THE BETROTHED.
So saying, he passed his arm around the neckof the Unknown, who after resisting a moment,yielded, quite vanquished by this impulse ofkindness, and fell on the neck of the Cardinalin an agony of repentance.
STANDARD
NOVELS.
Nº XLIII.
“No kind of literature is so generally attractive as Fiction. Pictures oflife and manners, and Stories of adventure, are more eagerly received bythe many than graver productions, however important these latter may be.Apuleius is better remembered by his fable of Cupid and Psyche than byhis abstruser Platonic writings; and the Decameron of Boccaccio has outlivedthe Latin Treatises, and other learned works of that author.”
THE BETROTHED.
COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, 8. NEW BURLINGTON STREET
(SUCCESSOR TO HENRY COLBURN):
BELL, AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH;
AND CUMMING, DUBLIN.
1834.
London:
Printed by A. Spottiswoode,
New-Street-Square.
CRITICAL REMARKS
on
MANZONI’S BETROTHED:
BY
THE COUNT O’MAHONY.
[Translated from the Italian.]
To publish a novel, to analyse, to eulogise it, and recommendits perusal to the good and pious, will appearno doubt very extraordinary, and offend the prejudices ofmany who have agreed among themselves to consider anovel, whoever may be its author, and whatever may beits subject, form, and design, as a pestilent production.If you ask them why? “Because,” they will reply—“becauseit is a novel!” The answer is as wise as it isperemptory and decisive, and we will spare ourselves theuseless trouble of replying to arguments so profound andpowerful. We will, however, submit a few serious reflectionsto minds of a less elevated order, were it only toprove that we can talk reasonably, even on the subject ofnovels.
Certainly, if we are understood to designate by the appellationof Novel, the written dreams and extravagantimaginations of a corrupt mind and depraved heart, whereillusions are substituted for realities, vice transformed intovirtue, crime justified by the passions that lead to its perpetration,and fallacious pictures presented of an idealworld, or criminal apologies for a world too real; if,we say, such are the novels to be condemned and proscribed,none more than ourselves will be disposed to confirmthe sentence. The unhappy influence which productionslike these have exerted over the minds of youth,and above all, the ravages which their multiplication haswithin a few years produced, is a fact acknowledged byall, by those who have escaped the contagion of their perusal,as well as by those