MADAME DE STAËL.

(_From Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron._)


Talking of literary women, Lord Byron said that Madame de Staël was
certainly the cleverest, though not the most agreeable woman he had ever
known. "She declaimed to you instead of conversing with you," said he,
"never pausing except to take breath; and if during that interval a
rejoinder was put in, it was evident that she did not attend to it, as
she resumed the thread of her discourse as though it had not been
interrupted." This observation from Byron was amusing enough, as we had
all made nearly the same observation on him, with the exception that he
listened to, and noticed, any answer made to his reflections. "Madame de
Staël," continued Byron, was very eloquent when her imagination warmed,
(and a very little excited it;) her powers of imagination were much
stronger than her reasoning ones, perhaps owing to their being much more
frequently exercised; her language was recondite, but redundant, and
though always flowery, and often brilliant there was an obscurity that
left the impression that she did not perfectly understand what she
endeavoured to render intelligible to others. She was always losing
herself in philosophical disquisition, and once she got entangled in the
mazes of the labyrinth of metaphysics; she had no clue by which she
could guide her path--the imagination that led her into her
difficulties, could not get her out of them; the want of a mathematical
education, which might have served as a ballast to steady and help her
into the port of reason, was always visible, and though she had great
tact in concealing her defeat, and covering a retreat, a tolerable
logician must have always discovered the scrapes she got into. Poor dear