His Criticism,

The chief of these gifts is criticism—a department in which Byron, for all his shrewdness, simply does not count, because of the waywardness, egotism, and personal prejudice which tinge every one of his critical utterances, eulogistic or depreciatory. Now Chateaubriand counts in criticism for a very great deal. By those who allow indirect critical influence to rank Rousseau as a great critic, Chateaubriand ought to be ranked as a critic infinitely greater; by those who observe a more rigid and legitimate calculus, he can, as we shall shortly show, be ranked almost, if not quite, in the first class. When a French critic or historian[[192]] pronounces him the father of modern criticism, the first to start the comparative method, and so forth, he is, as we are all inclined, and as French critics used to be extravagantly, and are still rather excessively inclined to do, speaking as if what is true of his own nation and literature were true universally. We must, of course, go a long way back in time, and some way afield in place—to the middle of the eighteenth century in the one case, to England and Germany in the other—for the real first appearances (“origins” is always a misleading word) of these things, and even if we cling to France we must deal with the vaguer but far older claims of Diderot. But Chateaubriand represents them powerfully. He represents them practically before Madame de Staël, in a much more literary fashion, and with much more literary power, and he represents them with a magic, with a contagious influence, to which she cannot pretend. Further, he possesses that claim which is the first, if not the sole claim for us, though it seems to be regarded by some with jealousy, and almost with resentment, the claim of having actually written criticism, and a great deal of it.

Indirect

The champions of the Indirect have, it must be confessed, not a little to rely upon in Chateaubriand. He was so much more intensely literary than Rousseau, and even than Madame de Staël, that Atala, René, Les Natchez, Le Dernier Abencérage still more, Les Martyrs most of all, and even not a few things in the Mémoires d’Outre Tombe, may without violence be twisted into a literary bearing. All, in their different degrees and ways, exhibit the author’s insatiable curiosity as to the literature of different times, countries, religions, languages, and his indefatigable industry in staining and twining his own literature with the colours and the threads of these others. But it is quite unnecessary to twist and infer, to force the “this must have” and the “we can see,” when we have two such documents before us as the Essai sur La Littérature Anglaise, and, above all, the Génie du Christianisme.

and Direct.

As a matter of fact, by far the larger part of this latter famous book, the revanche for Voltairianism, the manifesto of the whole earlier, and not a little of the later nineteenth century, the main pillar of its author’s fame,[[193]] is literary criticism pure and simple. It is so odd a place to look for this that it sometimes escapes. Accounts of Chateaubriand have been written (I am, I fear, guilty of one myself) in which it has had no adequate recognition. But when we have once sighted our panther,[[194]] she cannot escape us; and we may try here to do justice to the real sweetness of her breath.[[195]]

The Génie du Christianisme.