Stendhal has not only adapted the ideas—he has to a great extent translated the words of Thomas Broadbent. He has changed the order of ideas here and there—not the ideas themselves—and in some cases he has enlarged their application. Where he has translated the English word for word, it has often been possible in this translation to restore the original English, which Stendhal borrowed and turned into French. Where we have done this, we have printed the words, which belong to Thomas Broadbent, in italics.
However, as Stendhal often introduced slight, but important, changes of language, we also give below, as an example of his methods, longer passages chosen from the article in the Edinburgh Review, to compare with the corresponding passages literally translated by us from Stendhal.
These are the passages:—
P. [225], l. 2:
"As if women were more quick and men more judicious, as if women were more remarkable for delicacy of expression and men for stronger powers of attention."
P. [228], l. 9:
"Knowledge, where it produces any bad effects at all, does as much mischief to one sex as to the other.... Vanity and conceit we shall of course witness in men and women, as long as the world endures.... The best way to make it more tolerable is to give it as high and dignified an object as possible."
P. [229], l. 21:
"Women have, of course, all ignorant men for enemies to their instruction, who being bound (as they think) in point of sex to know more, are not well pleased in point of fact to know less."
P. [230], l. 24: