aples, Venice, etc.

[21] She was rather proud of these mighty members: and some readers may
recall that not least Heinesque remark of the poet who so much shocks
Kaiser Wilhelm II., "Those of the Venus of Milo are not more beautiful."

[22] Including also a third short story, _Le Dernier Abencerage_, which
belongs, constructively, rather to the _Voyages_. It is in a way the
liveliest (at least the most "incidented") of all, but not the most
interesting, and with very little _temporal_ colour, though some local.
It may, however, be taken as another proof of Chateaubriand's importance
in the germinal way, for it starts the Romantic interest in Spanish
things. The contrast with the dirty rubbish of Pigault-Lebrun's _La
Folie Espagnole_ is also not negligible.

[23] For the mother, in a fashion which the good Father-missionary most
righteously and indignantly denounces as unchristian, had staked her own
salvation on her daughter's obedience to the vow.

[24] Its author, in the _Memoires d'Outre-Tombe_, expressed a warm wish
that he had never written it, and hearty disgust at its puling admirers
and imitators. This has been set down to hypocritical insincerity or the
sourness of age: I see neither in it. It ought perhaps to be said that
he "cut" a good deal of the original version. The confession of Amelie
was at first less abrupt and so less effective, but the newer form does
not seem to me to better the state of Rene himself.

[25] There had been a very early French imitation of _Werther_ itself
(of the end especially), _Les dernieres aventures du sieur d'Olban_, by
a certain Ramond, published in 1777, only three years after Goethe. It
had a great influence on Ch. Nodier (_v. inf._), who actually
republished the thing in 1829.

[26] This "out-of-bounds" passion will of course be recognised as a
Romantic trait, though it had Classical suggestions. Chateaubriand
appears to have been rather specially "obsessed" by this form of it, for
he not merely speaks constantly of Rene as _le frere d'Amelie_, but goes
out of his way to make the good Father in _Atala_ refer, almost
ecstatically, to the happiness of the more immediate descendants of Adam
who were _compelled_ to marry their sisters, if they married anybody. As
I have never been able to take any interest in the discussions of the
Byron and Mrs. Leigh scandal, I am not sure whether this _tic_ of
Chateaubriand's has been noticed therein. But his influence on Byron was
s