ach
other, are not comfortable.

It ought, however, to be said that _Armance_ is an early and remarkable
Romantic experiment in several ways, not least in the foreign mottoes,
English, Portuguese, Spanish, and German, which are prefixed to the
chapters. Unluckily some of them[129] are obviously retranslated from
French versions unverified by the originals, and once there is a most
curious blunder. Pope's description of Belinda's neck and cross, not
quite in the original words but otherwise exact, is attributed
to--Schiller!

[Sidenote: _La Chartreuse de Parme._]

I have read, I believe, as much criticism as most men, possibly, indeed,
a little more than most, and I ought long ago to have been beyond the
reach of shocking, startling, or any other movement of surprise at any
critical utterance whatsoever. But I own that an access of _fou rire_
once came upon me when I was told in a printed page that _La Chartreuse
de Parme_ was a "very lively and very amusing book." A book of great and
peculiar power it most undoubtedly is, a book standing out in the
formidable genealogy of "psychological" novels as (_salva reverentia_)
certain names stand out from the others in the greater list that opens
the first chapter of St. Matthew. But "lively"? and "amusing"? Wondrous
hot indeed is this snow, and more lustrous than any ebony are the
clerestories towards the south-north of this structure.

[Sidenote: The Waterloo episode.]

[Sidenote: The subject and general colour.]

To begin with, there rests on the whole book that oppression of _recit_
which has been not unfrequently dwelt upon in the last volume, and
sometimes this. Of the 440 pages, tightly printed, of the usual reprint,
I should say that two-thirds at least are solid, or merely broken by one
or two paragraphs, which are seldom conversational. This, it may be
said, is a purely mechanical objection. But it is not so. Although the
action is laid in the time contemporary with the writer and writing,
from the fall of Napoleon onwards, and in the country (Italy) that he
knew best, the whole cast and scheme are historical, the method is that
of a lecturer at a panorama, who describes and points while the panorama
itself passes a long way off behind a screen of clear but thick glass.
In two or perhaps three mostly minute parts or scenes this description
may seem unjust. One, the first, the longest, and the best, is perhaps
also the best-known of all Beyle's work: it is the sk