Of her political opinions Sir John Bowring ('Autobiographical Recollections', pp. 375, 376) has left a sketch.
"Madame de Staël was a perfect aristocrat, and her sympathies were wholly with the great and prosperous. She saw nothing in England but the luxury, stupidity, and pride of the Tory aristocracy, and the intelligence and magnificence of the Whig aristocracy. These latter talked about truth, and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was all as it should be. As to the millions, the people, she never inquired into their situation. She had a horror of the 'canaille', but anything of 'sangre asul' had a charm for her. When she was dying she said, 'Let me die in peace; let my last moments be undisturbed.' Yet she ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought to her. Among them was one from the Duc de Richelieu. 'What!' exclaimed she indignantly, 'What! have you sent away the 'Duke'? Hurry! Fly after him. Bring him back. Tell him that, though I die for all the world, I live for 'him'.'"
Napoleon's hatred of her was intense. "Do not allow that jade, Madame de Staël," he writes to Fouché, December 31, 1806 ('New Letters of Napoleon I.', p. 35), "to come near Paris." Again, March 15, 1807 ('ibid.', p. 39), "You are not to allow Madame de Staël to come within forty leagues of Paris. That wicked schemer ought to make up her mind to behave herself at last." In a third letter, April 19, 1807 ('ibid.', p. 40), he speaks of her as "paying court, one day to the great--a patriot, a democrat, the next!... a fright, ... a worthless woman" (Léon Lecestre's 'Lettres inédites de Napoléon I'er', 2nd ed. vol. i. pp. 84, 88, 93).]
"Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart to write a monthly miscellany called the 'Universal Visitor'. There was a formal written contract, which Allen the printer saw.... They were bound to write nothing else; they were to have, I think, a third of the profits of his sixpenny pamphlet; and the contract was for ninety-nine years"
(Boswell's 'Life of Dr. Johnson', ed. Birrell, vol. iii. p. 192).]
"But first the Monarch, so polite, Ask'd Mister Whitbread if he'd be a 'Knight'. Unwilling in the list to be enroll'd, Whitbread contemplated the Knights of 'Peg', Then to his generous Sov'reign made a leg, And said, 'He was afraid he was 'too old','" etc.