essays; for in his later and better, Sainte-Beuve was not wont to give
way to the little flashes and crackles of conceit and epigram which many
Frenchmen and some Englishmen think to be criticism. There was, however,
some excuse for this. In the first place (as one of Charles Lamb's
literal friends would have pointed out), Madame de Stael, like her
heroine, did actually "ascend the Capitol," and received attentions
there from an Academy. In the second, there can be no doubt that
_Corinne_ in a manner fixed and settled the high literary reputation
which she had already attained. Even by her severest critics, and even
now when whatever slight recrudescence of biographical interest may have
taken place in her, her works are little read, _Corinne_ is ranked next
to _De l'Allemagne_ as her greatest production; while as a work of form,
not of matter, as literature of power, not of knowledge, it has at last
a chance of enduring when its companion is but a historical
document--the record of a moment that has long passed away.

The advocates of the _milieu_ theory--the theory which will have it that
you can explain almost the whole of any work of art by examining the
circumstances, history, and so forth of the artist--have a better chance
with _Corinne_ than with many books, though those who disagree with them
(as I own that I do) may retort that this was precisely because Madame
de Stael in literature has little idiosyncracy, and is a receptive, not
a creative, force. The moment at which this book was composed and
appeared had really many of the characteristics of crisis and climax in
the life of the author. She was bidding adieu to youth; and though her
talents, her wealth, her great reputation, and her indomitable
determination to surround herself with admirers still made her a sort of
queen of society, some illusions at least must have been passing from
her. The most serious of her many passions, that for Benjamin Constant,
was coming, though it had not yet come, to an end. Her father, whom she