Chaucer, Butler or Spenser, and I should not be surprised if she knew nothing, save at second-hand, of Waller or Cowley. I could multiply examples _ad lib._, from the German chapters especially, but the “matter of Germany” had better be dealt with under the book exclusively devoted to it. As for general strictures on the _Littérature_, they also will best be postponed till the _De l’Allemagne_ has been dealt with. [Sidenote: _The_ De l’Allemagne.] That this book is, as far as criticism goes, her masterpiece, there can be no doubt, and it would be surprising if it were not so. She was older; she had read more; and she had enjoyed very distinguished “coaching.” This kept her fairly straight in matters of fact within the comparatively limited range which she here allowed herself as far as literature is concerned. German literature had taken itself by this time pretty seriously for a couple of generations: and the German men of letters whom she interrogated or “led about,” were perfectly competent and apparently not unwilling[185] to keep her from such absurdities as we have just been noticing. Very much of the book is plain, straightforward _compte rendu_, and generally _très bien rendu_, whatever minor faults one may find here and there. Above all, the expressed and very fairly carried out purpose of comparative study which made Napoleon so angry, and with such good reason,[186] gives the book an honourable place as a precursor, if not, indeed, an absolute origin, in a new way which had to be trodden. If Napoleon’s innate and colossal vulgarity had not been constantly tripping up his immense cleverness, he might have perceived that here was a new feather of some consequence to stick in his sham crown-imperial. The analyses and _précis_ of such short things as _Lenore_ and the _Braut von Korinth_ are rather excessive for a book: but neither piece is easily translatable into French, and Madame de Staël probably knew very well that few of her dear quasi-countrymen were likely to learn German, in order to read them. The old leaven of French and _philosophe_ taste and culture shows itself at intervals interestingly. She cites[187] (a little generously perhaps in any case) the line in Raynouard’s _Les Templiers_, when the reprieve arrives too late to save the knights who have been chanting hymns on the pyre “Mais il n'était plus temps; les chants avaient cessés,” in connection with the yoke of the unities. But, strangely enough, she does not seem to notice the weakening and watering down of what she calls _l’un des mots les plus sublimes qu’on puisse entendre au théâtre_, by its being made part of the speech of a messenger. The voices of the warrior-priests ceasing one by one in agony, and the reprieve coming on the silence of the last, would be, though a rather _melo_-dramatic, a really dramatic moment. The recital of the situation is a little less ordinary than talk “of the rain and the fine time,” and that is all.