Corinne Volume 1 (of 2) Read online

  Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Martin Pettit and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  The crowd break their ranks as the horses pass.]

  CORINNE

  OR

  ITALY

  BY

  MME. DE STAEL

  WITH INTRODUCTION BY

  GEORGE SAINTSBURY

  (_In Two Volumes_)

  VOL. I.

  _Illustrated_

  _by_

  H.S. Greig

  LONDON: Published by J.M. DENT and COMPANY atALDINE HOUSE in Great Eastern Street, E.C.

  MDCCCXCIV

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

  THE CROWD BREAK THEIR RANKS AS THE HORSES PASS _Frontispiece_.

  CORINNE AT THE CAPITOL PAGE 33

  CORINNE SHOWING OSWALD HER PICTURES " 235

  INTRODUCTION.

  In Lady Blennerhassett's enthusiastic and encyclopaedic book on Madame deStael she quotes approvingly Sainte-Beuve's phrase that "with _Corinne_Madame de Stael ascended the Capitol." I forget in which of his manydealings with an author who, as he remarks in the "Coppet-and-Weimar"_causeries_, was "an idol of his youth and one that he never renounced,"this fancy occurs. It must probably have been in one of his earlyessays; for in his later and better, Sainte-Beuve was not wont to giveway to the little flashes and crackles of conceit and epigram which manyFrenchmen and some Englishmen think to be criticism. There was, however,some excuse for this. In the first place (as one of Charles Lamb'sliteral friends would have pointed out), Madame de Stael, like herheroine, did actually "ascend the Capitol," and received attentionsthere from an Academy. In the second, there can be no doubt that_Corinne_ in a manner fixed and settled the high literary reputationwhich she had already attained. Even by her severest critics, and evennow when whatever slight recrudescence of biographical interest may havetaken place in her, her works are little read, _Corinne_ is ranked nextto _De l'Allemagne_ as her greatest production; while as a work of form,not of matter, as literature of power, not of knowledge, it has at lasta chance of enduring when its companion is but a historicaldocument--the record of a moment that has long passed away.

  The advocates of the _milieu_ theory--the theory which will have it thatyou can explain almost the whole of any work of art by examining thecircumstances, history, and so forth of the artist--have a better chancewith _Corinne_ than with many books, though those who disagree with them(as I own that I do) may retort that this was precisely because Madamede Stael in literature has little idiosyncracy, and is a receptive, nota creative, force. The moment at which this book was composed andappeared had really many of the characteristics of crisis and climax inthe life of the author. She was bidding adieu to youth; and though hertalents, her wealth, her great reputation, and her indomitabledetermination to surround herself with admirers still made her a sort ofqueen of society, some illusions at least must have been passing fromher. The most serious of her many passions, that for Benjamin Constant,was coming, though it had not yet come, to an end. Her father, whom sheunfeignedly idolised, was not long dead. The conviction must have beenfor some time forcing itself on her, though she did not even yet give uphope, that Napoleon's resolve not to allow her presence in her stillmore idolised Paris was unconquerable. Her husband, who indeed had longbeen nothing to her, was dead also, and the fancy for replacing him withthe boy Rocca had not yet arisen. The influence of the actual chief ofher usual herd of lovers, courtiers, teachers, friends (to use whicheverterm, or combination of terms, the charitable reader pleases), A.W.Schlegel, though it never could incline her innately unpoetical andunreligious mind to either poetry or religion, drove her towardsaesthetics of one kind and another. Lastly, the immense intellectualexcitement of her visits to Weimar, Berlin, and Italy, added itsstimulus to produce a fresh intellectual ferment in her. On the purelyintellectual side the result was _De l'Allemagne_, which does notconcern us; on the side of feeling, tinged with aesthetic philosophy, ofstudy of the archaic and the picturesque illuminated by emotion--theresult was _Corinne_.

  If there had been only one difference between this and its author'searlier attempt at novel-writing, that difference would have given_Corinne_ a great advantage. _Delphine_ had been irreverently describedby Sydney Smith, when it appeared a few years earlier, as "this dismaltrash which has nearly dislocated the jaws of every critic with gaping."The Whigs had not then taken up Madame de Stael, as they did afterwards,or it is quite certain that Mr Sydney would not have been allowed toexercise such Britannic frankness. _Corinne_ met with gentler treatmentfrom his friends, if not from himself. Sir James Mackintosh, inparticular, was full of the wildest enthusiasm about it, though headmitted that it was "full of faults so obvious as not to be worthmentioning." It must be granted to be in more than one, or two importantpoints a very great advance on _Delphine_. One is that the easy andillegitimate source of interest which is drawn upon in the earlier bookis here quite neglected. _Delphine_ presents the eternal Frenchsituation of the "triangle;" the line of _Corinne_ is straight, and theonly question is which pair of three points it is to unite in anhonourable way. A French biographer of Madame de Stael, who is not onlyan excellent critic and an extremely clever writer, but a historian ofgreat weight and acuteness, M. Albert Sorel, has indeed admitted thatboth Leonce, the hero of _Delphine_, who will not make himself and hisbeloved happy because he has an objection to divorcing his wife, andLord Nelvil, who refuses either to seduce or to marry the woman wholoves him and whom he loves, are equal donkeys with a nationaldifference. Leonce is more of a "fool;" Lord Nelvil more of a "snob." Itis something to find a Frenchman who will admit that any nationalcharacteristic is foolish: I could have better reciprocated M. Sorel'scandour if he had used the word "prig" instead of "snob" of Lord Nelvil.But indeed I have often suspected that Frenchmen confuse these twoengaging attributes of the Britannic nature.

  A "higher moral tone" (as the phrase goes) is not the only advantagewhich _Corinne_ possesses over its forerunner. _Delphine_ is almostavowedly autobiographical; and though Madame de Stael had the wit andthe prudence to mix and perplex her portraits and her reminiscences sothat it was nearly impossible to fit definite caps on the personages,there could be no doubt that Delphine was herself--as she at least wouldhave liked to be--drawn as close as she dared. These personalities havein the hands of the really great masters of fiction sometimes producedastonishing results; but no one probably would contend that Madame deStael was a born novelist. Although _Delphine_ has many more personagesand much more action of the purely novel kind than _Corinne_, it iscertainly not an interesting book; I think, though I have beenreproached for, to say the least, lacking fervour as a Staelite, that_Corinne_ is.

  But it is by no means unimportant that intending readers should know thesort of interest that they are to expect from this novel; and for thatpurpose it is almost imperative that they should know what kind ofperson was this novelist. A good deal of biographical pains has beenspent, as has been already more than once hinted, on Madame de Stael.She was most undoubtedly of European reputation in her day; and betweenher day and this, quite independently of the real and unquestionablevalue of her work, a high estimate of her has been kept current by thefact that her daughter was the wife of Duke Victor and the mother ofDuke Albert of Broglie, and that so a proper respect for her has been anecessary passport to favour in one of the greatest political andacademic houses of France; while another not much less potent in bothways, that of the Counts d'Haussonville, also represents her. Stillpeople, and especially English people, have so many non-literary thingsto think of, that it may not be quite unpardonable to supply thatconception of the life of Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baroness ofStael-Holstein, which is so necessary to the understanding of _Corinne_,and which may, in possible cases, be wanting.

  She was born on the 22nd of April 1766, and was, as probably everybodyknows, the daughter of the Swiss financier, Necker, whom the FrenchRevolution first exalted to almost supreme power in France, and thencast off--fortunately for him, in a less tragical fashion than that inwhich it usually cast off its favourites. Her mother was SuzanneCurchod, the first love of Gibbon, a woman of a delicate beauty, of veryconsiderable mental and social faculties, a kind of puritanicalcoquette, but devoted to her (by all accounts not particularlyinteresting) husband. Indeed, mother and daughter are said to have beenfrom a very early period jealous of each other in relation to Necker.Germaine, as she was generally called, had, unluckily for her, inheritednothing of her mother's delicacy of form and feature; indeed, her mostrapturous admirers never dared to claim much physical beauty for her,except a pair of fine, though unfeminine, eyes. She was rather shortthan tall; her figure was square-set and heavy; her features, though notexactly ill-formed, matched her figure; her arms were massive, thoughnot ill-shaped; and she was altogether distinctly what the French call_hommasse_. Nevertheless, her great wealth, and the high position of herfather, attracted suitors, some of whom at least may not have overlookedthe intellectual ability which she began very early to display. Therewas talk of her marrying William Pitt, but either Pitt's well-known"dislike of the fair," or some other reason, foiled the project. Afterone or two other negotiations she made a match which was not destined togood fortune, and which does not strike most observers as a verytempting one in any respect, though it carried with it some exceptionaland rather eccentric guarantees for that position at court and insociety on which Germaine was set. The King of Sweden, Gustavus, whosefamily oddity had
taken, among less excusable forms, that of a platonicdevotion to Marie Antoinette, gave a sort of perpetual brevet of hisministry at Paris to the Baron de Stael-Holstein, a nobleman of littlefortune and fair family. This served, using clerical language, as his"title" to marriage with Germaine Necker. Such a marriage could not beexpected to, and did not, turn out very well; but it did not turn out asill as it might have done. Except that M. de Stael was ratherextravagant (which he probably supposed he had bought the right to be)nothing serious is alleged against him; and though more than one thingserious might be alleged against his wife, it is doubtful whether eithercontracting party thought this out of the bargain. For business reasons,chiefly, a separation was effected between the pair in 1798, but theywere nominally reconciled four years later, just before Stael's death.

  Meanwhile the Revolution broke out, and Madame de Stael, who, as she wasbound to do, had at first approved it, disapproved totally of theTerror, tried to save the Queen, and fled herself from France toEngland. Here she lived in Surrey with a questionable set of _emigres_,made the acquaintance of Miss Burney, and in consequence of theunconventionalities of her relations, especially with M. de Narbonne,received, from English society generally, a cold shoulder, which she haspartly avenged, or tried to avenge, in _Corinne_ itself. She had alreadywritten, or was soon to write, a good deal, but nothing of the firstimportance. Then she went to Coppet, her father's place, on the Lake ofGeneva, which she was later to render so famous; and under the Directorywas enabled to resume residence in Paris, though she was more than onceunder suspicion. It was at this time that she met Benjamin Constant, thefuture brilliant orator, and author of _Adolphe_, the only man perhapswhom she ever really loved, but, unluckily, a man whom it was by nomeans good to love. For some years she oscillated contentedly enoughbetween Coppet and Paris. But the return of Bonaparte from Egypt wasunlucky for her. Her boundless ambition, which, with her love ofsociety, was her strongest passion, made her conceive the idea offascinating him, and through him ruling the world. Napoleon, to usefamiliar English, "did not see it." When he liked women he liked thempretty and feminine; he had not the faintest idea of admitting any kindof partner in his glory; he had no literary taste; and not only didMadame de Stael herself meddle with politics, but her friend, Constant,under the Consulate, chose to give himself airs of opposition in theEnglish sense. Moreover, she still wrote, and Bonaparte disliked anddreaded everyone who wrote with any freedom. Her book, _De laLitterature_, in 1800, was taken as a covert attack on the Napoleonic_regime_; her father shortly after republished another on finance andpolitics, which was disliked; and the success of _Delphine_, in 1803,put the finishing touch to the petty hatred of any kind of rivalsuperiority which distinguished the Corsican more than any other man ofequal genius. Madame de Stael was ordered not to approach within fortyleagues of Paris, and this exile, with little softening and someexcesses of rigour, lasted till the return of the Bourbons.

  Then it was that the German and Italian journeys already mentioned (thedeath of M. Necker happening between them and recalling his daughterfrom the first) led to the writing of _Corinne_.

  A very few words before we turn to the consideration of the book, as abook and by itself, may appropriately finish all that need be said hereabout the author's life. After the publication of _Corinne_ she returnedto Germany, and completed the observation which she thought necessaryfor the companion book _De l'Allemagne_. Its publication in 1810, whenshe had foolishly kindled afresh the Emperor's jealousy by appearingwith her usual "tail" of worshippers or parasites as near Paris as shewas permitted, completed her disgrace. She was ordered back to Coppet:her book was seized and destroyed. Then Albert de Rocca, a youth oftwenty-three, who had seen some service, made his appearance at Geneva.Early in 1811, Madame de Stael, now aged forty-five, married himsecretly. She was, or thought herself, more and more persecuted byNapoleon; she feared that Rocca might be ordered off on active duty, andshe fled first to Vienna, then to St Petersburg, then to Stockholm, andso to England. Here she was received with ostentatious welcome andpraises by the Whigs; with politeness by everybody; with more or lessconcealed terror by the best people, who found her rhapsodies and herpolitical dissertations equally boring. Here too she was unlucky enoughto express the opinion that Miss Austen's books were vulgar. The fallof Napoleon brought her back to Paris; and after the vicissitudes of1814-15, enabled her to establish herself there for the short remainderof her life, with the interruption only of visits to Coppet and toItaly. She died on the 13th July 1817: her two last works, _Dix Anneesd'Exil_ and the posthumous _Considerations sur La Revolution Francaise_,being admittedly of considerable interest, and not despicable even bythose who do not think highly of her political talents.

  And now to _Corinne_, unhampered and perhaps a little helped by thissurvey of its author's character, career, and compositions. Theheterogeneous nature of its plan can escape no reader long; and indeedis pretty frankly confessed by its title. It is a love story doubledwith a guide-book: an eighteenth-century romance of "sensibility"blended with a transition or even nineteenth-century diatribe ofaesthetics and "culture." If only the first of these two labels wereapplicable to it, its case would perhaps be something more gracious thanit is; for there are more unfavourable situations for cultivating theaffections, than in connection with the contemplation of the great worksof art and nature, and it is possible to imagine many more disagreeable_ciceroni_ than a lover of whichever sex. But Corinne and Nelvil (whomour contemporary translator[1] has endeavoured to acclimatise a littlemore by Anglicising his name further to Nelville), do not contentthemselves with making love in the congenial neighbourhoods of Tiber orPoestum, or in the stimulating presence of the masterpieces of modernand ancient art. A purpose, and a double purpose, it might almost besaid, animates the book. It aims at displaying "sensibility socharming"--the strange artificial eighteenth-century conception of lovewhich is neither exactly flirtation nor exactly passion, which setsconvention at defiance, but retains its own code of morality; atexhibiting the national differences, as Madame de Stael conceived them,of the English and French and Italian temperaments; and at preaching thenew cult of aesthetics whereof Lessing and Winckelmann, Goethe, andSchlegel, were in different ways and degrees the apostles. And it seemsto have been generally admitted, even by the most fervent admirers ofMadame de Stael and of _Corinne_ itself, that the first purpose has nothad quite fair play with the other two. "A little thin," they confess ofthe story. In truth it could hardly be thinner, though the author haslaid under contribution an at least ample share of the improbabilitiesand coincidences of romance.

  Nelvil, an English-Scottish peer who has lost his father, who accuseshimself of disobedience and ingratitude to that father, and who has beengrievously jilted by a Frenchwoman, arrives in Italy in a large blackcloak, the deepest melancholy, and the company of a sprightly thoughpenniless French _emigre_, the Count d'Erfeuil. After performingprodigies of valour in a fire at Ancona, he reaches Rome just when abeautiful and mysterious poetess, the delight of Roman society, is beingcrowned on the Capitol. The only name she is known by is Corinne. Thepair are soon introduced by the mercurial Erfeuil, and promptly fall inlove with each other, Corinne seeking partly to fix her hold on Nelvil,partly to remove his Britannic contempt for Italy and the Italians, byguiding him to all the great spectacles of Rome and indeed of thecountry generally, and by explaining to him at great length what sheunderstands of the general theory of aesthetics, of Italian history, andof the contrasted character of the chief European nations. Nelvil on hisside is distracted between the influence of the beauty, genius, andevident passion of Corinne, and his English prejudices; while thesituation is further complicated by the regulation discovery thatCorinne, though born in Italy of an Italian mother, is, strictlyspeaking, his own compatriot, being the elder and lawful daughter of aBritish peer, Lord Edgermond, his father's closest friend. Nay more, hehad always been destined to wed this very girl; and it was only afterher father's second marriage with an Englishwoman that the younger andwholly English daughter, Lucile, was substituted in the paternal schemesas his destined spouse. He hears, on the other hand, how Corinne hadvisited her fatherland and her step-mother, how she had found bothintolerable, and how she had in a modified and decent degree "thrown hercap over the mill" by returning to Italy to live an independent life asa poetess, an improvisatrice, and, at least in private, an actress.

  It is not necessary to supply fuller argument of the text which follows,and of which, when the reader has got this length, he is not likely tolet the _denoument_ escape him. But the action of _Corinne_ gets ratherslowly under weigh; and I have known those who complained that theyfound the book hard to read because they were so long in coming to anyclear notion of "what it was all about." Therefore so much argument ashas been given seems allowable.

  But we ought by this time to have laid sufficient foundation to make itnot rash to erect a small superstructure of critical comment on the booknow once more submitted to English readers. Of that book I own that Iwas myself a good many years ago, and for a good many years, a harsh andeven a rather unfair judge. I do not know whether years have brought methe philosophic mind, or whether the book--itself, as has been said, theoffspring of middle-aged emotions--appeals more directly to amiddle-aged than to a young judgment. To the young of its own time andthe times immediately succeeding it appealed readily enough, andscarcely Byron himself (who was not a little influenced by it) had moreto do with the Italomania of Europe in the second quarter of thiscentury than Madame de Stael.

  The faults of the novel indeed are those which impress themselves (asMackintosh, we have seen, allowed) immediately and perhaps excessively.M. Sorel observes of its companion sententiously but truly, "Si le stylede _Delphine_ semble vieilli, c'est qu'il a ete jeune." If not merelythe style but the sentiment, the whole properties and the whole stagemanagement of _Corinne_ seem out of date now, it is only because theywere up to date then. It is easy to laugh--not perhaps very easy toabstain from laughing--at the "schall" twisted in Corinne's hair, whereeven contemporaries mocked the hideous turban with which Madame de Staelchose to bedizen her not too beautiful head; at Nelvil's inky cloak; atthe putting out of the fire; at the queer stilted half-Ossianic,half-German rants put in the poetess's mouth; at the endless mingling ofgallantry and pedantry; at the hesitations of Nelvil; at the agonies ofCorinne. When French critics tell us that as they allow thegood-humoured satire on the Count d'Erfeuil to be just, we ought to dothe same in reference to the "cant Britannique" of Nelvil and of theEdgermond circle, we can only respectfully answer that we should notpresume to dispute their judgment in the first case, but that theyreally must leave us to ours in the second. As a matter of fact, Madamede Stael's goody English characters, are rather like Miss Edgeworth'snaughty French ones in _Leonora_ and elsewhere--clever generalisationsfrom a little observation and a great deal of preconceived idea, notstudies from the life.

  But this (and a great deal more that might be said if it were notsomething like petty treason in an introduction-writer thus to play thedevil's advocate against his author) matters comparatively little, andleaves enough in _Corinne_ to furnish forth a book almost great,interesting without any "almost," and remarkable as a not very largeshelf-ful in the infinite library of modern fiction deserves remark. Forthe passion of its two chief characters, however oddly, and to usunfashionably, presented, however lacking in the commanding andperennial qualities which make us indifferent to fashion in the work ofthe greatest masters, is _real_. And it is perhaps only after a prettylong study of literature that one perceives how very little real passionbooks, even pretty good books, contain, how much of what at times seemsto us passionate in them owes its appeal to accident, mode, and thepersonal equation. Of the highest achievement of art--that which availsitself of, but subdues, personal thought and feeling in the elaborationof a perfectly live character--Madame de Stael was indeed incapable. Butin the second order--that which, availing itself of, but not subduing,the personal element, keeps enough of its veracity and lively force toenliven a composite structure of character--she has here produced verynoteworthy studies. Corinne is a very fair embodiment of the beautywhich her author would so fain have had; of the youthful ardour whichshe had once actually possessed; of the ideas and cults to which she wassincerely enough devoted; of the instruction and talent whichunquestionably distinguished her. And it is not, I think, fanciful todiscover in this heroine, with all her "Empire" artifice and convention,all her smack of the theatre and the _salon_, a certain live quiver andthrob, which, as has been already hinted, may be traced to the combinedworking in Madame de Stael's mind and heart of the excitements offoreign travel, the zest of new studies, new scenes, new company, withthe chill regret for lost or passing youth and love, and the chillieranticipation of coming old age and death. It is a commonplace ofpsychology that in shocks and contrasts of this kind the liveliestworkings of the imagination and the emotions are to be expected. If weonce establish the contact and complete the circle, and feel somethingof the actual thrill that animated the author, we shall, I think, feeldisposed to forgive Corinne many things--from the dress and attitudewhich recall that admirable frontispiece of Pickersgill's to MissAusten's _Emma_, where Harriet Smith poses in rapt attitude with"schall" or scarf complete, to that more terrible portrait of Madame deStael herself which editors with remorseless ferocity will persist inprefixing to her works, and especially to _Corinne_. We shall consent tosweep away all the _fatras_ and paraphernalia of the work, and to see inthe heroine a real woman enough--loving, not unworthy of being loved,unfortunate, and very undeserving of her ill fortune. We shall furthersee that besides other excuses for the mere guide-book detail, theenthusiasm for Italy which partly prompted it was genuine enough andvery interesting as a sign of the times--of the approach of a period ofwhat we may call popularised learning, culture, sentiment. In somerespects _Corinne_ is not merely a guide-book to Italy; it is aguide-book by prophecy to the nineteenth century.

  The minor characters are a very great deal less interesting than Corinneherself, but they are not despicable, and they set off the heroine andcarry out what story there is well enough. Nelvil of course is a thingshreddy and patchy enough. He reminds us by turns of Chateaubriand'sRene and Rousseau's Bomston, both of whom Madame de Stael of courseknew; of Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, with whom she was very probablyacquainted; but most of no special, even bookish, progenitor, but of acombination of theoretic deductions from supposed properties of man ingeneral and Englishman in particular. Of Englishmen in particular Madamede Stael knew little more than a residence (chiefly in _emigre_ society)for a short time in England, and occasional meetings elsewhere, couldteach her. Of men in general her experience had been a littleunfortunate. Her father had probity, financial skill, and, I suppose, acertain amount of talent in other directions; but while he must have hadsome domestic virtues he was a wooden pedant. Her husband hardly countedfor more in her life than her _maitre d'hotel_, and though there seemsto have been no particular harm in him, had no special talents and nospecial virtues. Her first regular lover, Narbonne, was a handsome,dignified, heartless _roue_ of the old _regime_. Her second, BenjaminConstant, was a man of genius, and capable of passionate if inconstantattachment, but also what his own generation in England called athorough "raff"--selfish, treacherous, fickle, incapable of consideringeither the happiness or the reputation of women, theatrical in his waysand language, venal, insolent, ungrateful. Schlegel, though he too hadsome touch of genius in him, was half pedant, half coxcomb, and full ofintellectual and moral faultiness. The rest of her mighty herd of malefriends and hangers-on ranged from Mathieu de Montmorency--of whom, inthe words of Medora Trevilian it may be said, that he was "only anexcellent person"--through respectable savants like Sismondi and Dumont,down to a very low level of toady and tuft-hunter. It is rathersurprising that with such models and with no supreme creative facultyshe should have been able to draw such creditable walking gentlemen asthe Frenchman Erfeuil, the Englishman Edgermond, and the ItalianCastel-Forte; and should not have produced a worse hero than Nelvil. ForNelvil, whatever faults he may have, and contemptible as his vacillatingrefusal to take the goods the gods provide him may be, is, after all, ifnot quite a live man, an excellent model of what a considerable numberof the men of his time aimed at being, and would have liked to be. He isnot a bit less life-like than Byron's usual hero for instance, whoprobably owes not a little to him.

  And so we get to a fresh virtue of _Corinne_, or rather we reach itsmain virtue by a different side. It has an immense historical value asshowing the temper, the aspirations, the ideas, and in a way the mannersof a certain time and society. A book which does this can never whollylose its interest; it must always retain that interest in a greatmeasure, for those who are able to appreciate it. And it must interestthem far more keenly, when, besides this secondary and, so to speak,historical merit, it exhibits such veracity in the portraiture ofemotion, as, whatever be its drawbacks, whatever its little temptationsto ridicule, distinguishes the hapless, and, when all is said, the nobleand 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 theoriginal, but corrected by another hand for the present edition in thepretty numerous points where it was lax or unintelligent in actualrendering. In the places which I have compared, it seems to me topresent that original very fairly now; and I am by no means sure that anexcessively artificial style like that of the French Empire is not bestleft to contemporaries to reproduce. At any rate, a really good newtranslation of _Corinne_ would be a task unlikely to be achieved exceptby rather exceptional talents working in labour of love: and I cannotblame the publishers of this issue for not waiting till such atranslator appeared.

  Book i.

  OSWALD.

  CORINNE.