and particular utterances.

It would require a separate and elaborate handling to show how far these half-progressist half-nihilist views are reflected in the literary utterances which stud Doudan’s Letters: but some of these must be given. He never achieves the supremacy of his very close analogue Joubert: but he is certainly “to be made a note of.” For instance,[[838]] in a certain Chartreuse (not otherwise identified, but which must be Beyle’s from what follows) he says (as he should not) that it is “stupid,” and accounts for, at the same time as he disables, his own judgment by adding that he has not read it. But he knows other books of the author, who is “un mauvais sujet au courant de tous les procédés d’imagination.” Unjust of course: but with how much justice and with how much more felicity in it! In 1843 he must have somewhat modified his fifteen years’ earlier disapproval of Old French, for in the Roman de la Rose he sees[[839]] “mille idées passer dans ces ombres du Moyen Âge”—ideas, we may retort, which, if you see, you may surely cry Halt! to, and register. Twenty years later again, in 1865,[[840]] he not merely condemns, in the Mémoires d’Outre Tombe, “le langage torturé, comme dans M. Victor Hugo, pour produire des effets,” which might be thought to show a certain obsolescence of judgment, but clears himself from this charge, and from his old fault of Chauvinist criticism, not merely by defending Eugénie de Guérin but by approving Charlotte Bronté, a combination of literary lady-loves which is not commonplace. He even consents, later still, to read Miss Braddon: and expresses warm and intelligent approval of The Small House at Allington. Only fanatical Goetheaner will find much fault with his characterisation,[[841]] in one of his interesting letters to A. W. Schlegel, of Meister as “excessively desultory and chimerical” in matter: and all but fanatical Hugonians will at least understand his unhappiness[[842]] at William Shakespeare, though the expressions of it have a touch of the comic. When you have read the book for ten minutes you feel as if you were standing on your head. Polyphemus must have written like it when he had eaten a Greek and drunk a skinful of wine. And the younger generation finds it admirable! These are the tricks that await all of us as we grow older, unless we keep our feet (and our heads) very carefully when we go into the House of Literature. But Doudan is not excessively affected by them, though, on the other hand, he does not shake himself vigorously and critically free. He is a good specimen of the purely contemplative and “occasional” critic—a sort of hermit of the desert, who does not object to decide on cases that present themselves, but who will not go to seek them.[[843]]

Renan.

We may turn from Doudan to a very different figure, introducing a new and important group. It is not uncommon to see M. Renan spoken of as a considerable critic; on the other hand, I think some one (and no mean authority, if my memory serves me) is reported to have said of him, “Renan n’a pas le sens littéraire.” Both statements are excessive: but at the risk of shocking some readers, I am bound to say that the second is a great deal nearer the truth than the first. A biblical critic he was, no doubt: but, as has been pointed out at the beginning of this history, the operations of the biblical critic are always conducted on principles different from, and usually on principles diametrically opposed to, the principles of the criticism of literature. Yet it may be urged, Did he not help to produce one volume, and that on a very interesting period, of the great Histoire Littéraire de la France? Did he not almost precede Mr Arnold himself in arguing for the necessity of Criticism, and the excellent influence not merely of Science but of Literature? and quite precede him in exalting the literary uses and virtues of Celtic? Has he not left us, from the Averroès and the Avenir de la Science downwards, constant literary allusions and handlings, frequent literary papers, on subjects ranging from Spinoza to Béranger?

This is all quite true: and if it were reasonable, as some people seem to think it is, to expect that an author should use as great length in showing why he does not deal with a subject as in dealing with what he thinks it right to handle, I could, as in the case of others from Voltaire downwards, produce chapter and verse to any extent in negative justification. But M. Renan seemed to me, on a careful perusal of all his then published work, twenty years ago[[844]] and more—he seemed to me, on a repetition and extension of that reading a dozen years later[[845]]—and he seems to me now, after recurring to his work for the present purpose—seldom or never to have regarded literature as literature. He said, in so many words, at the beginning of his career, and he published the saying towards the close,[[846]] that literary work is only valuable as the work of its time, that “the Pensées of Pascal and the Sermons of Bossuet, if they appeared to-day, would be hardly worth notice.” This exaggeration of the historic view is interesting, of course; but it is as fatal to criticism as the absolute refusal to take that view.

Taine.

Not thus is to be dismissed one who thought Renan a critic and a great one. Hippolyte Taine was a critic, though too often (not always) a “black horseman” of criticism. He was a great æsthetician, he was a brilliant literary historian—that is to say, what should be a critic on the greatest scale. He could do splendid justice[[847]] to another critic of tendencies and predilections so different from his own as those of Paul de Saint-Victor. To question his competence in pure criticism may seem more than presumption, it may seem pure fatuity. But, though a poet is dispensed from having a conscience, a critic and a historian of criticism is not.