trong and manifold, and Byron was particularly apt to do things,
naughty and other, because somebody else had done or suggested them. And
of course it has, from very early days, been suggested that Amelie is an
experience of Chateaubriand's own. But this, like the investigations as
to time and distance and possibility in his travels and much else also,
is not for us. Once more I must be permitted to say that I am writing
much about French novels, little about French novelists, and least of
all about those novelists' biographers, critics, and so forth.
Exceptions may be admitted, but as exceptions only.

[27] I once had to fight it out in public with a valued and valiant
friend for saying something like this in regard to Edgar of
Ravenswood--no doubt, in some sort a child of Rene's or of Nelvil's; but
I was not put to submission. And Edgar had truer causes for sulks than
his spiritual ancestor had--at least before the tragedy of Amelie.

[28] Not in the strict theological meaning of this phrase, of course;
but the misuse of it has aesthetic justification.

[29] _I.e._ not mere "sloth," but the black-blooded and sluggish
melancholy to which Dante pays so much attention in the _Inferno_. This
deadly sin we inadequately translate "sloth," and (on one side of it) it
is best defined in Dante's famous lines (_Inf._ vii. 121-3):

Tristi fummo Nell' aer dolce che dal sol s' allegra, Portando dentro
accidioso fummo.

Had Amelie sinned and not repented she might have been found in the
Second circle, flying alone; Rene, except _speciali gratia_, must have
sunk to the Fourth.

[30] For instance, he goes a-beaver-hunting with the Natchez, but his
usual selfish moping prevents him from troubling to learn the laws of
the sport, and he kills females--an act at once offensive to Indian
religion, sportsmanship, and etiquette, horrifying to the consciences of
his adopted countrymen, and an actual _casus belli_ with the
neighbouring tribes.

[31] Its second title, _ou Le Triomphe de la Religion Chretienne_,
connects it still more closely than _Les Natchez_ with _Le Genie du
Christianisme_, which it immediately succeeded in composition, though
this took a long time. No book (it would seem in consequence)
exemplifies the mania for annotation and "justification" more
extensively. In vol. i. the proportion of notes to text is 112 to 270,
in vol. ii. 123 to 221, and in vol. iii., including some extracts from
the Pere Mambrun, 149 to 225.