The lives of French men of letters, at least during the last two centuries, have never been isolated or obscure. Had Rousseau been born on the borders of Loch Lomond, he might have proved in his own person, and without interruption, the superiority of the savage state; and after his death the information in regard to him would have been fragmentary and uncertain. But born on the shores of Lake Leman, centralization laid its grasp upon him, drew him into the vortex of the "great world," and caused his name to figure in all the questions, the quarrels, and the scandals of his day.

The truth is, that literature is a far more important element of society in France than elsewhere. We seldom think of a French author, without recalling the history and the manners of his time. In reading a French play, though it be a tragedy of Racine or a comedy of MoliÈre, we are reminded of the spectators before whom it was brought out. In reading a French book, though it be Pascal's "Thoughts" or the "Characters" of La BruyÈre, our minds are continually diverted from the matter of the work to the circumstances under which it was written and the public for whom it was intended.

Generally, indeed, the author, however full of his subject, has evidently been thinking of his readers. His tone is that of a speaker with his audience before him. Madame de StaËl actually composed in conversation, and her works are little more than imperfect records of her eloquent discourse. Innumerable productions have been read aloud, or handed round in private coteries, before being revised and published. The very excellence of the workmanship, if nothing else, shows that the article is "custom made." Even if the matter be poor, the writing is almost sure to be good. French literature abounds, beyond every other, in readable books,—books such as are welcomed by the mass of cultivated persons. It excels, in short, as a literature of the salon, rather than of the study.

As a natural corollary, criticism occupies a more distinct and prominent place in the literature of France than in that of any other nation. Every writer is sure of being heard, sure of being discussed, sure of being judged. This may not always have been favorable to originality. A fixed standard,—which is a necessary consequence,—though the guardian of taste, is a bar to innovation. When, however, the bar has been actually crossed, when encroachment has once obtained a footing, French criticism is swift to adjust itself to the new conditions imposed upon it, to widen its sphere and to institute fresh comparisons.

The present position of French criticism, its connection with the general course of literature and of society from the fall of the first Empire to the establishment of the second,—a period of remarkable effervescence and even fertility,—will be best illustrated by a sketch of the writings and career of M. Sainte-Beuve. He is, it is true, one of a group, compromising such critics as Villemain, Cousin, Vinet, Planche, Taine, and Scherer; but his name is more intimately associated than any of these with the progress and fluctuations of opinion and of taste. His notices of his contemporaries have been by far the most copious and assiduous. His literary life, extending over forty years, embraces the rise and the decline of what is known as the Romantic School; and during all this period his course, whether we regard it as that of a leader or of a follower, has harmonized singularily with the tendencies of the age.

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was born at Boulogne—a town not fruitful in distinguished names—on the 23d of December, 1804. His father, who had held an employment under the government, died two days before the birth of the son. His mother was the daughter of an Englishwoman,—a circumstance which has been thought to account for the appreciation he has shown of English poetry. The notion would be more plausible if there were any poetry which he has failed to appreciate. But when it is added that she was a woman of remarkable intelligence and sensibility, we recognize a fact of which the influence can neither be doubted nor defined.

After several years of prepatory instruction at a boarding-school in his native place, he was sent to Paris, when thirteen years old, and entered successively in several of the educational establishments which had succeeded to the ancient University. His studies, everywhere crowned with honors, were completed by a second course of rhetoric at the CollÉge Bourbon, in 1822. He afterwards, however, attended the lectures of Guizot, Villemain, and other distinguished professors at the Sorbonne. A hostile critic, though seven years his junior, professes to retain a distinct recollection of him at this period: "Among the most assiduous and most attentive auditors was a young man whose face, irregular in outline but marvellously intelligent, reflected every thought and image of the speaker, almost as rivers reflect the landscape that unrolls itself along their banks. When I add that the volatile waves incessantly efface what they have just before reflected, the comparison will appear only the more exact." To an impartial inquirer it might appear singularly inexact; but having picked up the shaft, we shall not at present stop to examine whether it be poisoned.

On quitting college, M. Sainte-Beuve made choice of medicine as his profession. He threw himself with enthusiasm into the study of anatomy, and soon qualified himself for an appointment as externe at the Hospital of Saint Louis. This ardor, however, far from indicating the particular bent of his mind, proceeded from that eager curiosity which is ready to enter every avenue and knock at every door by which the domain of knowledge can be approached. With the faculties he was endowed with, and the training he had received, it was impossible that he should lose in any special pursuit his interest in general literature. His fellow-townsman and former master in rhetoric, M. Dubois, having become the principal editor of the newly founded "Globe," invited his co-operation. Accordingly, in 1824, he began to contribute critical and historical articles to that journal; and three years later he resigned his post at the hospital, with the purpose of devoting himself exclusively to literary pursuits.

The period was in the highest degree favorable to the development and display of his talent. The literary revolution, which in Germany and England had already passed through its principal stages, had as yet scarcely penetrated into France. It had been heralded, indeed, by Chateaubriand, at the beginning of the century; and Madame de StaËl, some few years later, had come into contact with the reigning chiefs of German literature, and had made known to her countrymen their character and activity. But the energies of France were then absorbed in enterprises of another kind. It was not till peace had been restored, and a new generation, ardent, susceptible, as eager for novelty as the veterans were impatient of it, had come upon the stage, that the requisite impulse was given. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, MÉrimÉe, Alfred de Vigny, and other young men of genius, were just opening the assault on the citadel of classicisme. Conventional rules were set at defiance; the authorities that had so long held sway were summoned to abdicate; nature, truth, above all passion, were invoked as the sources of inspiration, the law-givers of the imagination, the sole arbiters of style. As usual, the movement extended beyond its legitimate sphere. Not only the forms, but the ideas, not only the traditions, but the novelties, of the eighteenth century were to be discarded. In fact, the period, though favorable to literary development, was, on the surface at least, one of political and religious reaction; and reaction often assumes the aspect of progress, nay, in some cases is identical with progress. Most of the poets, dramatists, and other writers of the Romantic School were, either by affinity or predilection, legitimists and neo-Catholics. Gothic art, mediÆval sentiment, the ancient monarchy and the ancient creed, were blended in their programme with the abrogation of the "unities," and a greater license of poetical expression.

Imbued with the precepts of a former age, and fresh from the study of its masterpieces, M. Sainte-Beuve was at first repelled by the mutinous attitude of the new aspirants. He made his dÉbut in an attack upon the "Odes and Ballads" of Victor Hugo. But his opposition quickly yielded to the force of the attraction. Nature had given him a peculiar mobility of temperament, and a strong instinctive sense of beauty under every diversity of form. Moreover, resistance would have been useless and Quixotic. In literature, as in politics, dynasties perish through their own weakness. The classical school of France had no living representative around whom its adherents could have rallied. Its only watchword was "The Past," which is always an omen of defeat.

Properly speaking, therefore, M. Sainte-Beuve began his career, not as an opponent, but as the champion of the new school. He entered into personal and intimate relations with its leaders, joined, as a member of the CÉnacle, in the discussion of their plans, attended the private readings of "Cromwell" and other works by which the breach was to be forced, and took upon himself the task of justifying innovation, and securing its reception with a hesitating public. Hence his criticism at this period was, as he himself has styled it, "polemical" and "aggressive." It was, however, neither violent nor sophistical. On the contrary, it was distinguished by the candor and the suavity of its tone. Goethe, who watched from afar a movement which, directly or indirectly, owed much to German inspiration, was particularly struck with this trait. "Our scholars," he remarked to Eckermann, "think it necessary to hate whoever differs from them in opinion; but the writers in the Globe know how to blame with refinement and courtesy."

At home many, without being converted, were propitiated, and some, while still hostile or indifferent to the new literature, became warmly interested in its advocate. At the suggestion of Daunou, one of the most distinguished among the survivors of the Revolutionary epoch, he undertook a work on early French literature, with the intention of competing for a prize offered by the Academy. But his plan soon deviated from that which had been assigned; and his researches, more limited in their scope, but far deeper and more minute, than had been demanded, gave birth to a volume, published in 1828, under the title of Tableau historique et critique de la PoÉsie franÇaise et du ThÉÂtre franÇais au seiziÈme SiÉcle. It was received with general favor. Some of the author's principles were strenuously disputed; but he was admitted to have made many discoveries in literary history, and to have introduced an entirely new method of criticism. Perhaps it would be more correct to say, that he had carried the torch of an enlightened judgment into a period which the brilliancy of succeeding epochs had thrown into obscurity.

In 1829 M. Sainte-Beuve published a volume of poetry, PoÉsies de Joseph Delorme, followed, in 1830, by another, entitled Consolations, and some years later by a third, PensÉes d'AoÛt. Although different degrees of merit have been assigned to these productions, their general character is the same. They exhibit, not the fire and inspiration of the true poetical temperament, but the experiments of a mind gifted with delicacy of sentiment and susceptible of varied impressions, in quest of appropriate forms and a deeper comprehension of the sources from which language derives its power as a vehicle of art. The influence of Wordsworth is observable in a studied familiarity of diction, as well as in the tendency to versify every thought or emotion suggested by daily observation. These peculiarities, coupled with the frequency of bold ellipses, provoked discussion, and seemed to promise a fresh expansion of poetical forms, in a somewhat different direction from that of the Romanticists. But it was not in this department that M. Sainte-Beuve was destined to become the founder of a school. His poetical talent, though unquestionable, had been bestowed, not as a special attribute, but as an auxiliary of other faculties granted in a larger measure. He has himself not only recognized its limits, but shown an inclination to underrate its value. "I have often thought," he remarks in one of his later papers, "that a critic who would attain to largeness of view would be better without any artistic faculty of his own. Goethe alone, by the universality of his poetical genius, was able to apply it in the estimation of what others had produced; in every species of composition he was entitled to say, 'Had I chosen, I could have given a perfect specimen of this.' But one who possesses only a single circumscribed talent should, in becoming a critic, forget it, bury it, and confess to himself that Nature is more bountiful and more varied than she showed herself in creating him. Incomplete artists, let us strive for an intelligence wider than our own talent,—than the best we are capable of producing."

To the same period—perhaps to the same spirit of investigation and experiment—belongs the single prose work of fancy which has proceeded from his pen. It is a species of romance, bearing the title of VoluptÉ, and designed to exhibit the struggle between the senses and the soul, or, more strictly speaking, the effect upon the intellectual nature of an early captivity to the pleasures of sense. The hero, Amaury, after a youth of indulgence, finds himself in the prime of his manhood, with his powers of perception and of thought vigorous and matured, but incapable of acting, of willing, or of loving. He inspires love, but cannot return it; he feels, he admires, but he shrinks from any step demanding resolution or self-devotion. Hence, instead of conferring happiness, he makes victims,—victims not of an active, but of a merely passive and negative egotism. A conjunction of circumstances brings him to a sudden and vivid realization of his condition and its results. Instead of escaping by suicide, as might be expected,—and as would probably have been the case if Werther had not forestalled him,—he breaks loose from his thraldom by a supreme effort, and finds in the faith and sacrifices of a religious life the means of restoration and of permanent freedom. He enters a seminary, is ordained priest, and performs the funeral rites of the woman whose affection for him had been the most ardent and exalted, and whom his purified heart could have best repaid.

In form, the work is an autobiography. The thoughts with which it teems are delicate and subtile; the style, somewhat labored and over-refined, is in contrast with that of the PoÉsies, while it betrays the same struggle for a greater amplitude and independence. In point of art the book appears to us a failure. The theme is not objectionable in itself. It is similar to that of many works which have sprung from certain phases of individual experience. But if such experience is to be idealized, its origin should disappear. Shakespeare may have undergone all the conflicts of doubt and irresolution represented in "Hamlet"; but in reading "Hamlet" we think, not of Shakespeare's conflicts, but of our own. VoluptÉ is too palpably a confession. The story is not a creation; it has been simply evolved by that process of thought which transports a particular idiosyncrasy into conditions and circumstances where it becomes a kind of destiny and a subject of speculation. Reality is wanting, for the very reason that the Imagination, after being called into play, has proved too feeble for her office. Herein Amaury differs widely from RenÉ. Apart from the difference of power, Chateaubriand had poured out his entire self; he had transcended the limits of his actual life, but never those of his mental experience. M. Sainte-Beuve had felt only a part of what he sought to depict; the rest he had conjectured or borrowed. The pages which describe the hero's impressions and emotions in consecrating himself to the service of the Church were written by Lacordaire. They are a faithful transcript from nature, but from a nature not at all resembling that to which they have been applied. The circumstances under which the book was composed will exhibit the difference. The author was then intimate with Lamennais, whose eloquent voice, soon afterwards to be raised in support of the opposite cause, was proclaiming the sternest doctrines of a renovated Catholicism. A spell which acted so widely and so marvellously could not be altogether unfelt by a mind whose peculiar property it was to yield itself to every influence in order to extort its secret and comprehend its power. Beyond this point the magic failed. "In all my transitions,"—thus he has written of himself,—"I have never alienated my judgment and my will; I have never pledged my belief. But I had a power of comprehending persons and things which gave rise to the strongest hopes on the part of those who wished to convert me and who thought me entirely their own." Thus Lamartine, in a rapturous strain, had congratulated himself on having been the instrument of saving his friend from the abysm of unbelief. When Lamennais was forming the group of disciples who retired with him to La Chesnaye, M. Sainte-Beuve was invited to join them. While declining the proposal, he imagined the position in which he might have been led to embrace it, and—wrote VoluptÉ.

The revolution of 1830, with the events that led to it, marks a turning-point in literary as well as in political history. The public mind was in a state of ebullition very unlike that of an ordinary political contest, in which one party pulls while the other applies the drag, one seeks to maintain, the other to destroy. All parties were pulling in different directions; all sought to destroy, in order to reconstruct; principles, except with the extremists, were simply expedients, adopted to-day, abandoned on the morrow. Nor is this to be explained, as English writers generally explain it, by the mere volatility of the French temperament. In England, an established basis of political power is slowly but constantly expanding; privilege crumbles and wears away under the gradual action of democracy; concession on the one side, moderation on the other, are perfectly feasible, and obviate the necessity for sudden ruptures and violent transitions. But in France the question created by past convulsions, and left unsolved by recent experiments, was this: What is the basis of power? Privilege had been so shorn that those who desired to make that the foundation were necessarily not conservatives, but reactionists. On the other hand, if popular power were to be accepted in its widest sense, then a thousand questions, a thousand differences of opinion in regard to the mode, the form, the application, would naturally spring up. Besides, would it not be safer, wiser, to modify ideas by experience, to look abroad for patterns, to seek for an equilibrium, a juste milieu? Thus there was a diversity of systems, but all contemplative of change. No one was in favor of standing still, for there was nothing to stand upon. In a word, the agitation was not so much one of measures, of principles, or of prejudices, as of ideas.

Now in an agitation of this kind, literary men—that is to say, the men whose business is to think—are likely to be active, and in France, at least, are apt to become prominent and influential. But they, of all men, by the very fact that they think, are least under the control of party affinities and fixed doctrines, the most liable to be swayed by discussion and reflection. Hence the spectacle, so frequent at that time and since, of men distinguished in the world of letters passing from the ranks of the legitimists into those of the republicans, from the advocacy of papal supremacy in temporal affairs to that of popular supremacy in religious affairs, from the defence of a landed aristocracy to the demand for a community of property; and afterwards, in many instances, returning with the backward current, abjuring freedom and embracing imperialism.

In the case of M. Sainte-Beuve the changes were neither so abrupt nor so complete as in that of many others. But his course was still more meandering, skirting the bases of opposite systems, abiding with none. Never a blind adherent or a vehement opponent, he glided almost imperceptibly from camp to camp. He consorted, as we have seen, with legitimists and neo-Catholics, and allowed himself to be reckoned as one of them. Through the columns of the Globe, which had now become the organ of the Saint-Simonians, he invited the Romanticists to "step forth from the circle of pure art, and diffuse the doctrines of a progressive humanity." On the advent of Louis Philippe, he was inclined to accept the constitutional rÉgime as the triumph of good sense, as affording a practical solution and a promise of stability. But he appears soon to have lost his faith in a government too narrow in policy, too timid in action, too vulgar in aspect, to satisfy a cultivated Parisian taste.

A similar flexibility will be noticed in his literary judgments. Shall we then pronounce him a very chameleon in politics and in art? Shall we say, with the critic already quoted, M. de Pontmartin, that his mental hues have been simply reflections, effaced as rapidly as they were made? On the contrary, we believe that he, of all men, has retained the various impressions he has once received. Unlike so many others, who, in changing their views, have contradicted all their former utterances, disowned their former selves, undergone a sort of bisection into two irreconcilable halves, M. Sainte-Beuve has linked one opinion with another, modified each by its opposite, and thus preserved his continuity and cohesion. "Everything has two names," to use his own expression, and he has never been content with knowing only one of them. Guided by a sympathetic intelligence, adopting, not symbols, but ideas, he has, by force of penetration and comprehension, extracted the essence of each doctrine in turn. His changes therefore indicate, not superficiality, but depth. He is no more chargeable with volatility than society itself. Like it he is a seeker, listening to every proposition, accepting what is vital, rejecting what is merely formal. There is not one of the systems which have been presented, however contrasted they may appear, but has left its impress upon society,—not one but has left its impress on the mind and opinions of M. Sainte-Beuve.

In one particular—the most essential, in reality, of all—his constancy has been remarkable. He has remained true to his vocation. At the moment when his literary brethren, availing themselves of the opening we have noticed, were rushing into public life,—scholars and professors becoming ambassadors and ministers of state, poets and novelists mounting the tribune and the hustings, historians descending into the arena of political journalism,—M. Sainte-Beuve settled himself more firmly in the chair of criticism, concentrating his powers on the specialty to which they were so peculiarly adapted. His opportunities for doing this more effectively were themselves among the results of the events already mentioned. A greater freedom and activity of discussion demanded new and ampler organs. Cliques had been broken up; co-workers, brought together by sympathy, separated by the clash of opinions and ambitions, had dispersed; both in literature and in politics a wider, more inquisitive, more sympathetic public was to be addressed. Already in 1829, VÉron, one of those shrewd and speculative—we hardly know whether to call them men of business or adventurers, who foresee such occasions, had set up the Revue de Paris, on a more extended plan than that of any previous French journal of the kind. The opening article of the first number was from the pen of M. Sainte-Beuve. But this undertaking was subsequently merged in that of the Revue des Deux Mondes, which, after one or two abortive beginnings, was fairly started in January, 1831, and soon assumed the position it has ever since retained, at the head of the publications of its class. It enlisted among its contributors nearly all the leading writers of the day, none of whom was so regular and permanent, none of whom did so much to build up its reputation and confer upon it the stamp of authority, as M. Sainte-Beuve. His connection with it extended over seventeen years, the period between the last two revolutions. His papers seem to have averaged five or six a year. They form, with those which had been previously inserted in the Revue de Paris, a series of Portraits, now embraced in seven volumes, and divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into Portraits littÉraires, Portraits contemporains, and Portraits de Femmes. The names included, which with few exceptions are those of French writers, belong to different epochs, different schools, and different departments of literature. Many are famous; some are obscure; not a few, which had before been overlooked or overshadowed, owe the recognition they have since received to their admission into a gallery where the places have been assigned and the lights distributed by no partial or incompetent umpire.

In the case of any kind of literature, but especially in that of criticism, it is interesting to have an author's own ideas of his office and art. The motto of the Edinburgh Review—"Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur"—was a very good indication of the spirit of its founders, whose legal habits and aspirations naturally suggested the spectacle of a court, in which the critic as judge was to sit upon the bench, and the author as prisoner was to stand at the bar. Had Jeffries, instead of Jeffrey, presided over the assizes, they could not have been gayer or bloodier. It is interesting to remember that among the criminals sentenced without reprieve were the greatest poet and the most original thinker of the time. A journal which has earned something of the prestige that attached to the youthful Edinburgh takes a not very different view of its own functions. "An author may wince under criticism," say the writers of the Saturday Review; "but is the master to leave off flogging because the pupil roars?" Here, too, the notion of the relative position of author and critic is perfectly natural. Young gentlemen, with a lively recollection of their own construings and birchings, are only too happy in the opportunity of sitting with bent brows and uplifted rod, watching for a false quantity or similar peccadillo, which may justify a withering rebuke or a vigorous flagellation. If we add, that these writers exhibit that accuracy of statement which usually accompanies the assumption of infallibility, and that their English is of that prim and painful kind, common to pedagogues, which betrays a constant fear of being caught tripping while engaged in correcting others, the comparison—to cite once more M. de Pontmartin—"will appear only the more exact." We forbear to descend to a far lower class, judges who know nothing of law, masters who have never been scholars, truly "incomplete artists" who cannot "forget or bury" their own extremely "circumscribed talent," but who are perfectly willing to bury, and would fain induce the world to forget, that of every suspected rival.

Had M. Sainte-Beuve entered upon his task with similar conceptions and associations, his early anatomical studies would perhaps have suggested the patient under the scalpel as an appropriate device. But we are in danger of dishonoring him by the mere supposition. Scattered through his works—beginning with the earliest and coming down to the latest—we find such sentences as the following: "The critical spirit is in its nature facile, insinuating, mobile, and comprehensive; it is a great and limpid river, which winds and spreads itself around the productions and the monuments of genius." "The best and surest way to penetrate and to judge any writer, any man, is to listen to him,—to listen long and intently: do not press him; let him move and display himself with freedom, and of himself he will tell you all about himself; he will imprint himself upon your mind. Be assured that in the long run no man, no writer, above all no poet, will preserve his secret." "It is by virtue of an exquisite analogy that the word 'taste' has prevailed over the word 'judgment.' Judgment! I know minds which possess it in a high degree, but which are yet wanting in taste; for taste expresses what is finest and most instinctive in an organ which is at once the most delicate and the most complex." "To know how to read a book, judging it as we go along, but never ceasing to taste it,—in this consists almost the whole art of criticism." "What Bacon says as to the proper mode of educing the natural meaning from Scripture may be applied to ancient writings of all kinds, or even to the most modern. The best and sweetest criticism is that which exudes from a good book, not pressed as in a wine-press, but squeezed gently in a free reading. I love that criticism should be an emanation from the book." "Whenever I speak of a writer, I prefer to exhibit him in the brightest and happiest hour of his talent, to place him, if possible, directly under the rays." "The greatest triumph of criticism is when it recognizes the arrival of a power, the advent of a genius." "I cannot admit that the best mode of correcting a talent which is in process of development is to begin by throwing an inkstand at its head." "I am almost frightened at seeing to what an extent literary criticism becomes difficult, when it refrains from arrogance and from insult, claiming for itself both an honest freedom of judgment and the right to participate largely in the bestowment of deserved praise, as well as to maintain a certain cordiality even in its reservations." "If Diderot was as far as possible from being a dramatic poet, if he was destitute of that supreme creative power which involves the transformation of an author's own personality, he possessed, on the other hand, in the highest degree, that faculty of demi-metamorphosis which is the exercise and the triumph of criticism, and which consists in putting one's self in the the place of the author, occupying the point of view to the subject under examination, and reading every writing in the spirit by which it was dictated."

Let us admit that these are not so much absolute principles of criticism as the features which characterize that of the writer himself and the method which he has almost involuntarily pursued. Let us admit this, and in doing so we concede to him all the qualities that are rarest and most desirable in his art,—impartiality, sincerity, disinterestedness; freedom from theory, from passion, and from prejudice; insight, comprehension, sensitiveness to every trait and every kind of beauty and of power; a patient ardor and pure delight in acquisition, and a generous desire, in the interest of literature itself, to communicate the results and inspire similar feelings. Without denying that all good criticism will partake more or less largely of these qualities, or that some of them have been more abundantly possessed, more profoundly applied, by others, we believe that it would be difficult to cite an instance in which they have been so entirely combined or so continuously exercised. M. Sainte-Beuve is pre-eminently an artist in criticism. He has exhibited that self-absorption which it is easy to imagine, easy to find examples of, in poetry, in painting, and in music, but which in criticism had hitherto been hardly conceivable. "There is in him," wrote Gustave Planche in 1834,—and the force of the eulogy is in no degree impaired by subsequent censures from the same quarter,—"a happy mingling of enthusiasm and curiosity, renewed in proportion as they are appeased, and enrolled in the service of all nascent or unrecognized abilities.... He speaks the truth for the sole pleasure of speaking it, and asks no gratitude either from the disciples whom he initiates or from the new deities whom he exalts.... Whenever he finds a poet not sufficiently listened to, he aims to enlarge the audience, erects a stage on which to place him, and arranges everything for enabling him to produce the fullest effect.... Before him French criticism, when it was not either acrimonious or simply learned, consisted in a mere commonplace repetition of precepts and formulas of which the sense had been lost. His perpetual mobility is but a constant good faith; he believes in the most opposite schools, because believing is with him only a mode of comprehending."

Let it not be supposed from this description that M. Sainte-Beuve is wanting in acuteness, that his enthusiasm predominates over his sagacity. On the contrary, there is no keener eye than his for whatever is false, pretentious, or unsound. His sure instinct quickly separates the gold from the alloy. Unlike the critics of the nil admirari school, whose reluctance to trust themselves to their emotions proceeds in great part from the absence of this instinct, he is proof against the approaches of the charlatan, and has never debased the word "art" by applying it to a mere melodramatic mechanism. But he rightly considers the office of the detector as insignificant in comparison with that of the discoverer, and his glow of satisfaction is reserved for the nobler employment. The points on which he insists are the obligation of honestly desiring to understand an author; the impropriety of fastening on defects, or of simply balancing between defects and merits; the duty of approving with heartiness and warmth, in place of that cold-blooded moderation which he pronounces, with Vauvenargues, "a sure sign of mediocrity." If, therefore, we say that his is only one species of criticism, we cannot deny its claim to be entitled the "criticism of appreciation." It is thus the exact reverse of that species to which we have before alluded, and which deserves to be called the "criticism of depreciation."

We come now to the particular characteristics of the Portraits, the manner in which the author has there applied his principles. "I have never," he remarks in a recent defence, "vaunted my method as a discovery, or affected to guard it as a secret." It involves, however, both the one and the other. The discovery consists in the perception of the truth that an author is always in his works; that he cannot help being there; that no reticence, no pretences, no disguises, will avail to hide him. The secret lies in the skill with which the search is pursued and the object revealed. We do not, of course, mean to say that M. Sainte-Beuve is the originator of biographical criticism, which in England especially, favored by the portly Reviews, has been carried to an extent undreamt of elsewhere. But in general it may be noticed that English articles of this kind have been simply biographies accompanied with criticism; their model is to be found in Johnson's "Lives of the Poets." The critical articles of Mr. Carlyle are a striking exception. Of Carlyle it may be said, as it has been said of M. Sainte-Beuve, that "what chiefly interests him in a book is the author, and in the author the very mystery of his personality." In other words, each looks upon a literary work, not as the production of certain impersonal intellectual faculties, but as a manifestation of the author in the totality of his nature. But while the point of view is thus identical, there is little similarity in the treatment. In the one case a powerful imagination causes the figure to stand out in bold relief, while a luminous humor plays upon every feature. The method of the Portraits—again we cite the author's own language—is "descriptive, analytical, inquisitive." We are led along through a series of details, each lightly touched, each contributing to the elucidation of the enigma, by a train of closely linked and subtile observation, which penetrates all the obscurities, unravels all the intricacies, of the subject. And the result is, not that broad but mingled conception which arises from personal intimacy or from the art which simulates it, but that idea, that distilled essence, which is obtained when what is most characteristic, what is purely mental and individual, has been selected and condensed.

The sympathetic nature of the critic displays itself in his general treatment of the theme, in the post of observation which he chooses. He is not an advocate or an apologist. But the opinions in which he does not coincide, the defects which he has no interest in concealing, he sets in their natural connection, and regards as portions of a living organism. Put before him a nature the most opposite to his own,—narrow, rigorous, systematic. Shall he oppose or condemn it because of this contrariety? But why, then, has he himself been endowed with suppleness and insight, why is he a critic, unless that he may enter into other minds see as they have seen, feel as they have felt? He must get to the centre before he can trace the limits and imperfections. Once there, once identified with his object, he can observe its irregularities without being irritated or perturbed. As for that Rhadamanthine criticism which sits aloof from its object, and treats every aberration from a straight line as something abnormal and abominable, he leaves it to the immaculate. In truth, such criticism, with all its pretences to authority, is open to this fatal objection,—it tends to destroy our relish for literature; instead of stimulating the appetite, it creates disgust.[C] How different is the effect produced by the Portraits! Of all criticism they have the most power to refresh our interest in familiar topics, and to kindle curiosity in regard to those with which we are unacquainted. They serve as the best possible introduction to the study of the works themselves, to which, accordingly, they have in many cases been prefixed. They put us in the proper disposition for tasting as we read. Often they are guides with which we could hardly dispense. M. Sainte-Beuve is never more happy than in dealing with complexities or contradictions, with characters that puzzle the ordinary observer, with harmonies which are hidden in discords. Of women, it has been well said, he writes "as if he were one of them." Like Thackeray, like Balzac, he knows their secret. So, too, the spirit of a particular epoch or a particular school is seized, its successive phases are distinguished, with a nicety defying competition. Especially is this applicable to the developments of the present century. Who, indeed, was so competent to describe its parties and conflicts, its emotions and languors, as one who had shared in all its transitions, in all its experiences?

The style of the Portraits might form the subject of a separate study. Abjuring antithesis and epigram on the one hand, pomp and declamation on the other, it has yet none of the limpidity, the rapid flow, the incisive directness, of classical French prose. On the contrary, it is full of shadings and undulations. It abounds in caressing epithets, and in figures sometimes elaborated and prolonged to the last degree, sometimes clustered and contrasted like flowers in a bouquet. After a continuous reading a sense of luxury steals over us; we seem to be surrounded by the rich draperies and scented atmosphere of a boudoir. Yet the term "florid" will not apply to what is everywhere pervaded by an exquisite harmony and taste. Simplicity of expression, energy of tone, would be out of place, where the thought is so subtile and refined, the glow of feeling so soft and restrained, the mind so absorbed in the effort to catch every echo, every reflection, floating across the field of its survey. Difficult as it is to convey any adequate notion of such a style by mere description, it would be at least as difficult to do justice to its peculiarities in a translation. Our impressions of it may perhaps be best summed up by saying that it is the farthest remove from oratory, and the nearest approach to poetry, of any prose not professedly idyllic or lyric with which we are acquainted.

It has been stated by the author himself, as one defect in his criticism at this period, that it was not "conclusive." It was perfectly sincere, but not equally frank. In fact, it was not full-grown. A mind like that of M. Sainte-Beuve is slow in arriving at maturity. It is quick to comprehend; but the very breadth of its comprehension and the variety of its researches make it tardy in attaining that completeness and decision, that air of mastery, which less capacious minds assume through the mere instinct, and as the outward sign, of virility. He has himself indicated the distinction in his notice of M. Taine, whom he describes as "entering the arena fully armed and equipped, taking his place with a precision, a vigor of expression, a concentration and absoluteness of thought, which he applies in turn to the most opposite subjects, without ever forgetting his own identity or losing faith in his system." There were, however, in the case of M. Sainte-Beuve, further impediments to the assumption of an explicit and confident tone. Among the authors whom he was called upon to criticise were his acknowledged leaders, those by whom he had been initiated into the mysteries of modern art. Though he was fast outgrowing their influence, he was in no haste to proclaim his independence. An indefatigable student, he was accumulating stores of material without as yet drawing upon them to any proportionate extent, or putting forth all the strength with which they supplied him. Besides the "Portraits," his only other work during this period was his "History of Port Royal," the five volumes of which were published at long intervals. Social relations, too, exerted a restraining influence. His position in the world of letters was generally recognized, and had brought him the distinctions and rewards which France has it in her power to bestow. In 1840 he was appointed one of the conservators of the Mazarine Library. In 1845 he was elected to the French Academy. He lived on terms of intimacy with men of all parties, and with the highest in every party. He moved in the Élite of Parisian society, accepting rather than claiming its attentions, but fully sensible of its charms. All these circumstances combined to prolong, in his case, that season when, though the fruit has formed, the blossoms have not yet fallen, when the mind still yields itself to illusions as if loath to be disenchanted. His sincere admiration for the genius of Chateaubriand did not blind him to the monstrosities or the littlenesses by which it was disfigured. But should he rudely break the spell in the presence of the enchanter? should he disturb the veneration that encircled his decline? should he steel himself against the gracious pleadings of Madame RÉcamier, and throw a bomb-shell into that circle of which no one could better appreciate the seductive repose? He chose rather to limit the scope of his judgment, to look at the object solely on its attractive side, to postpone reservations which would have had the effect of a revolt.

Yet the extent of his concessions has been much exaggerated. No extravagant laudations ever fell from his pen. Moreover, his gradual emancipation, so to speak, is apparent in his writings,—in the last volumes of his "Port Royal" and in the later "Portraits." It was facilitated by the waning power displayed in the productions of some with whom he had been closely associated. It was suddenly completed by an event of which the momentous and wide-spread consequences are still felt,—the Revolution of February, 1848.

M. Sainte-Beuve has given a curious account of the immediate effect of that event upon his own external circumstances and position. Some lurking irony may be suspected,—a disposition to reduce the apparent magnitude of a great political convulsion by setting it in juxtaposition with its more trivial results. But as the narrative is characteristic, and contains some passages that throw light upon the author's habits and sentiments, we give it, very slightly abridged, in his own words. It is prefixed to a course of lectures on Chateaubriand and his literary friends, delivered at LiÉge in 1848-49.

"In October, 1847, in my capacity as one of the Conservators of the Mazarine Library, I occupied rooms at the Institute, where I had a chimney that smoked. With the view of guarding against this inconvenience before the winter should have set in, I summoned the fumiste of the establishment, who, after entering into details and fixing upon the remedy,—some contrivance on the roof in the nature of a hooded chimney-pot,—observed that the expense, amounting to a hundred francs or so, was one of those which are chargeable to the landlord, that is to say, in this case, the government. Consequently I made a requisition on the Minister to whose department it belonged; the work was executed, and I thought no more of it.

"Some months later, the Revolution of the 24th of February broke out. I perceived from the first day all the importance of that event, but also its prematureness. Without being one of those who regretted the fall of a dynasty or of a political system, I grieved for a civilization which seemed to me for the moment greatly compromised. I did not, however, indulge in the gloomy anticipations which I saw had taken possession of many who the day before had professed themselves republicans, but who were now surprised, and even alarmed, at their own success. I thought we should get out of this, as we had already got out of so many other embarrassments. I reflected that History has more than one road by which to advance; and I awaited the development of facts with the curiosity of an observer, closely blended, I must confess, with the anxieties of a citizen.

"About a month later, towards the end of March, I was told by a friend that M. Jean Reynaud, who then filled an office which, though nominally in the department of Public Instruction, corresponded in fact with that of Under-Secretary of State, wished to see me. I had been well acquainted with M. Reynaud for seventeen or eighteen years, and had dined with him, in company with M. Charton, on Wednesday, the 25th of February preceding, while the Revolution was in full blast. Profiting by a short truce which had suddenly intervened on the afternoon of that day, I had been able to traverse the Champs-ÉlysÉes, at the farther end of which he lived, and to keep an appointment dating from several days before. On that Wednesday, at six o'clock in the evening, I did not expect, and as little did M. Reynaud himself expect, that two days later he would be holding the post of quasi-minister in the department of Public Instruction. I heard with pleasure of his appointment, in conjunction with that of M. Carnot and M. Charton, for I knew their perfect integrity.

"Summoned then, about a month after these events, by M. Reynaud, and having entered his office and approached him with my ordinary air, I saw in his countenance a look of consternation. He informed me that something very grave had taken place, and that this something concerned me; that certain lists specifying the sums distributed by the late government, with the names of the recipients, had been seized at the Tuileries; that my name had been found in them; that it occurred several times, with a sum—with sums—of a considerable amount attached to it. At first I began to laugh; but perceiving that M. Reynaud did not laugh, and receiving from him repeated appeals to my recollection, I began to ply him with questions in return. He was unable to enter into any exact details; but he assured me that the fact was certain,—that he had verified it with his own eyes; and as his alarm evidently proceeded from his friendship, I could not doubt the reality of what he had told me.

"I believe that, by my manner of replying on the instant, I convinced him of the existence of some error or some fraud. But I perceived that there were others, near him, behind him, who would be less easily convinced. As soon, therefore, as I had returned home, I addressed to the Journal des DÉbats a letter of denial, a defiance to calumny, in the tone natural to honorable persons and such as feel secure in their own innocence. This letter furnished M. Reynaud with a weapon against my accusers behind the scene. As a proof that he accepted both the sentiment and the terms, he caused it to be inserted in the Moniteur.

"However, I was not entirely satisfied; I wished to bring the affair fully to light. I made attempts to procure the lists in question. I went to see M. Taschereau, who was publishing them in his Revue rÉtrospective; I saw M. Landrin, the Attorney-General of the Republic; I even caused inquiries to be made of the former Ministers, then in London, with whom I had had the honor of being personally acquainted. No result; nobody understood to what my questions had reference. Wearied out at last, I discontinued the pursuit, though without dismissing the subject from my thoughts.

"I will get to the bottom of this affair. There was in the department of Public Instruction a man newly elevated to power, who honored me with an enmity already of long standing. I have never in my life met M. GÉnin; I have never once seen his face; but the fact is that he has always detested me, has often in his writings made me the object of his satire, and in his critical articles especially has ridiculed me to the extent of his powers. I did not suit this writer, whom all his friends pronounced a man of intellect; I appeared to him affected and full of mannerisms; and to me, on the other hand, he perhaps appeared neither so subtile, nor so refined, nor so original, as he seemed to others. Now M. GÉnin, who had been intrusted, after the 24th of February, 1848, with the distribution of the papers in the Bureau of Public Instruction, was undoubtedly the person who had availed himself of the list in which my name was said to figure, for the purpose of bringing an accusation against my honor. He was himself a man of probity, but one who, in the violence of his prejudices and the acerbity of his disposition, could hardly stop short of actions positively bad.

"If M. GÉnin had lived in the world, in society, during the fifteen years previous to 1848 which I had passed in it, he would have comprehended how a man of letters, without fortune, without ambition, of retiring manners, and keeping strictly to his own place, may yet—by his intellect perhaps, by his character, by his tact, and by his general conduct—obtain an honorable and agreeable position, and live with persons of every rank, the most distinguished in their several walks,—persons not precisely of his own class,—on that insensible footing of equality which is, or which was, the charm and honor of social life in France. For my own part, during those years,—happy ones I may call them,—I had endeavored, not without a fair degree of success, to arrange an existence combining dignity with ease. To write from time to time things which it might be agreeable to read; to read what was not only agreeable but instructive; above all, not to write too much, to cultivate friendships, to keep the mind at liberty for the intercourse of each day and be able to draw upon it without fear of exhausting it; giving more to one's intimates than to the public, and reserving the finest and tenderest thoughts, the flower of one's nature, for the inner sanctuary;—such was the mode of life I had conceived as suitable to a literary knight, who should not allow has professional pursuits and associations to domineer over and repress the essential elements of his heart and soul. Since then necessity has seized upon me and constrained me to renounce what I considered the only happiness. It is gone, it has forever vanished, that better time, adorned with study and leisure, passed in a chosen circle, where I once received, from a fair friend whose loss has been irreparable, this charming counsel insinuated in the form of praise: 'If you think yourself dependent on the approbation of certain people, believe me, that others are dependent upon yours. And what better, sweeter bond can there be between persons who esteem each other, than this mutual dependence on moral approbation, balancing, so to speak, one's own sentiment of freedom. To desire to please and at the same time to remain free,—this is the rule we ought to follow.' I accepted the motto; I promised myself to be faithful to it in all that I might write; my productions at that period will show perhaps the degree in which I was influenced by it. But I perceive that I have strayed from my text.

"I had forgotten to mention that, on the same day on which I wrote the letter inserted first in the Journal des DÉbats, and afterwards in the Moniteur, I forwarded to Messieurs Reynaud and Carnot the resignation of my place at the Mazarine. I did not wish to expose myself to interrogatories and explanations where I could be less sure of being questioned in a friendly spirit and listened to with confidence. From the moment of taking this step there was no longer much choice for me. I had to live by my pen; and during the year 1848, literature in my understanding of that term—and indeed literature of every kind—formed one of those branches of industry, devoted to the production of luxuries, which were struck with a sudden interdict, a temporary death. I was asked in conversation if I knew any man of letters who would accept a place in Belgium as professor of French literature. Learning that the vacancy was at the University of LiÉge, I offered myself. I went to Brussels to confer on the project with M. Charles Rogier, Minister of the Interior, whom I had known a long time, and I accepted with gratitude the propositions that were made to me.

"I left France in October, 1848. The press of Paris noticed my departure only with raillery. When a man of letters has no party, no followers, at his back, when he takes his way alone and independently, the least that can be expected is that the world should give itself the pleasure of insulting him a little on his passage. In Belgium I met with unexpected difficulties, thrown in my way by hostile compatriots. Pamphlets containing incredible calumnies were published against me. I have reason to speak with praise of the youth of Belgium, who decided to wait, and to judge me only by my acts and words. In spite of obstacles I succeeded. The present book, which was entirely composed and was to have been published before the end of 1849, represents one of the two courses which I delivered.

"P.S. I had almost forgotten to recur to the famous lists. The one containing my name appeared at last in the Revue rÉtrospective. 'M. Sainte-Beuve, 100 francs,'—this was what was to be read there. The fabulous ciphers had vanished. On seeing this entry a ray of light dawned upon my memory. I recollected my smoky chimney of 1847, the repair of which was to have cost about that sum. But for this incident, I should never have been led to deliver the course now submitted to the reader, and the one circumstance has occasioned my mention of the other."

It must be confessed that the chimney that drove M. Sainte-Beuve into temporary exile, and led to the production of a work in which his views on many important topics were enunciated with a clearness and force he had hitherto held in reserve, had smoked to some purpose. We may be permitted to believe that his integrity had never been seriously questioned; that the pretext for a brief abandonment of his beloved Paris while she was in a state of excitement and dishabille had not been altogether unwelcome. Though no admirer of the government of Louis Philippe, he had, as he still acknowledges, appreciated "the mildness of that rÉgime, its humanity, and the facilities it afforded for intellectual culture and the development of pacific interests of every kind." The sudden overthrow, the turmoil, the vagaries that ensued, were little to his taste. He was content to stand aside, availing himself of the general dislocation to look around and choose for himself a new field, a more independent position.

Here then begins the third, and, as we must suppose, the final stage of his career. In September, 1849, he returned to Paris, feeling "a great need of activity," as if his mind had been "refreshed by a year of study and solitude." What was he to undertake? No sooner did the question arise, than an answer presented itself in the form of an offer from one whose coadjutor he had become on a previous and similar occasion. M. le docteur VÉron, now the proprietor of the Constitutionnel, and as sagacious as ever in catering for the public taste, proposed to him to furnish every Monday an article on some literary topic. The notion of writing for the masses, of adapting his style to the requirements of a newspaper, gave him a momentary shock. Hitherto he had addressed only the most select audiences. But, after all, he was conscious of an almost boundless versatility, and no plan could better satisfy the desire which he had long felt of becoming "a critic in the full sense of the word, with the advantages of ripeness and perhaps of boldness." Such a change would be suited also to the new aspect of society. In literature it was no longer the time for training, tending, and watering, but the season of gathering the fruit, selecting the good and rejecting the unsound. Romanticism as a school had done its work and was now extinct. Every one went his separate way. Questions of form were no longer mooted; the public tolerated everything. Whoever had an idea on any subject wrote about it, and whoever chose to write was a littÉrateur. "With such a noise in the streets it was necessary to raise one's voice in order to be heard. Accordingly," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "I set to work for the first time on that kind of criticism, frank and outspoken, which belongs to the open country and the broad day."

With the old manner he laid aside the old title. The term Portraits, which in its literary signification recalled the times of the Rochefoucaulds and the SÉvignÉs, was exchanged for the more modern one of Conversations,—Causeries de Lundis. Begun in the Constitutionnel on the 1st of October, 1849, they were continued three years later in the Moniteur, and in 1861 again resumed, under the title of Nouveaux Lundis, in the first-named journal, where they are still in progress. More than once the author has intimated his intention to bring them to a close. But neither his own powers nor the appetite of his readers having suffered any abatement, one series has followed upon another, until, in their reprinted form, they now fill nineteen volumes, while more are eagerly expected.

The transformation of style which was visible at the very outset is one of the miracles of literary art. Simplicity, swiftness, precision, all the qualities which were conspicuously absent, we will not say wanting, in the Portraits,—these are the characteristics, and that in a surpassing degree, of the Causeries. The whole arrangement, too, is different. There is no preluding, there are no intricate harmonies: the key-note is struck in the opening chord, and the theme is kept conspicuously in view throughout all the modulations. The papers at once acquired a popularity which of course had never attended the earlier ones. "He has not the time to make them bad," was the praise accorded by some of their admirers, and smilingly accepted by the author. But is this indeed the explanation? Had he merely taken to "dashing off" his thoughts, after the general manner of newspaper writers? Had he deserted "art," and fallen back upon the crudities misnamed "nature"? If such had been the case, there would have been no occasion for the present notice. His fame would long since have been buried under the rubbish he had himself piled up. The fact is very different. "Natural fluency"—that is to say, the inborn capacity of the writer—he undoubtedly possessed; but "acquired difficulty,"—this was the school in which he had practised, this was the discipline which enabled him, when the need arose, to carry on a campaign of forced marches, brilliant and incessant skirmishes, without severing his lines or suffering a mishap. It was in wielding the lance that he had acquired the vigor and agility to handle the javelin with consummate address. Contrasted as are his earlier and later styles, they have some essential qualities in common;—an exquisite fitness of expression; a total exemption from harshness, vulgarity, and all the vices that have grown so common; a method, a sequence, which is at once the closest and the least obtrusive to be found in any prose of the present day.

We pass from the style to the substance. The criticism, as we have seen, was to be "frank and outspoken." It became so at a single bound. The subject of the second number of the Causeries was the Confidences of M. de Lamartine, and the article opens with these words: "And why, then, should I not speak of it? I know the difficulty of speaking of it with propriety; the time of illusions and of complaisances has passed; it is absolutely necessary to speak truths; and this may seem cruel, so well chosen is the moment. Yet when such a man as M. de Lamartine has deemed it becoming not to close the year 1848 without giving to the public the confessions of his youth and crowning his political career with idyls, shall criticism hesitate to follow him and to say what it thinks of his book? shall it exhibit a discretion and a shamefacedness for which no one, the author least of all, would care?" And what follows? An outpouring of ridicule, of severity, such as the same book received from so many quarters? Nothing of the sort; nothing more than a thoroughly candid and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic or the poet at fault?

And so it has been in all the subsequent articles of M. Sainte-Beuve. It matters not who or what is the subject,—let it be a long-established reputation, like that of M. Guizot; a youthful aspirant, such as M. Hyppolite Rigault and many others; a brother critic, like M. Prevost-Paradol; a fanatical controversialist, like M. Veuillot; a personal friend, like M. Flaubert; or a bitter and unscrupulous assailant, like M. de Pontmartin,—the treatment is ever the same, sincere, impartial, unaffected. "To say nothing of writers, even of those who are the most opposed to us, but what their judicious friends already think and would be forced to admit,—this is the height of my ambition." Such was his proclamation, such has been his practice. No one has ever been bold enough to gainsay it. An equity so great, so unvarying, has almost staggered his brethren of the craft. "It is grand, it is royal," says M. Scherer,—who has himself approached near enough to the same summit to appreciate its height,—"only in him it cannot be called a virtue: it belongs to the intellect, which in him is blended with the character."

"But he professes neutrality! He has no doctrines, no belief, no emotions! He discusses everything, not with any regard to the eternal considerations of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, but solely in the view of literature and art!" So cry certain voices, loudest among them that of M. de Pontmartin. It is certainly somewhat surprising that a man without opinions, without emotions, should be made the object of violent attacks, that according to M. de Pontmartin himself, whose authority, however, upon this point we may take the liberty of rejecting, there should be "few men more generally hated." Mere jealousy can have nothing to do with it. "There is not," remarks M. Scherer, "the trace of a literary rivalry to be found in his whole career." The truth is, that M. Sainte-Beuve has, on all the subjects he has examined, convictions which are strong, decided, earnestly and powerfully maintained. But he differs from the rest of us in this, that he not only professes, but enforces, a perfect freedom of opinion, a perfect equality in discussion. In religion he attaches more importance to the sentiment than to the creed. In morals he sets up a higher standard than conventionalism. In politics, as we shall presently see, he has even given in his adhesion to a system; but, treating politics, like medicine, as an experimental science, he refuses to see in any system an article of faith to be adopted and proclaimed irrespective of its results. In questions of literature and art he declines to apply any test but the principles of art, the literary taste "pure and simple." In all matters he prefers to look at the practical rather than the dogmatic side, to study living forces rather than dead forms. Hence the charge of indifference. He would better please those who differ from him, were he one-sided, narrow, rancorous. It is because his armor is without a flaw that they detest him.[D]

We have spoken frequently of M. de Pontmartin. It is time to speak of him a little more definitely. As M. Sainte-Beuve has remarked, "the subject is not a difficult one." He belongs to the old aristocracy, and takes care that his readers shall not forget the fact. In religion and politics—with him, as with so many others, the two words have much the same meaning—he adheres consistently and chivalrously to causes once great and resplendent, now only fit subjects for elegies. As a writer, he is a master of the critique spirituelle,—that species which is so brilliant in display, so unsubstantial in results. He sparkles and glows; but his light only directs the brown nightingale where to find its repast. Armed cap-À-pie, glittering with epigram, rhetoric, and irony, he entered the lists against M. Sainte-Beuve, ostensibly to defend the reputation of Chateaubriand, provoked in reality by the causes already noticed. We have no space for the controversy that ensued. It is worthy of remark that the assault was directed, not against the censures which had been passed upon Chateaubriand,—M. de Pontmartin took good care not to aim at his adversary's shield,—but against the motives which had led to their suppression while the object was alive, and to their publication after he was dead. Now there are in the book on Chateaubriand some disclosures which might better have been spared. But in determining motives we shall go utterly astray if we leave character out of sight; and the whole career of M. Sainte-Beuve rises up against the implication that he was prompted in this instance by any other impulse than that spirit of investigation, that desire to penetrate to the heart of his subject, to unveil truth and dissipate illusions, which has grown stronger and more imperative at every step of his advance. We pass over his immediate replies. When, in the regular course of his avocation, he found an opportunity for expressing his opinion of M. de Pontmartin, he did it in a characteristic manner. There is not a particle of temper, not the slightest assumption of superiority, in the article. It is not "scathing" or "crushing,"—as we have seen it described. It has all the keenness, merely because it has all the simplicity, of truth. The playful but searching satire which the author has ever at command just touches the declamation of his opponent, and it falls like a house of cards. He sums up with a judgment as fair and as calm as if he had been speaking of a writer of some distant period. Astonished at the sleight of hand which had disarmed, and at the generosity which had spared him, M. de Pontmartin, in the first moment of his defeat,—before he had had time to recover his (bad) temper, to arm himself for more fiery assaults to be followed by fresh overthrows,—declared that, in spite of the susceptibility of his friends, he himself was well satisfied with a criticism which "assigned to him nearly all the merit to which he could pretend," and in which, "for the first time in his literary life, he had seen himself discussed, appreciated, and valued without either the indulgences of friendship or the violence of hatred."

One point still remains to be touched upon. M. Sainte-Beuve has been from the first a steady supporter of the present Empire. This of course accounts for a portion of the enmity with which he has been "honored." In 1852 he received the appointment of Professor of Latin in the CollÉge de France; but his opening lecture was interrupted by the clamors of the students, and the course was never resumed. From 1857 to 1861 he held a position in connection with the superintendence of the École Normale. In April, 1865, he was raised to the dignity of a Senator. No one, so far as we know, in France,—no one out of France, so far as we know, but a Saturday Reviewer,[E]—has ever been foolish enough to insinuate that he had purchased his elevation by a sacrifice of principle. It seems to us that the grounds on which such a man defends a system still on its probation before the world are worth examining. He has stated them more than once with his usual clearness and frankness. We extract some passages, with only the slight verbal alterations indispensable for condensation.

"Liberty! the name is so beautiful, so responsive to our noblest aspirations, that we hesitate to analyze it. But politics are, after all, not a mere matter of enthusiasm. I ask, therefore, of what liberty we are disputing? The word conveys many different ideas. Have we to do with an article of faith, some divine dogma not to be touched without sacrilege? Modern liberty, which keeps altogether in view the security of the individual, the free exercise of his faculties, is a very complex thing. If under a bad government, though it be in form republican, I cannot walk the streets with safety at night, then my liberty is curtailed. On the other hand, every advantage, every improvement, which science, civilization, a good police, or a watchful and philanthropic government furnishes to the masses and to individuals, is a liberty acquired, a liberty not the less practical, positive, and fruitful for being unwritten, unestablished by any charter. These, I shall be told, are 'little liberties.' I do not call them such. But we have a greater and more essential one,—the right of the representatives of the nation to discuss and vote on the budget; and this supposes others,—it brings with it publicity, and the liberty of touching upon such questions in the press. Here the difference of opinion is one of degree; some demand an unqualified freedom of discussion, others stop at a point more or less advanced.

"In human society, liberty, like everything else, is relative, and dependent on a multitude of circumstances. A sober, orderly, laborious, educated people can support a larger dose than one less richly gifted in these respects. Liberty is, thank God! a progressive conquest; that portion of it which is denied us to-day we can always hope to acquire to-morrow. Let us develop, as far as it lies with us, intelligence, morality, habits of industry, in all the classes of society; that done, we may die tranquilly; France will be free, not with that absolute freedom which is not of this world, but with the relative freedom which corresponds with the imperfect, but perfectible, conditions of our nature.

"This, however, will not satisfy those who are faithful to the primary idea of liberty as absolute and indivisible. After every concession, there must still remain two distinct classes of minds, divided by a broad line of demarcation.

"One embraces those who hold firmly to that generous inspiration which, under all diversities of time and circumstances, has had the same moral source; who contend that such champions of liberty as Brutus, William of Orange, De Witt, Chatham, however haughty and aristocratic the ideas of some of them, were yet of the same political faith, filled with ideas of human nobleness and dignity, conceding much, if not to the masses, at least to the advanced and enlightened classes which in their eyes represented humanity. Thinkers of this kind are not far to seek; witness Scherer, RÉmusat, Tocqueville,—the last of whom was so imbued and penetrated with the idea that all his language vibrated with it; and, most striking example of all, that great minister too early removed, Cavour, who, confident in the patriotic sentiment of his countrymen, adopted it as a principle and a point of honor not to govern or reform without letting the air of liberty blow and even bluster around him.

"It will not be said that I undervalue this class. I will come boldly to the other, composed of those who are neither servile not absolutists,—I repel this name, in my turn, with all the pride to which every sincere conviction has a right,—but who believe that humanity has in all times owed much to the mind and character of particular individuals; that there have always been, and always will be, what were formerly called heroes, what under one name or another are to be recognized as directors, guides, superior men,—men who, whether born or raised to power, cause their countrymen, their contemporaries, to take some of those decisive steps which would otherwise have been retarded or indefinitely adjourned. I picture to myself the first progress of society as having taken place in this way: tribes or collections of men stop short at a stage of civilization which indolence or ignorance leads them to be content with; in order that they shall pass beyond it, it is necessary that a superior and far-seeing mind, the civilizer, should assist them, should draw them to himself, raise them a degree by sheer force, as in the 'Deluge' of Poussin, those on the upper terraces stretch their hands to those below, clutch and lift them up. But humanity, I shall be told, is at last emancipated; it has no longer any deluge to fear; it has attained its majority; it finds within itself all the motives and stimulants to action; light circulates; every one has the right to speak and to be heard; the sum total of all opinions, the net result of discussion, may be accepted as the voice of truth itself! I do not deny that in certain questions of general interest and utility, on which every one may be tolerably well informed, the voice of all has, in our mild and instructed ages, its share of reason, and even of wisdom; ideas ripen by the mere conjunction of forces and the course of the seasons. And yet has routine altogether ceased? Is prejudice, that monster with a thousand forms which has the quality of never recognizing its own visage, as far removed as we flatter ourselves? Is progress, true progress, as entirely the order of the day as it is believed to be? How many steps are there still to take,—steps which I am persuaded never will be taken save by the impulsion and at the signal of a firm and vigorous head, which shall take the direction upon itself!

"Some years since there was a question about finishing the Louvre. Could it of could it not be done? A great Assembly, when consulted, declared it to be impracticable. It was in fact impracticable under the conditions which then existed. Yet within the short period that has since elapsed, the Louvre has been finished. This instance is for me only a symbol. How many moral Louvres remain to be completed!

"There are governments which have for their principle resistance and obstruction; but there are also governments of initiation. Governments founded on pure liberty are not necessarily the most active. Free assemblies are better suited to put the drag upon the wheels, to check them when they go too fast, than to accelerate them. Like criticism, which is in fact their province and their strength, they excel in warning and in hindering rather than in undertaking. The eternal problem is to reconcile, to balance, authority and liberty, using sometimes the one, sometimes the other. In this double play theory may be at fault, but practical ability will always triumph.

"Some nations, it was lately said by a liberal, have tried to dispense with great men, and have succeeded. There is a perspective to contemplate! Let us not, however, in France, try too often to dispense with them. The greatest of our moralists, he who knew us best, has said of man in general, what is true of the French nature in particular, that we have more force than will. Let us hope that this latter quality may not fail us too long or in too many cases; and, that it may be efficacious, there is nothing like a man, a determined and sovereign will, at the head of the nation.

"I appreciate human dignity as much as others. Woe to him who would seek to diminish the force of this moral spring; he would cripple at a blow all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers of liberty. Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment, which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the remembrance, the care, of that great number who are condemned to a life of poverty and suffering, and whose precarious condition will not endure those obstacles, retardments, and delays that belong to every plan of amelioration founded on agitation and a conflict of systems and ideas. I am far from imputing to the worshippers of liberty a disregard of this humane and generous feeling. But with them the means is more sacred than the end. They would rather take but one step in the path of true progress, than be projected two by an adverse principle. Their political religion is stronger than mine. Mine is not proof against experience.

"If a question were put to us in a general way, Which is the better for a people, self-government, full discussion, decisions in accordance with good sense, and submitted to by all—or government by one, however able?—it would be only too easy to decide. But the practical question is, Given such a nation, with such a character, with such a history, in such a position,—does it, can it, wish to govern itself by itself? would not the end be anarchy? We talk of principles; let us not leave out of sight France, which is for us the first and most sacred of principles. Some have their idol in Rome and the Vatican; others in Westminster and the English Parliament; meanwhile, what becomes of poor France, which is neither Roman nor English, and which does not wish to be either?

"No, without doubt, all is not perfect. Let us accept it on the condition of correcting and improving it. Examine the character, original and altogether modern, of this new Empire, which sincerely has no desire to repress liberty, which has acquired glory, and in which the august chain of tradition is already renewed. What a rÔle does it offer to young and intelligent minds, to generous minds, which, putting apart secondary questions and disengaging themselves from formulas, should be willing to seize and comprehend their entire epoch, accepting all that it contains! What a problem in politics, in public economy, in popular utility, that of seeking and aiding to prepare the way for such a future as is possible for France, as is now grandly opening before her, with a chief who has in his hand the power of Louis XIV., and in his heart the democratic principles of the Revolution,—for he has them, and his race is bound to have them!"

This, it will be perceived, is an application of the ideas of Mr. Carlyle, modified by the special views and characteristics of the writer, and adapted to the circumstances and necessities of the particular case. It has far less similarity with the doctrines so pompously announced, so vaguely applied, in the Vie de Jules CÉsar. It does not lie open to the criticism which that clumsy and feeble apology seemed intended to provoke, and which it had received at the competent hands of M. Scherer. We have here no mysterious revelations of the designs of Providence, no intimations that the world was created as a theatre for the exaltation of certain godlike individuals. The question, as presented by M. Sainte-Beuve, is a practical one, and as such we accept it. We believe with him in the necessity for great men, in the guidance of heroes. We believe with M. Scherer in the animating forces of liberty, in its activity and power as an essential principle of progress and civilization. That the combination may exist is attested by such examples as William of Orange, Count Cavour, Abraham Lincoln.

It all comes, therefore, to this single inquiry: Is the present ruler of France a great man, a hero? Is he the enlightened leader whom a nation may and confidently follow? Has he the genius and the will to solve the problem before him, to reconcile liberty with authority? Posterity alone will be able to pronounce with unanimity. For ourselves, we must answer in the negative. We do not denounce him, we believe it absurd to denounce him, as a conspirator or a usurper. If he was a conspirator, France was his accomplice. There cannot be a doubt that the nation not only was ready to accept him, but sought him; not indeed for his personal qualities, not as recognizing its appointed guide, but from the recollections and the hopes of which his name was the symbol. We acknowledge, too, his obvious abilities; we acknowledge the material and economical improvements which his government has inaugurated. But we fail to see the "moral Louvres" which he has opened; we fail to see in his character any evidences of the moral power which can alone inspire such improvements; we fail to see in his reign any principle of "initiation," save that which the Ruler of the universe has implanted in every system and in every government. Yet we concede the right of others to think differently on these points, without being suspected of moral obtuseness or obliquity. Especially can we comprehend how a patriotic Frenchman should choose to accept all the conditions of his epoch, and embrace every opportunity of aiding in the task of correction and amelioration.

We are unwilling to emerge from our subject at its least agreeable angle. Our strain, however feeble, shall not close with a discord. And indeed, in looking back, we are pained to perceive how slight is the justice we have been able to render to the rare combination of powers exhibited in the works we have enumerated. We have left unnoticed the wonderful extent and accuracy of the learning, the compass and profundity of the thought, the inexhaustible spirit, ever preserving the happy mean between mental languor and nervous excitement. In these twenty-seven volumes of criticism, scarcely an error has been detected, scarcely a single repetition is met with; there is scarcely a page which a reader, unpressed for time, would be inclined to skip. Where you least agree with the author, there you will perhaps have the most reason to thank him for his hints and elucidations. Is it not then with reason that M. Sainte-Beuve has been styled "the prince of contemporaneous criticism"? His decisions have been accepted by the public, and he has founded a school which does honor to France.

How is it that our own language offers no such example? How is it that the English literature of the present century, superior to that of France in so many departments, richer therefore in the material of criticism, has nothing to show in this way, we will not say equal, but—taking quantity as well as quality into the account—in any degree similar? How is it that nothing has been written on the highest minds and chief productions of the day—on Tennyson, on Thackeray, on Carlyle—which is worth preserving or remembering? Is it that criticism has been almost abandoned to a class of writers who have no sense of their responsibilities, no enlightened interest in their art, no liberality of views,—who make their position and the influence attached to it subservient either to their interests or to their vanity? Descend, gentlemen reviewers, from the heights on which you have perched yourselves; lay aside your airs and your tricks, your pretences and affectations! Have the honesty not to misrepresent your author, the decency not to abuse him, the patience to read, and if possible to understand him! Point out his blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate his faults; it is your duty,—he himself will have reason to thank you. But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of judging, vitiate your faculty of tasting. Recognize the importance, the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have piqued yourselves on despising,—that sympathy which is the sum of experience, the condition of insight, the root of tolerance, the seal of culture!