[208]. Chap. viii. It is a pity that Chateaubriand did not live long enough to read Mr Ruskin (who had begun to write before his death) on “The Angel of the Sea”—one of the great conceptions whose poetic suggestiveness he has himself here indicated.
[209]. This fills the whole of the Fifth or last Book of the Second Part, and shows the author at nearly his best.
[210]. Il y règne (in Saint Louis) une sombre imagination très propre à la peinture de cette Egypte, pleine de souvenirs et de tombeaux, et qui vit passer tour à tour les Pharaons, les Ptolemées, les solitaires de la Thebaide, et les soudans des barbares.
[211]. I have not thought it necessary to notice Chateaubriand’s literary judgments in the Essai sur les Révolutions at the beginning, or in the Mémoires d’Outre Tombe at the end of his career. The first, interesting as it is, is too crude (v. inf., Bk. viii. Ch. ii.), the second too much spoilt by “cooking of spleen,” and both too personal and egotistic.
[212]. Chateaubriand, Joubert’s intimate friend, printed some of this privately after the author’s death; and in 1842 Joubert’s nephew published two vols. of Pensées, Letters, &c. These, with some subsequent augmentations, had reached their 10th ed. in 1901. There is an English translation of part by Mr Attwood, and perhaps others.
[213]. Sainte-Beuve, Sylvestre de Sacy, Saint-Marc-Girardin, Géruzez, and Poitou—the last a scholarly lawyer and man of letters, who contributed to the Deux Mondes, wrote books of various kinds, and died in 1880.
[214]. At p. 203 of the usual ed., extending to the end, and filling nearly half the book.
[215]. P. 265 ed. cit.
[216]. P. 273-300.
[217]. P. 387.