cted works is on Madame de Stael. Now that good
lady, of whom some judges in these days do not think very much, was a
kind of goddess on earth in literature, however much she might bore them
in life, to the English Whig party in general; while Jeffrey's French
tastes must have made her, or at least her books, specially attractive
to him. Accordingly he has written a great deal about her, no less than
three essays appearing in the collected works. Writing at least partly
in her lifetime and under the influences just glanced at, he is of
course profuse in compliments. But it is very amusing and highly
instructive to observe how, in the intervals of these compliments, he
contrives to take the good Corinne to pieces, to smash up her ingenious
Perfectibilism, and to put in order her rather rash literary judgments.
It is in connection also with her, that he gives one of the best of not
a few general sketches of the history of literature which his work
contains. Of course there are here, as always, isolated expressions as
to which, however much we admit that Jeffrey was a clever man, we cannot
agree with Jeffrey. He thinks Aristophanes "coarse" and "vulgar" just as
a living pundit thinks him "base," while (though nobody of course can
deny the coarseness) Aristophanes and vulgarity are certainly many miles
asunder. We may protest against the chronological, even more than
against the critical, blunder which couples Cowley and Donne, putting
Donne, moreover, who wrote long before Cowley was born, and differs from
him in genius almost as the author of the _Iliad_ does from the author
of the _Henriade_, second. But hardly anything in English criticism is
better than Jeffrey's discussion of the general French imputation of
"want of taste and politeness" to English and German writers, especially
English. It is a very general, and a very mistaken notion that the
Romantic movement in France has done away with this imputation to a
great extent. On the contrary, though it has long been a kind of
fashion in France to admire Shakespeare, and though since the labours of
MM. Taine and Montegut, the study of English literature generally has
grown and flourished, it is, I believe, the very rarest thing to find a
Frenchman who, in his heart of hearts, does not cling to the old "pearls
in the dung-heap" idea, not merely in reference to Shakespeare, but to
English writers, and especially English humorists, generally. Nothing
can be more admirable t