Amiels Journal | Page 3

the Journal had been during his lifetime wholly
unknown to the general European public. In Geneva itself he had been
commonly regarded as a man who had signally disappointed the hopes
and expectations of his friends, whose reserve and indecision of
character had in many respects spoiled his life, and alienated the
society around him; while his professional lectures were generally
pronounced dry and unattractive, and the few volumes of poems which
represented almost his only contributions to literature had nowhere met

with any real cordiality of reception. Those concerned, therefore, in the
publication of the first volume of the Journal can hardly have had much
expectation of a wide success. Geneva is not a favorable starting-point
for a French book, and it may well have seemed that not even the
support of M. Scherer's name would be likely to carry the volume
beyond a small local circle.
But "wisdom is justified of her children!" It is now nearly three years
since the first volume of the "Journal Intime" appeared; the impression
made by it was deepened and extended by the publication of the second
volume in 1884; and it is now not too much to say that this remarkable
record of a life has made its way to what promises to be a permanent
place in literature. Among those who think and read it is beginning to
be generally recognized that another book has been added to the books
which live--not to those, perhaps, which live in the public view, much
discussed, much praised, the objects of feeling and of struggle, but to
those in which a germ of permanent life has been deposited silently,
almost secretly, which compel no homage and excite no rivalry, and
which owe the place that the world half-unconsciously yields to them
to nothing but that indestructible sympathy of man with man, that
eternal answering of feeling to feeling, which is one of the great
principles, perhaps the greatest principle, at the root of literature. M.
Scherer naturally was the first among the recognized guides of opinion
to attempt the placing of his friend's Journal. "The man who, during his
lifetime, was incapable of giving us any deliberate or conscious work
worthy of his powers, has now left us, after his death, a book which
will not die. For the secret of Amiel's malady is sublime, and the
expression of it wonderful." So ran one of the last paragraphs of the
Introduction, and one may see in the sentences another instance of that
courage, that reasoned rashness, which distinguishes the good from the
mediocre critic. For it is as true now as it was in the days when La
Bruyère rated the critics of his time for their incapacity to praise, and
praise at once, that "the surest test of a man's critical power is his
judgment of contemporaries." M. Renan, I think, with that exquisite
literary sense of his, was the next among the authorities to mention
Amiel's name with the emphasis it deserved. He quoted a passage from
the Journal in his Preface to the "Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse,"
describing it as the saying "_d'un penseur distingué, M. Amiel de

Genève_." Since then M. Renan has devoted two curious articles to the
completed Journal in the Journal des Desbats. The first object of these
reviews, no doubt, was not so much the critical appreciation of Amiel
as the development of certain paradoxes which have been haunting
various corners of M. Renan's mind for several years past, and to which
it is to be hoped he has now given expression with sufficient emphasis
and brusquerie to satisfy even his passion for intellectual adventure.
Still, the rank of the book was fully recognized, and the first article
especially contained some remarkable criticisms, to which we shall find
occasion to recur. "In these two volumes of _pensées_," said M. Renan,
"without any sacrifice of truth to artistic effect, we have both the
perfect mirror of a modern mind of the best type, matured by the best
modern culture, and also a striking picture of the sufferings which beset
the sterility of genius. These two volumes may certainly be reckoned
among the most interesting philosophical writings which have appeared
of late years."
M. Caro's article on the first volume of the Journal, in the Revue des
Deux Mondes for February, 1883, may perhaps count as the first
introduction of the book to the general cultivated public. He gave a
careful analysis of the first half of the Journal--resumed eighteen
months later in the same periodical on the appearance of the second
volume--and, while protesting against what he conceived to be the
general tendency and effect of Amiel's mental story, he showed himself
fully conscious of the rare and delicate qualities of the new writer. "_La
rêverie a