BY MADAME DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN. Un Homme doit savoir braver l'Opinion! une Femme A Man ought to be able to brave public Opinion; a Woman Madame Neckar's Miscellanies. PREFACE. Fall literary productions, novels have to encounter the most general and extensive criticism. Almost every reader is entitled to pass his judgment on them; even those who are most modest and most dif fident as to their understanding, have a right to consult their own feelings with respect to such works. The popular success, therefore, which ought to be aimed at in compositions of this kind, is one of its greatest difficultics.. Another difficulty no less important arises from the number of indifferent novels which daily issue from the press. The multitude of these productions induces the common obscrver to believe that the novel is, of all species of writing, the most easy, whereas it is precisely the numberless attempts made in this career which render every |