As to the parallel, with all due deference to Madame D'Arblay's
proved sagacity aided by her personal knowledge of her two gifted
friends, it may be suggested that they present fewer points of
resemblance than any two women of at all corresponding celebrity.[1]
The superiority in the highest qualities of mind will be awarded
without hesitation to the French woman, although M. Thiers terms her
writings the perfection of mediocrity. She grappled successfully with
some of the weightiest and subtlest questions of social and political
science; in criticism she displayed powers which Schlegel might have
envied while he aided their fullest development in her "Germany"; and
her "Corinne" ranks amongst the best of those works of fiction which
excel in description, reflection, and sentiment, rather than in
pathos, fancy, stirring incident, or artfully contrived plot. But her
tone of mind was so essentially and notoriously masculine, that when
she asked Talleyrand whether he had read her "Delphine," he answered,
"Non, Madame, mais on m'a dit que-nous y sommes tous les deux
deguises en femmes."[2] This was a material drawback on her
agreeability: in a moment of excited consciousness, she exclaimed,
that she would give all her fame for the power of fascinating; and
there was no lack of bitterness in her celebrated repartee to the man
who, seated between her and Madame Recamier, boasted of being between
Wit and Beauty, "Oui, et sans posseder ni l'un ni l'autre."[3] The
view from Richmond Park she called "calme et animee, ce qu'on doit
etre, et que je ne suis pas.
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