The novels of Florian were genuine and simple
romances, less mischievous, I incline to think, upon the whole, than the
educational Countess's mock moral sentimentality; but Chateaubriand's
"Atala et Chactas," with its picturesque pathos, and his powerful
classical novel of "Les Martyrs," were certainly unfit reading for young
girls of excitable feelings and wild imaginations, in spite of the
religious element which I supposed was considered their recommendation.
One great intellectual good fortune befell me at this time, and that was
reading "Guy Mannering;" the first of Walter Scott's novels that I ever
read--the _dearest_, therefore. I use the word advisedly, for I know no
other than one of affection to apply to those enchanting and admirable
works, that deserve nothing less than love in return for the healthful
delight they have bestowed. To all who ever read them, the first must
surely be the best; the beginning of what a series of pure enjoyments,
what a prolonged, various, exquisite succession of intellectual
surprises and pleasures, amounting for the time almost to happiness.
Scott, like Shakespeare, has given us, for intimate acquaintance,
companions, and friends, men and women of such peculiar individual
nobleness, grace, wit, wisdom, and humor, that they people our minds and
recur to our thoughts with a vividness which makes them seem rather to
belong to the past realities of the memory, than to the shadowy visions
of the imagination.
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