us, was able to apply it in the
estimation of what others had produced; in every species of composition
he was entitled to say, 'Had I chosen, I could have given a perfect
specimen of this.' But one who possesses only a single circumscribed
talent should, in becoming a critic, forget it, bury it, and confess to
himself that Nature is more bountiful and more varied than she showed
herself in creating him. Incomplete artists, let us strive for an
intelligence wider than our own talent,--than the best we are capable of
producing."

To the same period--perhaps to the same spirit of investigation and
experiment--belongs the single prose work of fancy which has proceeded
from his pen. It is a species of romance, bearing the title of
_Volupte_, and designed to exhibit the struggle between the senses and
the soul, or, more strictly speaking, the effect upon the intellectual
nature of an early captivity to the pleasures of sense. The hero,
Amaury, after a youth of indulgence, finds himself in the prime of his
manhood, with his powers of perception and of thought vigorous and
matured, but incapable of acting, of willing, or of loving. He inspires
love, but cannot return it; he feels, he admires, but he shrinks from
any step demanding resolution or self-devotion. Hence, instead of
conferring happiness, he makes victims,--victims not of an active, but
of a merely passive and negative egotism. A conjunction of circumstances
brings him to a sudden and vivid realization of his condition and its
results. Instead of escaping by suicide, as might be expected,--and as
would probably have been the case if Werther had not forestalled
him,--he breaks loose from his thraldom by a supreme effort, and finds
in the faith and sacrifices of a religious life the means of restoration
and of permanent freedom. He enters a seminary, is ordained priest, and
performs the funeral rites of the woman whose affection for him had been
the most ardent and exalted, and whom his purified heart could have best
repaid.

In form, the work is an autobiography. The thoughts with which it teems
are delicate and subtile; the style, somewhat labored and over-refined,
is in contrast with that of the _Poesies_, while it betrays the same
struggle for a greater amplitude and independence. In point of art the
book appears to us a failure. The theme is not objectionable in itself.
It is similar to that of many works which have sprung from certain
phases of individual exper