Chapter V: Part I (5)

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.