Author: Andrew Archibald Paton

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-10

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9781331086710

Excerpt from Henry Beyle: Otherwise De Stendhal; A Critical and Biographical Study; Aided by Original Documents and Unpublished Letters From the Private Papers of the Family of Beyle After Beyle became an author, and placed himself in relations of acquaintance with men having a taste for letters, and, in some cases, persons of literary celebrity, there is no great difficulty in tracing his career. The publication of his works was his principal business, and thenceforward the circumstances of his life were closely attached to the preparation and publication of these works. But until this correspondence was placed in my hands, the materials for the construction of Beyle's biography, from the period of his entrance into Government employment down to the fall of the Empire, were rather scanty. Here I saw at once how he served his apprenticeship to that knowledge of the human heart, as well as of literature and art, displayed in his subsequent works; and it is not difficult to trace, athwart the smoke of Marengo, Jena, Wagram, and Borodino, the profound future analyst of love and ambition, of tears and of laughter, or the light-hearted admirer of Cimarosa and biographer of Rossini, or the successor of Diderot as a fine-art critic, who so agreeably mingled general literature with special criticism of schools of. painting. Nor must I forget my obligations to Beyle's townsmen, M. Pilot, the erudite historian of Grenoble, and conservator of the archives of Dauphine, whose acquaintance I made through the kindness of the head of his department in Paris; the accomplished Francis Wey, who had, in days gone by, more than once broken a lance with Beyle in the literary arena. This gentleman greatly assisted me by the light he threw on the early days of Beyle. I beg leave also to acknowledge the kindness and courtesy of M. Gariel, the conservator of the library of Grenoble, in whose official care are the unpublished manuscripts of Beyle, and who, having been a collector of matter on his brilliant fellow-Dauphinois, was so good as to place his stores at my disposition, seasoned with more than one interesting anecdote of Beyle, which the reader will find in the course of the work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.