Of the interest, the influence, the significance, and, in so far as these important things go, the importance, of the work of Madame de Staël[176] in criticism, there can, as to their mere existence, be no two well-formed opinions. I wish that I could think this statement—made frankly in intention, and with deliberate consideration of the weight of every word—likely to obtain for the examination which follows the credit of impartiality which I think it deserves. Unfortunately, we are now approaching closely matters which are distinctly _cinis dolosus_. At every step the apparently irreconcilable difference between those who mean by criticism the judging and judicial enjoyment of literature, and those who mean by it theorising about the ultimate causes of such judgment and such enjoyment, is likely—is sure—to interfere. Nor does it seem possible for the philosophers to agree to keep these points of law for the appropriate tribunal, and to let the rest of the case be stated on its own merits.[177] [Sidenote: _Her critical position._] Now “Corinne” is about the first person in whose case this difficulty and this difference become acute and annoying. She is not quite so popular with the critics of “ideas” as she used to be; they have, belike, discovered at last her rather awkward sciolism of fact; her very theories are not theirs; the “hideous hum” of “Madame de Staël : ideas; Chateaubriand : images,” ceases to tire the weary ear quite to the same extent as it used to do in histories of literature and critical discussions thereof. But historically she is not to be denied; there is no doubt that no one has ever done the popularising of “metacritic” throughout Europe as she did. [Sidenote: _And work._]