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PREFACE

то THE AMERICAN EDITION.

instances lamentably misconceived. In others such a latitude was taken with the original as seemed to betray a doubtful perception of its meaning; and often the most beautiful trains of thought were left half developed. These defects it has been our object to repair.

THE only translation through which of the author was found to be in many the celebrated chef-d'œuvre of Madame de Staël has been hitherto known to the English reader, was of so inferior a character, that a great proportion of the thoughts of the author were wholly lost, or so obscured and distorted as to be little better than lost. A new translation was in progress here when that which is The poetical contributions of L. E. L. now presented to the reader in a revised add much to the value of this edition. shape was received from England. It They are worthy of her reputation. We was prepared for the London Library of have thought it requisite to discard a poStandard Novels. Its style was found etical translation, by another hand, of characterized by a degree of ease and the chapter entitled, "Fragments of the grace rarely met with in a translation. thoughts of Corinne," and have substituted The idiom of a foreign tongue has seldom a strictly literal prose translation. The been more completely thrown off. But incongruity of a poetical garb with the such a peculiar merit was perhaps hardly reflections and feelings expressed in that consistent with the most thorough and chapter will be obvious to every reader. practical familiarity with the language of the original. A short examination detected numerous errors, and it was found necessary to subject the whole book to a minute and rigid revision.* The sense

It may be thought proper to give an example of some of the mistakes which we found it necessary to correct. One, of quite an amusing character, may be taken from the very first book. At the fire in Ancona, Oswald is represented as bringing on shore the ship's pump, to aid in ex

tinguishing the conflagration! This ludicrous

error arose from the use in the French of the

word pompe instead of pompe à feu-fire-engine, as in English we use the word "engine" instead of "fire-engine," when the connection is such as to supersede the use of the compound word. The engines belonging to the ship were of course jutended.

It does not come within the design of this notice to present an analysis of this celebrated work. We cannot, however, forbear transcribing from the recently published memoirs of one of the most distinguished critics of this or any other age, Sir James Mackintosh, a few sentiments to show the estimation in which "Corinne" was held by him.

The extracts which follow are from Sir James' diary.

"Corinne,' first volume.—I have not received the original, and I can no longer refrain from a translation.

"It is, as has been said, a tour in Italy, mixed with a novel. The tour is full of picture and feeling, and of observations on

national character, so refined that scarcely any one else could have made them.

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She paints Ancona and above all Rome in the liveliest colors. She alone seems to have inhabited the Eternal City.

"In the character of Corinne, Madame de Staël draws an imaginary self-what she is, what she had the power of being, and what she might easily imagine that she might have become. Purity, which her sentiments and principles teach her to love, talents and accomplishments, which her energetic genius might easily have acquired; uncommon scenes fitted for her extraordinary mind; and even beauty which her fancy contemplates so constantly and which in the enthusiasm of invention she bestows on this adorned as well as improved self.-These are the

materials out of which she has formed Corinne.,

"13th. Second and third volumes of 'Corinne.' I swallow Corinne slowly, that I may taste every drop. I prolong my enjoyment and really dread its termination.

"How she ennobles the most common scenes!-a sermon from the quarter deck of a ship of war!

"15th. Fourth and fifth volumes of Corinne.' Farewell Corinne ! Powerful and extraordinary book; full of faults so obvious, as not to be worth enumerating, but of which a single sentence has excited more feeling, and exercised more reason than the most faultless models of elegance."

C4

CORINNE ;

OR,

ITALY.

BOOKI.

OSWALD.

CHAPTER I.

In the year 1794, Oswald, Lord Nelvil, a Scotch nobleman, left Edinburgh to pass the winter in Italy. He possessed a noble and handsome person, a fine mind, a great name, an independent fortune; but his health was impaired; and the physicians, fearing that his lungs were affected, prescribed the air of the south. He followed their advice though with little interest in his own recovery, hoping, at least, to find some amusement in the varied objects he was about to behold. That heaviest of all afflictions, the loss of a father, was the cause of his malady. The remorse inspired by scrupulous delicacy still more embittered his regret and haunted his imagination. When we suffer we readily convince ourselves that we are guilty, and violent griefs bring pangs even to the conscience itself.

At five-and-twenty he was already tired of life; he judged the future by the past, and his wounded sensibility was no longer alive to the illusions of the heart. No one could be more kind and devoted to his friends; yet not even the good he effected gave him one sensation of pleasure. He constantly sacrificed his tastes to those of others; but this total forgetfulness of self could not be explained by generosity alone; it was often to be attributed to a degree of melancholy, which rendered him careless of his own doom. The indifferent considered this mood extremely graceful; but those who loved him felt that he gave himself to the happiness of others, like a man who hoped for none himself; and

they almost repined at receiving felicity from one on whom they could never bestow it.

Yet his natural disposition was versatile, sensitive and impassioned; uniting all the qualities which could excite himself or others; but misfortune and repentance had rendered him timid, and he thought to disarm, by exacting nothing from, fate. He trusted to find, in a firm adherence to his duties, and a renouncement of all enjoyments, a security against the sorrows which had distracted him. No pleasures of the world seemed to him worth the risk of its pains; but when we are capable of feeling thein, by what mode of life can we hope to escape them?

Lord Nelvil flattered himself that he should quit Scotland without regret, as he had remained there without pleasure; but it is not thus with sensitive imaginations; he did not suspect the strength of the ties which bound him to the very scene of his miseries, the home of his father. There were apartments which he could not approach without a shudder, and yet, when he had resolved to quit them, he felt more lonely than ever. A sensation of desolateness stole over his heart; he could no longer weep; he could no more recall those little local associations which so deeply touched him; his recollections had less of life; they belonged not to the objects that surrounded him. He did not think the less of him whom he mourned, but he found it more difficult to recall his presence.

Sometimes, too, he reproached himself for abandoning the place where his father had dwelt. "Who knows," would he sigh, "it

the shades of the dead can follow the objects and harmonious; nay, his grief, far from inof their affection? They may not be permit-juring his temper, taught him a still greater ted to wander beyond the spots where their degree of consideration and kindness for ashes repose! Perhaps, at this moment, my others. father deplores mine absence, powerless to recall me. Alas! may not a host of wild events have persuaded him that I have betrayed his tenderness, turned rebel to my country, to his will, and all that is sacred on earth?" These remembrances occasioned him such insupportable despair, that, far from daring to confide them in any one, he dreaded even to sound their depths himself; so easy is it, out of our own reflections, to create irreparable evils!

Twice or thrice in the voyage from Har wich to Emden the sea threatened a storm. Nelvil directed the sailors, cheered the passengers; and when toiling at the ropes himself, or taking for a while the helmsman's place, there was a vigor and address in what he did, which could not be regarded as the simple effect of personal strength and activity, for mind pervaded it all.

When they were about to part, all on board crowded round him to take leave, thanking It is a greater trial to leave one's country, him for a thousand good offices, which he had when one must cross the sea. There is such forgotten: sometimes it was a child that he solemnity in a pilgrimage, the first steps of had caressed and amused; more frequently, which are on the ocean. It seems as if a gulf some old man whose steps he had supported were opening behind you, and your return be- while the wind rocked the vessel. A greater coming impossible; besides, the sight of the absence of personal feeling was scarce ever main always profoundly impresses us, as the known. His voyage had passed without his image of that infinitude which perpetually at- having devoted a moment to himself; he gave tracts the soul, in which thought ever feels up his time to others, with a melancholy beherself lost. Oswald, leaning near the helm, nevolence. As he quitted the vessel the his eyes fixed on the waves, appeared perfect- whole crew cried, almost with one voice, ly calm. Pride and diffidence generally pre- "God bless you, my Lord! we wish you betvented his betraying his emotions even before ter!" Yet Oswald had not once complained his friends; but sad feelings struggled within. of his sufferings; and the persons of a highHe thought on the time when that spectacleer class, who crossed with him, had said not animated his youth with a desire to cleave the a word on this subject; but the common peobillows and measure his strength with theirs.ple, in whom their superiors so rarely confide, "Why," he bitterly mused," why thus constantly yield to meditation? How much pleasure is there in active life, in those violent exertions that make us feel the energy of existence death itself, then, is looked on as but an event, perhaps glorious; at least sudden, and not preceded by decay; but that death which finds us without being bravely sought,that gloomy death which steals from you, in a night, all you held dear, which mocks your regrets, repulses your supplications, and pitilessly opposes to your desire the eternal laws of time and nature,—that death inspires a kind of contempt for human destiny, for the impotence of grief, and all the vain efforts that wreck themselves against necessity."

Such were the thoughts by which Oswald was haunted. The vivacity of youth was united with the reflection of age. He gave himself up to feelings which might have occupied the mind of his father in his last hours, and infused the ardor of five-and-twenty into the melancholy contemplations of declining years. He was weary of everything; yet, nevertheless, lamented the loss of happiness as if he was still alive to its illusions.

This inconsistency, entirely at variance with the will of nature, disordered the depths of his soul; but his manners were ever gentle

are wont to detect the truth without the aid of words: they pity you when you suffer, though ignorant of the cause; and their spontaneous sympathy is unmixed either with censure or advice.

CHAPTER II.

TRAVELLING, say what we will, is one of the saddest pleasures in life. If you ever feel at ease in a strange place, it is because you have begun to make it your home; but to traverse unknown lands, to hear a language which you hardly comprehend, to look on faces unconnected with either your past or future, this is solitude without repose or dignity; for the hurry to arrive where no one awaits you, that agitation whose sole cause is curiosity, lessens you in your own esteem, until new objects can become bound to you by some sweet links of sentiment and habit.

Oswald felt his despondency redoubled in crossing Germany to reach Italy, obliged by

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