it is from an error as trifling as this that people of my acquaintance
confound Madame de Staël with Madame de Staal-Delauney, in spite of
chronology and common sense. Again, by the leave of the _Christian
Remembrancer_ (vol. xiii. no. 55.), the elegant and accomplished scholar to
whom we owe the only complete text of Pascal's thoughts, is M. Faugère, not
Fougère. All these are minutiæ; but the chapter of minutiæ is an important
one in literary history.

Another remarkable question which I feel a wish to touch upon before
closing this communication, is that of _impromptus_. Your correspondent MR.
SINGER (p. 105.) supposes Malherbe the poet to have been "ready at an
impromptu." But, to say the least, this is rather doubtful, unless the
extemporaneous effusions of Malherbe were of that class which Voiture
indulged in with so much success at the Hôtel de Rambouillet--sonnets and
epigrams leisurely prepared for the purpose of being fired off in some
fashionable "_ruelle_" of Paris. Malherbe is known to have been a very slow
composer; he used to say to Balzac that ten years' rest was necessary after
the production of a hundred lines: and the author of the _Christian
Socrates_, himself rather too fond of the file, after quoting this fact,
adds in a letter to Consart:

"Je n'ai pas besoin d'un si long repos après un si petit travail. Mais
aussi d'attendre de moi cette heureuse facilité qui fait produire des
volumes à M. de Scudéry, ce serait me connaître mal, et me faire une
honneur que je ne mérite pas."

Malherbe certainly had a most happy influence on French poetry; he checked
the ultra-classical school of Ronsard, and began that work of reformation
afterwards accomplished by Boileau.