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