Corinne, Volume 1 | Page 7

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