aly, as I am with
seeing our fields covered with a thousand superfluous products. This
liberality of nature makes me proud. I am particularly pleased with the
improvisations of the lower classes of the people; it discovers their
imagination to us, which is concealed everywhere else, and is only
developed amongst us. They give a poetical character to the lowest
orders of society, and spare us the contempt which we cannot help
feeling for every thing that is vulgar. When our Sicilians, conveying
travellers in their vessels, so delicately and politely felicitate them
in their pleasing dialect, and wish them in verse a sweet and long
adieu, one would say the pure breeze of heaven and of the sea produces
the same effect upon the imagination of men as the wind on the AEolian
harp, and that poetry, like the chords of that instrument, is the echo
of nature. One thing makes me attach an additional value to our talent
for improvisation, and that is, that it would be almost impossible in a
society disposed to mockery. It requires the good humour of the south,
or rather of those countries where people love to amuse themselves
without taking pleasure in criticising that which affords them
amusement, to encourage poets to venture on so perilous an enterprise.
One jeering smile would be sufficient to destroy that presence of mind
necessary for a sudden and uninterrupted composition: your audience must
become animated with you, and inspire you with their applause."

"But madam," said Oswald at last, who till then had kept silence without
having for a moment ceased to behold Corinne, "to which of your poetical
talents do you yourself give the preference? To the work of inflection,
or of momentary inspiration?" "My lord," answered Corinne, with a look
that expressed the highest interest and the most delicate sentiment of
respectful consideration, "it is you that I would wish to make the judge
of that; but if you ask me to examine my own thoughts upon this subject,
I would say that improvisation is to me as an animated conversation. I
do not confine myself to any particular subject, I yield entirely to the
impression produced on me by the attention of my hearers, and it is to
my friends, in this instance, that I owe the greatest part of my talent.
Sometimes the impassioned interest with which I am inspired by a
conversation in which we have spoken of some great and noble question
that relates to the moral existence of man, his destiny, his