o write English more as a learned language; and
completing that correction of style which had only gone a certain way
in the last century, raise the general level of language towards their
own. If there be a weakness in Mr. Saintsbury's view, it is perhaps in
a tendency to regard style a little too independently of matter. And
there are still some who think that, after all, the style is the man;
justified, in very great varieties, by the simple consideration of what
he himself has to say, quite independently of any real or supposed
connection with this or that literary age or school. Let us close with
the words of a most [16] versatile master of English--happily not yet
included in Mr. Saintsbury's book--a writer who has dealt with all the
perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as
idiomatic, as easy and elegant, as Steele's:

"I wish you to observe," says Cardinal Newman, "that the mere dealer in
words cares little or nothing for the subject which he is embellishing,
but can paint and gild anything whatever to order; whereas the artist,
whom I am acknowledging, has his great or rich visions before him, and
his only aim is to bring out what he thinks or what he feels in a way
adequate to the thing spoken of, and appropriate to the speaker."

17th February 1886

II. AMIEL'S "JOURNAL INTIME"

Amiel's Journal. The Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic Amiel.
Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Mrs. Humphry Ward. Two
vols. Macmillans.

[19] CERTAIN influential expressions of opinion have attracted much
curiosity to Amiel's Journal Intime, both in France, where the book has
already made its mark, and in England, where Mrs. Humphry Ward's
translation is likely to make it widely known among all serious lovers
of good literature. Easy, idiomatic, correct, this English version
reads like an excellent original English work, and gives fresh proof
that the work of translation, if it is to be done with effect, must be
done by those who, possessing, like Mrs. Ward, original literary gifts,
are willing to make a long act of self-denial or self-effacement [20]
for the benefit of the public. In this case, indeed, the work is not
wholly one of self-effacement, for the accomplished translator has
prefaced Amiel's Journal by an able and interesting essay of seventy
pages on Amiel's life and intellectual position. And certainly there
is much in the book, thus effectively presented to the En