
the heroine a real woman enough - loving, not unworthy of being loved,
unfortunate, and very undeserving of her ill fortune. We shall further
see that besides other excuses for the mere guide-book detail, the
enthusiasm for Italy which partly prompted it was genuine enough and
very interesting as a sign of the times - of the approach of a period of
what we may call popularised learning, culture, sentiment. In some
respects _Corinne_ is not merely a guide-book to Italy; it is a
guide-book by prophecy to the nineteenth century.

The minor characters are a very great deal less interesting than Corinne
herself, but they are not despicable, and they set off the heroine and
carry out what story there is well enough. Nelvil of course is a thing
shreddy and patchy enough. He reminds us by turns of Chateaubriand's
René and Rousseau's Bomston, both of whom Madame de Stael of course
knew; of Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, with whom she was very probably
acquainted; but most of no special, even bookish, progenitor, but of a
combination of theoretic deductions from supposed properties of man in
general and Englishman in particular. Of Englishmen in particular Madame
de Stael knew little more than a residence (chiefly in _émigré_ society)
for a short time in England, and occasional meetings elsewhere, could
teach her. Of men in general her experience had been a little
unfortunate. Her father had probity, financial skill, and, I suppose, a
certain amount of talent in other directions; but while he must have had
some domestic virtues he was a wooden pedant. Her husband hardly counted
for more in her life than her _maître d'hôtel_, and though there seems
to have been no particular harm in him, had no special talents and no
special virtues. Her first regular lover, Narbonne, was a handsome,
dignified, heartless _roué_ of the old _régime_. Her second, Benjamin
Constant, was a man of genius, and capable of passionate if inconstant
attachment, but also what his own generation in England called a
thorough "raff" - selfish, treacherous, fickle, incapable of considering
either the happiness or the reputation of women, theatrical in his ways
and language, venal, insolent, ungrateful. Schlegel, though he too had
some touch of genius in him, was half pedant, half coxcomb, and full of
intellectual and moral faultiness. The rest of her mighty herd of male
friends and hangers-on ranged from Mathieu de Montmorency - of whom, in
the words of Medora Trevilian it may be said, that he was "only an
excellent person" - through respectable savants like Sismondi and Dumont,
down to a very low level of toady and tuft-hunter. It is rather
surprising that with such models and with no supreme creative faculty
she should have been able to draw such creditable walking gentlemen as
the Frenchman Erfeuil, the Englishman Edgermond, and the Italian
Castel-Forte; and should not have produced a worse hero than Nelvil. For
Nelvil, whatever faults he may have, and contemptible as his vacillating
refusal to take the goods the gods provide him may be, is, after all, if
not quite a live man, an excellent model of what a considerable number
of the men of his time aimed at being, and would have liked to be. He is
not a bit less life-like than Byron's usual hero for instance, who
probably owes not a little to him.

And so we get to a fresh virtue of _Corinne_, or rather we reach its
main virtue by a different side. It has an immense historical value as
showing the temper, the aspirations, the ideas, and in a way the manners
of a certain time and society. A book which does this can never wholly
lose its interest; it must always retain that interest in a great
measure, for those who are able to appreciate it. And it must interest
them far more keenly, when, besides this secondary and, so to speak,
historical merit, it exhibits such veracity in the portraiture of
emotion, as, whatever be its drawbacks, whatever its little temptations
to ridicule, distinguishes the hapless, and, when all is said, the noble
and pathetic figure of Corinne.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] I am creditor neither to praise nor to blame for this translation,
which is the old English version brought out in the same year as the
original, but corrected by another hand for the present edition in the
pretty numerous points where it was lax or unintelligent in actual
rendering. In the places which I have compared, it seems to me to
present that original very fairly now; and I am by no means sure that an
excessively artificial style like that of the French Empire is not best
left to contemporaries to reproduce. At any rate, a really good new
translation of _Corinne_ would be a task unlikely to be achieved except
by rather exceptional talents working in labour of love: and I cannot
blame the publishers of this issue for not waiting till such a
translator appeared.


Book i.

OSWALD.

[Illustration]


CORINNE.


Chapter i.


Oswald, Lord Nelville, Peer of Scotland, quitted Edinburgh for Italy
during the winter of 1794-5. He possessed a noble and handsome figure,
an abundance of wit, an illustrious name, and an independent fortune,
but his health was impaired by deeply-rooted sorrow, and his physicians,
fearing that his lungs were attacked, had prescribed him the air of the
South. Though indifferent as to the preservation of his life, he
followed their advice. He expected, at least, to find in the diversity
of objects he was about to see, something that might divert his mind
from the melancholy that preyed upon it. The most exquisite of
griefs - the loss of a father - was the cause of his malady; this was
heightened by cruel circumstances, which, together with a remorse
inspired by delicate scruples, increased his anguish, which was still
further aggravated by the phantoms of the imagination. Those who suffer,
easily persuade themselves that they are guilty, and violent grief will
extend its painful influence even to the conscience.

At twenty-five years of age he was dissatisfied with life, his mind
anticipated every thing that it could afford, and his wounded
sensibility no longer enjoyed the illusions of the heart. Nobody
appeared more complacent, more devoted to his friends when he was able
to render them service; but not even the good he performed could afford
him a pleasurable sensation.

He incessantly sacrificed his own taste to that of others; but it was
impossible to explain, upon principles of generosity alone, this total
abnegation of every selfish feeling, most frequently to be attributed to
that species of sadness which no longer permitted him to take any
interest in his own fate. Those indifferent to him enjoyed this
disposition so full of benignity and charm; but those who loved him
perceived that he sought the happiness of others like a man who no
longer expected any himself; and they almost experienced a pain from his
conferring a felicity for which it was impossible to make him a return
in kind.

He was, notwithstanding, of a nature susceptible of emotion, sensibility
and passion; he combined every thing that could evoke enthusiasm in
others and in himself; but misfortune and repentance had taught him to
tremble at that destiny whose anger he sought to disarm by forbearing to
solicit any favour at her hands.

He expected to find in a strict attachment to all his duties, and in a
renunciation of every lively enjoyment, a security against those pangs
that tear the soul. What he had experienced struck fear into his heart;
and nothing this world can afford, could, in his estimation, compensate
the risk of those sufferings; but when one is capable of feeling them,
what mode of life can shelter us from their power?

Lord Nelville flattered himself that he should be able to quit Scotland
without regret, since he resided in it without pleasure; but the
unhappy imagination of the children of sensibility is not so formed: he
did not suspect what ties attached him to those scenes which were most
painful to him, - to the home of his father. There were in this
habitation, chambers, places, which he could not approach without
shuddering, and, nevertheless, when he resolved to quit them, he felt
himself still more solitary. His heart became dried up; he was no longer
able to give vent to his sufferings in tears; he could no longer call up
those little local circumstances which affected him deeply; his
recollections no longer possessed anything of the vivid semblance of
real existence; they were no longer in affinity with the objects that
surrounded him; he did not think less on him whose loss he lamented, but
he found it more difficult to recall his presence.

Sometimes also he reproached himself for abandoning those abodes where
his father had dwelt. "Who knows," said he to himself, "whether the
shades of the departed are allowed to pursue every where the objects of
their affection? Perhaps it is only permitted them to wander about the
spot where their ashes repose! Perhaps at this moment my father regrets
me, while distance prevents my hearing his voice exerted to recall his
son. Alas! while he was living must not a concourse of strange events
have persuaded him that I had betrayed his tenderness, that I was a
rebel to my country, to his paternal will, to everything that is sacred
on earth?" - These recollections excited in Lord Nelville a grief so
insupportable that not only was he unable to confide it to others, but
even dreaded himself to sound it to the bottom. So easily do our own
reflections become to us an irreparable evil.

It costs us more to quit our native country when to leave it we must
traverse the sea; all is solemn in a journey of which ocean marks the
first steps. An abyss seems to open behind you, and to render your
return for ever impossible. Besides, the sublime spectacle which the sea
presents must always make a deep impression on the imagination; it is
the image of that Infinity which continually attracts our thoughts, that
run incessantly to lose themselves in it. Oswald, supporting himself on
the helm, his eyes fixed on the waves, was apparently calm, for his
pride, united to his timidity, would scarcely ever permit him to
discover, even to his friends, what he felt; but he was internally
racked with the most painful emotions.

He brought to mind the time when the sight of the sea animated his youth
with the desire of plunging into her waves, and measuring his force
against her's. - "Why," said he to himself, with the most bitter regret,
"why do I yield so unremittingly to reflection? How many pleasures are
there in active life, in those exercises which make us feel the energy
of existence? Death itself then appears but an event, perhaps glorious,
at least sudden, and not preceded by decline. But that death which comes
without having been sought by courage, that death of darkness which
steals from you in the night all that you hold most dear, which despises
your lamentations, repulses your embrace, and pitilessly, opposes to you
the eternal laws of nature and of time! such a death inspires a sort of
contempt for human destiny, for the impotence of grief, for all those
vain efforts that dash and break themselves upon the rock of necessity."

Such were the sentiments that tormented Oswald; and what particularly
characterised his unhappy situation, was the vivacity of youth united to
thoughts of another age. He entered into those ideas which he conceived
must have occupied his father's mind in the last moments of his life;
and he carried the ardour of twenty-five into the melancholy
reflections of old age. He was weary of every thing, and yet still
regretted happiness, as if her illusions were still within his grasp.
This contrast, quite in hostility with the ordinance of nature, which
gives uniformity and graduation to the natural course of things, threw
the soul of Oswald into disorder; but his manners always possessed
considerable sweetness and harmony, and his sadness, far from souring
his temper, only inspired him with more condescension and goodness
towards others.

Two or three times during the passage from Harwich to Empden the sea put
on the appearance of approaching storm; Lord Nelville counselled the
sailors, restored confidence to the passengers, and when he himself
assisted in working the ship, when he took for a moment the place of the
steersman, there was in all he did, a skill and a power which could not
be considered as merely the effect of the agility of the body, - there
was soul in all that he did.

On his quitting the vessel all the crew crowded around Oswald to take
leave of him; they all thanked him for a thousand little services which
he had rendered them during the voyage, and which he no longer
remembered. Upon one occasion, perhaps, it was a child which had
occupied a large share of his attention; more often an old man, whose
tottering steps he had supported when the wind agitated the ship. Such a
general attention, without any regard to rank or quality, was perhaps
never met with. During the whole day he would scarcely bestow a single
moment upon himself: influenced alike by melancholy and benevolence, he
gave his whole time to others. On leaving him the sailors said to him
with one voice, "My dear Lord, may you be more happy!" Oswald had not
once expressed the internal pain he felt; and the men of another rank,
who had accompanied him in his passage, had not spoken a word to him on
that subject. But the common people, in whom their superiors rarely
confide, accustom themselves to discover sentiments and feelings by
other means than speech: they pity you when you suffer, though they are
ignorant of the cause of your grief, and their spontaneous pity is
unmixed with either blame or advice.


Chapter ii.


Travelling, whatever may be said of it, is one of the saddest pleasures
of life. When you find yourself comfortable in some foreign city it
begins to feel, in some degree, like your own country; but to traverse
unknown realms, to hear a language spoken which you hardly comprehend,
to see human countenances which have no connection either with your past
recollections or future prospects, is solitude and isolation, without
dignity and without repose; for that eagerness, that haste to arrive
where nobody expects us, that agitation, of which curiosity is the only
cause, inspires us with very little esteem for ourselves, till the
moment when new objects become a little old, and create around us some
soft ties of sentiment and habit.

The grief of Oswald was, then, redoubled in traversing Germany in order
to repair to Italy. On account of the war it was necessary to avoid
France and its environs; it was also necessary to keep aloof from the
armies who rendered the roads impracticable. This necessity of occupying
his mind with particulars material to the journey, of adopting, every
day, and almost every instant, some new resolution, was quite
insupportable to Lord Nelville. His health, far from becoming better,
often obliged him to stop, when he felt the strongest desire to hasten
to his journey's end or at least to make a start. He spat blood, and
took scarcely any care of himself; for he believed himself guilty, and
became his own accuser with too great a degree of severity. He no longer
wished for life but as it might become instrumental to the defence of
his country. "Has not our country," said he, "some paternal claims upon
us? But we should have the power to serve it usefully: we must not offer
it such a debilitated existence as I drag along to ask of the sun some
principle of life to enable me to struggle against my miseries. None but
a father would receive me to his bosom, under such circumstances, with
affection increased in proportion as I was abandoned by nature and by
destiny."

Lord Nelville had flattered himself that the continual variety of
external objects would distract his imagination a little from those
ideas by which it was habitually occupied; but that circumstance was far
from producing, at first, this happy effect. After any great misfortune
we must become familiarised anew with everything that surrounds us;
accustom ourselves to the faces that we behold again, to the house in
which we dwell, to the daily habits that we resume; each of these
efforts is a painful shock, and nothing multiplies them like a journey.

The only pleasure of Lord Nelville was to traverse the Tirolese
Mountains upon a Scotch horse which he had brought with him, and which
like the horses of that country ascended heights at a gallop: he quitted
the high road in order to proceed by the most steep paths. The
astonished peasants cried out at first with terror at beholding him thus
upon the very brink of precipices, then clapped their hands in
admiration of his address, his agility, and his courage. Oswald was fond
of this sensation of danger; it supports the weight of affliction, it
reconciles us, for a moment, with that life which we have reconquered,
and which it so easy to lose.


Chapter iii.


In the town of Inspruck, before entering Italy, Oswald heard a merchant
at whose house he had stopped some time, relate the story of a French
emigré called the Count d'Erfeuil, which greatly interested him in his
favour. This man had suffered the entire loss of a very large fortune
with the most perfect serenity; he had, by his talent for music,
supported himself and an old uncle, whom he had taken care of until his
death; he had constantly refused to accept offers of pecuniary
assistance pressingly made to him; he had manifested the most brilliant
valour - a French valour - during the war, and the most invincible gaiety
in the midst of reverses. He was desirous of going to Rome to see a
relation, whose heir he was to be, and wished for a companion, or rather
a friend, in order to render the journey more agreeable to both.

The most bitter recollections of Lord Nelville were connected with
France; nevertheless he was exempt from those prejudices which divide
the two nations; for a Frenchman had been his intimate friend, and he
had found in this friend the most admirable union of all the qualities
of the soul. He, therefore, offered to the merchant who related to him
the story of the Count d'Erfeuil, to take this noble and unfortunate
young man to Italy; and at the end of an hour the merchant came to
inform Lord Nelville that his proposition was accepted with gratitude.
Oswald was happy in being able to perform this service, but it cost him
much to renounce his solitude; and his timidity was wounded at finding
himself, all of a sudden, in an habitual relation with a man whom he did
not know.

The Count d'Erfeuil came to pay a visit to Lord Nelville, in order to
thank him. He possessed elegant manners, an easy politeness, good taste,
and appeared, from the very first introduction, perfectly at his ease.
In his company one would feel astonished at all that he had suffered,
for he supported his fate with a courage approaching to oblivion; and
there was in his conversation a facility truly admirable when he spoke
of his own reverses; but less admirable, it must be confessed, when it
extended to other subjects.

"I owe you infinite obligation, my lord," said the Count d'Erfeuil, "for
rescuing me from this Germany, where I was perishing with _ennui_." "You
are here, nevertheless," replied Lord Nelville, "generally beloved and
esteemed." "I have friends here," replied the Count d'Erfeuil, "whom I
sincerely regret; for we meet in this country the best people in the
world; but I do not know a word of German, and you will agree with me
that it would be too long and fatiguing a task for me to set about
learning it now. Since I have had the misfortune to lose my uncle I do
not know what to do with my time, when I had the care of him it filled
up my day, at present the twenty-four hours weigh heavily upon my
hands." "The delicacy of your conduct towards your uncle," said Lord
Nelville, "inspires everybody with the most profound esteem for your
character, Count." "I have only done my duty," replied the Count
d'Erfeuil; "the poor man had overwhelmed me with kindnesses during my
childhood; I should never have deserted him had he lived a hundred
years! But it is happy for him, however, that he is dead; it would be a
happy thing for me also were I to follow him," added he, laughing; "for
I have not much hope in this world. I used my best endeavours, during
the war, to get killed; but, since fate has spared me, I must only live
as well as I can." "I shall congratulate myself on my arrival here,"
answered Lord Nelville, "if you find yourself comfortable at Rome, and
if - " "Oh, _mon Dieu_," interrupted the Count d'Erfeuil, "I shall find
myself comfortable every where: when we are young and gay every thing
accommodates itself to us. It is not from books, nor from meditation,
that I have derived the philosophy which I possess, but from knowledge
of the world, and trials of misfortune; and you see, my lord, that I
have reason to reckon upon chance, since it has procured me the honour
of travelling with you." In finishing these words the Count d'Erfeuil
saluted Lord Nelville with the best grace in the world, settled the hour
of departure for the following day, and took his leave.

The Count d'Erfeuil and Lord Nelville set out on the morrow. Oswald,
after some expressions of politeness had passed between them, was
several hours without saying a word; but perceiving that this silence
was disagreeable to his companion, he asked him if he anticipated
pleasure from a residence in Italy: "_Mon Dieu_," replied the Count
d'Erfeuil, "I know what I have to expect from that country. I have no
hope of any amusement there: a friend of mine, who had passed six months
at Rome, has assured me there is not a province of France where one may
not find a better theatre and a more agreeable society than at Rome, but
in that ancient capital of the world I shall surely find some Frenchmen
to chat with, and that is all I desire." "You have not attempted to
learn Italian?" interrupted Oswald. "Not at all," replied the Count
d'Erfeuil; "that did not enter into my plan of study." And in saying
this he assumed such a serious air that one would have believed it was a
resolution founded upon grave motives.

"If I may speak my mind to you," continued the Count d'Erfeuil, "as a
nation, I love only the English and the French, one must either be proud
like them or brilliant like us; all the rest is only imitation." Oswald
was silent; the Count d'Erfeuil some moments after resumed the
conversation by the most lively sallies of wit and gaiety. He played
with words and phrases in a very ingenious manner, but neither external
objects nor intimate sentiments were the object of his discourse. His
conversation proceeded, if it may be so expressed, neither from without
nor within; it was neither reflective nor imaginative, and the bare
relations of society were its subject.

He repeated twenty proper names to Lord Nelville, either in France, or
in England, to know if he was acquainted with them, and related upon
this occasion highly seasoned anecdotes with a most graceful turn; but
one would have said, in hearing him, that the only discourse suitable to
a man of taste was, to use the expression, the gossip of good company.

Lord Nelville reflected some time on the character of Count d'Erfeuil;
that singular mixture of courage and frivolity, that contempt of
misfortune, so great if it had cost more efforts, so heroic if it did
not proceed from the same source that renders us incapable of deep
affections. "An Englishman," said Oswald to himself, "would be weighed
down with sadness under similar circumstances. - Whence proceeds the
resolution of this Frenchman? Whence proceeds also his mobility? Does