Her mind was strong of grasp and wide in range, but continuous effort fatigued it.  She could strike out isolated sentences alternately brilliant, exhaustive, and profound, but she could not link them to other sentences so as to form an organic whole.  Her thought was definite singly, but vague as a whole.  She always saw things separately, and tried to combine them arbitrarily, and it is generally difficult to follow out any idea of hers from its origin to its end.  Her thoughts are like pearls of price profusely scattered, or carelessly strung together, but not set in any design.  On closing one of her books, the reader is left with no continuous impression.  He has been dazzled and delighted, enlightened also by flashes; but the horizons disclosed have vanished again, and the outlook is enriched by no new vistas.

Then she was deficient in the higher qualities of the imagination.  She could analyse, but not characterise; construct, but not create.  She could take one defect like selfishness, or one passion like love, and display its workings; or she could describe a whole character, like Napoleon’s, with marvellous penetration; but she could not make her personages talk, or act like human beings.  She lacked pathos, and had no sense of humour.  In short, hers was a mind endowed with enormous powers of comprehension, and an amazing richness of ideas, but deficient in perception of beauty, in poetry, and in true originality.  She was a great social personage, but her influence on literature was not destined to be lasting, because, in spite of foreseeing too much, she had not the true prophetic sense of proportion, and confused the things of the present with those of the future—­the accidental with the enduring.

I cannot but think that in this passage Miss Duffy rather underrates Madame de Stael’s influence on the literature of the nineteenth century.  It is true that she gave our literature no new form, but she was one of those who gave it a new spirit, and the romantic movement owes her no small debt.  However, a biography should be read for its pictures more than for its criticisms, and Miss Duffy shows a remarkable narrative power, and tells with a good deal of esprit the wonderful adventures of the brilliant woman whom Heine termed ‘a whirlwind in petticoats.’

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Mr. Harcourt’s reprint of John Evelyn’s Life of Mrs. Godolphin is a welcome addition to the list of charming library books.  Mr. Harcourt’s grandfather, the Archbishop of York, himself John Evelyn’s great-great-grandson, inherited the manuscript from his distinguished ancestor, and in 1847 entrusted it for publication to Samuel Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford.  As the book has been for a long time out of print, this new edition is sure to awake fresh interest in the life of the noble and virtuous lady whom John Evelyn so much admired.  Margaret Godolphin was one of the Queen’s Maids of Honour at the