and final dicta.

But it is at the end of the Seventh lecture, in the special critique of Atala, that Sainte-Beuve first, I think, shows the wonderful critical mastery which was to distinguish him for the remaining twenty years of his life; and the proofs multiply as we turn the pages. In whom elsewhere—even in Coleridge—shall we find two such sentences, on the verso and recto of the same leaf,[[592]] showing such different kinds not merely of mastery but of supremacy as those that follow—the last of the Eighth lecture, and, save for a mere bow to the audience, the first of the Ninth? He has, in the first, been contrasting Paul et Virginie (for which he, like almost all Frenchmen, has an affection incomprehensible to us), and he has to admit the transcendence of its successor. “Elle [Atala] gardait,” he says, “son ascendant troublant: au milieu de toutes les reserves qu’une saine critique oppose, la flamme divine y a passé.... On y sent le philtre—le poison qui, une fois connu, ne se guérit pas; on emporte avec soi la flèche empoisonnée du désert.” Dixit! There are critics who feel the philtre and who carry the arrow with them, and there are those who do not.

The other passage is, “Savoir bien lire un livre en le jugeant chemin faisant, et sans cesser de le goûter, c’est presque tout l’art du critique. Cet art consiste encore à comparer.... Faites cela, et laissez-vous faire.” How different this cool prescription from the enthusiasm of the last, and yet how equal in its finality!

I could bestow much more of my tediousness on the reader in regard to this wonderful book: but its allotted space is nearly filled. Once only do I find a pettiness, in fact a falsity, where[[593]] he carps at the phrase, “A combien de rivages n’ai-je pas vu depuis se briser les mêmes flots que je contemple ici,” in the truly Rymerian note, “Tout les flots se ressemblent: mais ce ne sont pas les mêmes flots, les mêmes vagues qu’il voyait se briser en des lieux si divers.” The poète mort jeune in Sainte-Beuve (to use his own famous words) was bien mort when he wrote this: and the critic had not “felt the philtre.” Does not the greater part of the power of the Angel of the Sea arise from this very mysterious sense of the unity of wave from Pole to Equator, and from coral to iceberg? The lands are broken, separated, isolated: the “unplumbed, salt, estranging sea” is one and indivisible, an unbroken link between the live self that sees it here and the dead self that saw it far away and long ago.

But he seldom slips or nods thus. For happier things, note his sketch[[594]] of the three manners in Chateaubriand, where he compares Fontenelle’s notice of Corneille’s,[[595]] and might have compared Milton’s; the confession that French is not “une langue qui aurait eu l’accent et qui se souvenait d’avoir étée scandée”; the profound remarks on the Kinds of Criticism;[[596]] the almost profounder remarks on the different kinds of description.[[597]] I could multiply these instances almost endlessly, but it is enough to say, or repeat, that if we had nothing else of Sainte-Beuve’s it would place him in the first rank of the critics of the world, and that it is perhaps the earliest book that definitely does so.

The Causeries at last.

Although the rest of Sainte-Beuve’s life certainly did not fail to justify the immortal and invariable law that the gods never yet gave all things to man at once, yet in the main it was exceptionally fortunate, and the fortune was of the kind most important to our purpose. For once, a man who could do a thing supremely was allowed to do it, under conditions, if not absolutely ideal, yet exceptionally favourable. Had he resisted the temptations of professorships and senatorships, he would have been able, without any interruption, to devote himself entirely to literary work of his own choosing, in his own house, without let or hindrance, publicity or disturbance, without even the pressure (so galling to some temperaments) of any fixed time and place of duty, except the easily adjustable necessities of having his “copy” and his proofs duly ready. Even of the avocations which he permitted himself, the actual interference with his vocation was trifling. The reward in mere money, though of course ludicrous in comparison with the rewards of other professions or even arts, was a competence; and it freed him completely from one of the most disagreeable penances of the working man of letters, the necessity of stepping out of his proper sphere in order to keep himself within it.

With this amiability of the Destinies, and with the man himself so perfectly prepared as we have seen him to be, it is scarcely surprising that the work should be altogether exceptional. It would require a really “encyclopædic head” either to affirm or deny, with competence, the proposition that it is the most complete and four-square batch of work ever done by any craftsman: but I do not know where to look for its rival, in any branch at least of literature. Criticism may or may not be the lowest of such branches; it may or may not be unworthy even to be called a branch. But of it, and barring the previous question, we shall certainly look in vain anywhere for such an example, in quality and quantity combined, as is presented by the Causeries du Lundi and the Nouveaux Lundis.