STENDHAL IN ENGLISH
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The reviewer of " Stendhal in English" says that our appreciation of him will depend very much on " whether his unique spirit is sympathetic to us or not." In this connexion it may possibly interest your readers to learn what the well- known French writer, the late Comte Melchior de Vogue, says of him. The passage is taken from a letter published in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1921 or 1922: " Je doute qu'on puisse miner plus savarnnzent le sens moral d'un jeune esprit que ye le fait Stendhal. Mais quel art . . . " One feels that a writer of whom this could be said by a man like de Vogue must have views of human life which cannot fail to be " unsympathetic " to the vast majority of cultured English people, those to whom Stendhal may appeal on other grounds.—I am, Sir, &c., A LIFE MEMBER.
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