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ferings which beset the sterility of genius: These two volumes may certainly be reck-` oned 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 réussi a notre auteur,' he says, a little reluctantly - for M. Caro has his doubts as to the legitimacy of rêverie; 'il en a fait une œuvre qui restera.' The same final judgment, accompanied by a very different series of comments, was pronounced on the Journal a year later by M. Paul Bourget, a young and rising writer, whose article is perhaps chiefly interesting as showing the kind of effect produced by Amiel's thought on minds of a type essen

tially alien from his own. There is a leaven of something positive and austere, of something which, for want of a better name, one calls Puritanism, in Amiel, which escapes the author of Une Cruelle Enigme. But whether he has understood Amiel or no, M. Bourget is fully alive to the mark which the Journal is likely to make among modern records of mental history. He, too, insists that the book is already famous and will remain so; in the first place, because of its inexorable realism and sincerity; in the seeond, because it is the most perfect example available of a certain variety of the modern mind.

Amongst ourselves, although the Journal has attracted the attention of all who keep a vigilant eye on the progress of foreign literature, and although one or two appreciative articles have appeared on it in the magazines, the book has still to become generally known. One remarkable English testimony to it, however, must be quoted. Six months after the publication of the first volume, the late Mark Pattison, who since then has himself bequeathed to literature a strange and memorable fragment of autobiography, addressed a letter to M. Scherer as the editor of the Journal Intime, which

M. Scherer has since published, nearly a year after the death of the writer. The words have a strong and melancholy interest for all who knew Mark Pattison; and they certainly deserve a place in any attempt to estimate the impression already made on contemporary thought by the Journal Intime.

'I wish to convey to you, sir,' writes the Rector of Lincoln, 'the thanks of one at least of the public for giving the light to this precious record of a unique experience. I say unique, but I can vouch that there is in existence at least one other soul which has lived through the same struggles, mental and moral, as Amiel. In your pathetic description of the volonté qui voudrait vouloir, mais impuissante à se fournir à ellemême des motifs, of the repugnance for all action-the soul petrified by the sentiment of the infinite, in all this I recognise myself. Celui qui a déchiffré le secret de la vie finie, qui en a lu le mot, est sorti du monde des vivants, il est mort de fait. I can feel forcibly the truth of this, as it applies to myself!

'It is not, however, with the view of thrusting my egotism upon you that I have ventured upon addressing you. As I can

not suppose that so peculiar a psychological revelation will enjoy a wide popularity, I think it a duty to the editor to assure him that there are persons in the world whose souls respond, in the depths of their inmost nature, to the cry of anguish which makes itself heard in the pages of these remarkable confessions.'

seems to

So much for the place which the Journal -the fruit of so many years of painful thought and disappointed effort be at last securing for its author among those contemporaries who in his lifetime knew nothing of him. It is a natural consequence of the success of the book that the more it penetrates, the greater desire there is to know something more than its original editors and M. Scherer have yet told us about the personal history of the man who wrote it- about his education, his habits, and his friends. Perhaps some day this wish may find its satisfaction. is an innocent one, and the public may even be said to have a kind of right to know as much as can be told it of the personalities which move and stir it. At present the biographical material available is extremely scanty, and if it were not for the kindness of M. Scherer, who has allowed

It

the present writer access to certain manuscript material in his possession, even the sketch which follows, vague and imperfect as it necessarily is, would have been impossible.*

Henri Frédéric Amiel was born at Geneva in September 1821. He belonged to one of the emigrant families, of which a more or less steady supply had enriched the little Republic during the three centuries following the Reformation. Amiel's ancestors, like those of Sismondi, left Languedoc for Geneva after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His father must have been a youth at the time when Geneva passed into the power of the French Republic, and would seem to have married and settled in the halcyon days following the restoration of Genevese independence in 1814. Amiel was born when the prosperity of Geneva was at its height, when the little State was administered by men of European reputation, and Genevese society had power to attract

* Four or five articles on the subject of Amiel's life have been contributed to the Révue Internationale by Mdlle. Berthe Vadier during the passage of the present book through the press. My knowl edge of them, however, came too late to enable me to make use of them for the purposes of the present introduction.

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