A French biographer of Madame de Stael, who is not only an excellent critic and an extremely clever writer, but a historian of great weight and acuteness, M.Albert Sorel, has indeed admitted that both Leonce, the hero of _Delphine_, who will not make himself and his beloved happy because he has an objection to divorcing his wife, and Lord Nelvil, who refuses either to seduce or to marry the woman who loves him and whom he loves, are equal donkeys with a national difference.

Leonce is more of a "fool;" Lord Nelvil more of a "snob." It is something to find a Frenchman who will admit that any national characteristic is foolish: I could have better reciprocated M.Sorel's candour if he had used the word "prig" instead of "snob" of Lord Nelvil.
But indeed I have often suspected that Frenchmen confuse these two engaging attributes of the Britannic nature.
A "higher moral tone" (as the phrase goes) is not the only advantage which _Corinne_ possesses over its forerunner.

_Delphine_ is almost avowedly autobiographical; and though Madame de Stael had the wit and the prudence to mix and perplex her portraits and her reminiscences so that it was nearly impossible to fit definite caps on the personages, there could be no doubt that Delphine was herself--as she at least would have liked to be--drawn as close as she dared.

These personalities have in the hands of the really great masters of fiction sometimes produced astonishing results; but no one probably would contend that Madame de Stael was a born novelist.

Although _Delphine_ has many more personages and much more action of the purely novel kind than _Corinne_, it is certainly not an interesting book; I think, though I have been reproached for, to say the least, lacking fervour as a Staelite, that _Corinne_ is.
But it is by no means unimportant that intending readers should know the sort of interest that they are to expect from this novel; and for that purpose it is almost imperative that they should know what kind of person was this novelist.