AUTHOR OF MISS BRETHERTON,' 'ROBERT ELSMERE, ETC. MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 1915 KD 25667 HARVARD COLLEGE DEC 17 1917 LIBRARY Gift of COPYRIGHT First Edition 1885. Second Edition April 1889 Reprinted August 1889, January 1890, August 1890, March 1891, September 1891, 1892, 1894, 1898, 1901, 1904, 1906, 1909, 1913, 1915 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In this second edition of the English translation of Amiel's Journal Intime, I have inserted a good many new passages, taken from the last French edition (Cinquième édition, revue et augmentée). But I have not translated all the fresh material to be found in that edition, nor have I omitted certain sections of the Journal which in these two recent volumes have been omitted by their French editors. It would be of no interest to give my reasons for these variations at length. They depend upon certain differences between the English and the French public, which are more readily felt than explained. Some of the passages which I have left untranslated seemed to me to overweight the introspective side of the Journal, already so full-to overweight it, at any rate, for English readers. Others which I have retained, though they often relate to local names and books, more or less unfamiliar to the general public, yet seemed to me valuable as supplying some of that surrounding detail, that setting, which helps one to understand a life. Besides, we English are in many ways more akin to Protestant and Puritan Geneva than the French readers to whom the original Journal primarily addresses itself, and some of the entries I have kept have probably, by the nature of things, more savour for us than for them. M. A. W. |