Critical and Miscellaneous Essays; To Which Are Added a Few Poems Volume 2 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LIFE OF BERNARDIN DE ST PIERRE. [North American Review, July, 1821.] This is the first collection that has appeared of the writings of Bernardin de St Pierre. The Studies of Nature, comprehending Paul and Virginia and the Indian Cottage, was the only considerable book published by the author during his life. The present collection contains another work in three volumes octavo, entitled the Harmonies of Nature, which was left unfinished, and might perhaps as well have remained unpublished. It is in substance nothing more than a repetition of the same ideas that are developed in a better form in the Studies. It serves with several other posthumous pieces to swell the number of volumes, and perhaps the booksellers' profits, without adding any thing to the author's reputation, which rests ultimately upon Paul and Virginia. The few pages that compose this charming little pastoral were the principal achievement and are the only lasting memorial of a life of more than seventy years. At the head of the collection is placed a copious biographical notice of the author by Mr Aim Martin, a professor in one of the colleges at Paris; and it is from this that we propose to draw the materials for the present article. The account is pretty well written, and from the great variety of singular adventures related in it, is as interesting as a romance. As we anticipate that it will require a good deal of room to recapitulate ihe principal of them even in the most compressed form, we shall proceed at once to the narrative without further preliminary observations. Oeuvres CompUUs de Jacques Henri Sernardin de St. Pierre mises en ordre, etprtcedtes de la vie de Vautenr par L. Aimt Martin. 12 vo,ls. Svq. Paris, 1818?1620. Bernardin de St Pierre was born at Havre, on the 19th of January, 1737....