[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 René'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 Amélie.
[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 Amélie sinned and not repented she might have been found in the Second circle, flying alone; René, 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 Chrétienne, connects it still more closely than Les Natchez with Le Génie 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 Père Mambrun, 149 to 225.
[32] Such as Eudore's early friendship at Rome, before the persecution under Diocletian, with Augustine, who was not born till twenty years later.
[33] See note above.
[34] There cannot be too much Homer in Homer; there may be too much outside Homer.