CORINNE. (Corinne) (1806) was the crowning point of Madame de Stal's literary career. In it her ideals find their most corn plete expression. By it, pre-eminently, and by her 'Germany,' in the words of Faguet, she sowed the century with fertile ideas and gave French poetry as it were a new soul) It is a book of self-interpretation. The heroine is herself, and is the only living character in a story whose plot, though easy and graceful, is of no special value. Corinne, of mingled Italian and English blood, has gone from England to Rome to seek psychic emancipation in a freer artistic life than English conventions admitted. With admirable art the spirit of the two nations is contrasted, unreckoning idealism with self satisfied calculation, passion with cant, nature with respectability, fame with wealth and ease. To Corinne as to Coleridge, all thoughts, pas sions, delights are but ministers of love. Glory
without love is only (the bright shroud of happiness,* conscious intellectual superiority rather a hardship than a boon. Yet a vision of happiness seemed always beckoning her on; and this vision made of 'Corinne,' for a whole generation of romantic spirits, a breviary of generous passion and of ideal love, none the less because the heroine dies at last, abandoning her dignity to her love, a victim to social con ventionality. Here a new range of emotions gained recognition in the evolution of fiction. The artistic and musical novels of the next generation, the Teverino's and the Consuelo's, had in their inspiration and exemplar. It showed, too, as no novel before it had done, - - how description of nature might be made to reflect and interpret the psychic moods of its characters. There are four English trans lations.