新エロイーズ

simple, if you will, but sensible, who mutually expressing the real sentiments of their hearts, have no intention to display their wit. They know and love each other too well for self-admiration to have any influence among them. They are children, and therefore think like children. They are not natives of France, how then can they be supposed to write correctly? They lived in solitude, and therefore could know but little of the world. Entirely filled with one single sentiment, they are in a constant delirium, and yet presume to philosophise. Would you have them know how to observe, to judge, and to reflect? No: of these they are ignorant; but they are versed in the art of love, and all their words and actions are connected with that passion. Their ideas are extravagant, but is not the importance which they give to these romantic notions more amusing than all the wit they could have displayed. They speak of every thing; they are constantly mistaken; they teach us nothing, except the knowledge of themselves; but in making themselves known, they obtain our affection. Their errors are more engaging than the wisdom of the wise. Their honest hearts, even in their transgressions, bear still the prejudice of virtue, always confident and always betrayed. Nothing answers their expectations; every event serves to undeceive them. They are deaf to the voice of discouraging truth: they find nothing correspond with their own feelings, and therefore, detaching themselves from the rest of the universe, they create, in their separate society, a little world of their own, which presents an entire new scene. N. I confess, that a young fellow of twenty, and girls of eighteen, though not; uninstructed, ought not to talk like philosophers, even though they may suppose themselves such. I own also, for this distinction has not escaped me, that these girls became wives of merit, and the young man a better observer.…