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PREFACE.
human passions and the human heart, whose elements in all ages are the same! One word more,—let me be permitted to remind the reader, that if I have succeeded in giving some interest and vitality to a description of classic manners and to a tale of a classic age, I have succeeded where all hitherto have failed:[1] a necessary corollary from this proposition is one equally consolatory though less triumphant, viz. if I have failed in the attempt, I fail where no one has succeeded. After this sentence, I can but conclude at once.—Can I say anything more effectually to prove, that an author never shows half so much ingenuity as in making out the best possible case for his own performance?
- ↑ I must be pardoned for not excepting even Barthélemy. His Anacharsis is a work of wonderful ability, labour, elegance, and research. But there is no life in it! It does not, to be sure, profess to be actually a romance, but even as a book of Imaginary travels, it is formal and tedious. The external erudition is abundant, but the inward spirit is wanting. He has not been exhilarated by the wine of antiquity, but he has accumulated a prodigious quantity of labels. "Anacharsis," says Schlegel, well and wittily, "views things, in his travels, not as a young Scythian, but as an old Parisian!" Yes, and as a Parisian who never gives you the notion that he has travelled at all—except in an arm-chair!
