The great critical truth, that not merely is the tongue of the critic loosed but his eyes are opened by the death of his subject, has seldom been better illustrated than by the volumes entitled Chateaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire, originally delivered as lectures at Liége when Sainte-Beuve had left France to the March-haredom of the Second Republic. Of course we must remember that he had had more than twenty years of critical practice wherein to grow in critical wisdom and stature; that in the last sixteen or seventeen, especially, since he had shed his Saint-Simonian and Lamennaisian crotchets, he had (losing some fancy and enthusiasm with them) acquired immensely greater knowledge, critical delicacy, critical insight in most ways; and that, accordingly, the Portraits and other pieces of the ’Forties are, in almost every respect except romantic and poetic furia, superior to those of the ’Thirties. But this will not entirely account for the excellence of the Chateaubriand, which is a sort of central “broad” in the stream of Sainte-Beuve’s criticism, from which it flows thereafter ever deeper, wider, and clearer. The book indeed is not—what book, and especially what critical book, is?—to be praised unreservedly or with very slight reserves. The common accusations of “envy,” “treachery,” “malignity,” “intolerance of greatness,” and the like, brought against Sainte-Beuve, are exaggerated at the best, and at the worst simply silly. They come partly from the general dislike and suspicion of the critic, who is a critic wholly or mainly, partly from unintelligent, if not quite ungenerous partisanship, partly from the most polluted of all sources, personal and spiteful gossip. But, as nearly always happens, there is some shred of justification for them, and the matter is important enough to be dealt with once for all here.
Faults found with it.
Rarely—so rarely that it is an almost unknown event—shall a man practise, as Sainte-Beuve had for years and decades been practising, criticism of his contemporaries and in many cases friends, without exciting ill-feeling. But that ill-feeling becomes still more certain, and its complexion is likely to be darker, when the criticism is of the peculiar character which it is Sainte-Beuve’s greatest claim in the general view (not quite in mine) to have perfected, if not actually invented. It is true that, in the case of his living subjects, he moves about, among the extra-literary personal traits, which it is his delight to assemble and to group beside the literary details in heightening or contrasting light, with a cat-like dexterity. But even cats sometimes upset things: and the things among which Sainte-Beuve moved were much more ticklish and unstable than the objects of the cat’s legerdepied. Moreover, he actually had, as some, though by no means all other great critics have had, a certain predilection for the secondary. He never quite attains to the Longinian soundness of view on the faults-and-beauties question; and it is particularly unfortunate that the two greatest men of letters of his own time and country, Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, were men who specially require a Longinian judgment. Nor am I disposed to deny that his attitude towards the great Beltenebroso of French Literature “doth something smack; doth a little grow to.” Sainte-Beuve’s strange Bonapartism—the strangest instance[[587]] of that most incomprehensible of political faiths—may have had a little to do with this: but one suspects, putting gossip aside, something more. There was, no doubt, much injustice in the too famous “Mérimée était gentilhomme: Sainte-Beuve ne l'était pas,” but there was an infinitesimal something in it.[[588]]
Again, to pass to a less “scabrous” subject, the scheme of the book leaves a very little to desire: it may be argued, with some justice, that Sainte-Beuve might better have proceeded entirely by the planet-and-satellite method which he has partly adopted, instead of sometimes mixing planet and satellite up, and sometimes keeping them separate.
Its extraordinary merits,
But the critical merits of the book are quite extraordinary. I know nothing earlier even approaching it as a comprehensive review of a great writer; and the details are even more admirable than the admirable ensemble. As for the latter, whatever may be Sainte-Beuve’s insinuations, whatever his want of cordiality for Chateaubriand the man and the politician,[[589]] it is impossible to charge him with the least inadequacy as regards Chateaubriand the writer. Like others, he dwells a little too much on the obligatory “images”; but unlike others, he does not limit Chateaubriand’s powers to them; and he is more likely to be thought by foreign critics excessive than grudging in his assignment and recognition of those powers. He does the amplest justice to the immense advance, in intensity and range, of “René” over Bernardin and Jean Jacques. He sees perfectly well that the best and most characteristic part of Byron is only Chateaubriand in English, in verse, with a few more yataghans, and with no crucifixes. He has here gone nearer, I think, to a real “grasp” of the writer, and the whole writer (alas! not of nothing but the writer) than in any other instance.
As for the details, one simply punctuates the book with bravo!s, if reading merely for enjoyment, and the note-book is never out of one’s hand if one is reading for reference. It “enfists” you, as the French say, at once, and it never lets the grasp go, but tightens it ever again and again. Take the admirable conclusion of the second Lecture,[[590]] with its indication of the way in which Chateaubriand combines the appeal of ancient poetry, of mediæval romance, and of the new fancy for nature, and turn, or rather come (for there should be no turning or skipping in this book) to the justification of the last point in the Fourth.[[591]]