[567]. See the later Conversations, passim.
[568]. This, with Quintus Smyrnæus as make-weight, is a sort of wreckage or recovery from the lectures which were howled down at the Collége de France by anti-Imperialist students. It is the largest of its author’s classical studies: not perhaps the most interesting. The French professorial method, possibly in direct tradition from the time when authors were really (and in some cases almost merely) read to students, seems to include a very large amount of simple abstract and “argument.” (“Priam conducts the young princess to the Palace: he honours her,” &c.) This is, from our point of view, rather surplusage, and at any rate more important on Quintus Smyrnæus than on Virgil. But we may note a reference (p. 73) to Mr Arnold’s Preface, then pretty new, which is an interesting thing.
[569]. There is naturally not much criticism here except the remark—in itself involving one of the few great commandments of criticism and one of the most frequently neglected—“il n’avait pas assez lu.”
[570]. In the case of a man who wrote so much and so often on the same things as Sainte-Beuve, an exhaustive general index would be a great assistance. There is a whole volume of Table to the Causeries, properly so called, the Portraits de Femmes, and the Portraits Littéraires; while the Premiers Lundis contains a succinct but very useful synopsis-index of all the works and substantive pieces, and Port-Royal has an elaborate index of its own. But my copies of the Portraits Contemporains (5 vols.) and the Chateaubriand (2), as well as the 13 of the Nouveaux Lundis, are indexless.
[571]. Sainte-Beuve could be dull, and his Senate speeches are most painful proofs of it. We know that the Senators who talked him inaudible had other reasons for their rudeness: but he almost provoked it apart from those reasons.
[572]. I know Balzac’s criticism, which is extensive, pretty well: but I shall do no such despite to his genius as to allow him to appear here in a character where he showed no genius at all.
[573]. Paris, 1828, and since.
[574]. This, however (5 vols., 1832-39), was probably the first collection that definitely announced its author to the world at large.
[575]. The first reissue (1844 ?) was only in two.
[576]. This is a crucial example. Sainte-Beuve had a just reverence for the powers of this Abdiel-Michael of aristocracy. He even seems a little daunted and dazzled by their sombre splendour. But he does not bring out their literary quality as he would have done later.