the personal novel and in lyrical poetry. The theme of that suffering
which is beneficent and inspiring is contained in the following words:
"Come back to me, Sorrow! Why have you left me? It is by grief alone
that man is great." This is worthy of Chateaubriand. The theme of
melancholy is as follows: "The moon appeared. . . . What is the moon,
and what is its nocturnal magic to me? One hour more or less is nothing
to me." This might very well be Lamartine. We then have the malediction
pronounced in face of impassible Nature: "Yes, I detested that radiant
and magnificent Nature, for it was there before me in all its stupid
beauty, silent and proud, for us to gaze on, believing that it was
enough to merely show itself." This reminds us of Vigny in his _Maison
du berger_. Then we have the religion of love: "Doubt God, doubt men,
doubt me if you like, but do not doubt love." This is Musset.

But the theme which predominates, and, as we have compared all this to
music, we might say the _leit-motiv_ of all, is that of desolation, of
universal despair, of the woe of life. It is the same lamentation which,
ever since Werther, was to be heard throughout all literature. It is the
identical suffering which Rene, Obermann and Lara had been repeating to
all the echoes. The elements of it were the same: pride which prevents
us from adapting ourselves to the conditions of universal life, an abuse
of self-analysis which opens up our wounds again and makes them bleed,
the wild imagination which presents to our eyes the deceptive mirage of
Promised Lands from which we are ever exiles. Lelia personifies, in her
turn, the "_mal du siecle_." Stenio reproaches her with only singing
grief and doubt. "How many, times," he says, "have you appeared to me
as typical of the indescribable suffering in which mankind is plunged
by the spirit of inquiry! With your beauty and your sadness, your
world-weariness and your scepticism, do you not personify the excess of
grief produced by the abuse of thought?" He then adds: "There is a great