[597]. Ibid., 340.
[598]. The Constitutionnel first, then the Moniteur. Here, as elsewhere, I do not burden the text with details which are in all the biographical dictionaries.
[599]. I wonder whether Mr Arnold got “Stagirius” from Sainte-Beuve, or direct from Saint-Marc Girardin, who seems to have extracted him originally from the Golden-mouth? So, too, did Sohrab and Rustum come from the “Firdousi” article? These interesting suggestions of suggestion—as interesting as the ordinary plagiarism and parallel-passage inquiries of bad and dull critics, are dull and bad—occur with Sainte-Beuve more often than with almost any man.
[600]. The adventure was kept up, so far as I remember, for four subsequent years with equal punctuality. The Chapel, in Criticism of Our Lady of the Broken Lances has never seen such a paladin.
[601]. The same applies to the protest, interesting as a cri du cœur and a statement of life-purpose, but mistaken, against Taxile Delord (xi. 400-403). The punishment too much dignifies the offence—and the offender.
[602]. There is rhetoric enough in Gibbon, of course; but it is not the rhetoric that the French love.
[603]. Sainte-Beuve’s fancy for Feydeau was a subject of wonder to friends of his who were not in the least prudish. It waned, however, and the signs of the waning are the subject of an anecdote, slightly too Rabelaisian to quote here, but very amusing.
[604]. He himself has said truly and nobly of one of the few who did escape them—Gautier: “Jamais un sentiment mauvais, soit de hauteur soit de jalousie mesquine, n’est entre dans [son] âme.” To be thus is to be one of ten thousand: even to kick the bad thoughts out when they present themselves is no common merit (N. L., vi. 325).
[605]. Rather tantalisingly as to the number of fulfilments. But the papers on the Greek Anthology in vol. vii. are exquisite in quality.
[606]. I do not forget either Mr Arnold or Mr Pater: but they look at antiquity in a different way.