Such was Samuel Johnson; a man whose talents, acquirements, and virtues were so extraordinary, that the more his character is considered, the more he will be regarded by the present age and by posterity with admiration and reverence.
PAUL BOURGET
(1852-)
rench by birth, born at Amiens of a Russian father and an English mother, Paul Bourget inherited Anglo-Saxon as well as Gallic intuitions. He is very proud of the cosmopolitan spirit which exempts him from the usual French provincialism, and has sought to develop it by travel and study. He endeavors to know intimately the phases of life which he wishes to describe, and then to treat them in the light of a large knowledge of many peoples. Yet he feels a somewhat bitter realization that so general a view as his own has necessarily an element of weakness. He lacks convictions and prejudices to express with whole-hearted strength, and hence is always a dilettante.
Paul Bourget.
His student life was passed at the Lycée of Clermont, and later at the Collège de Sainte-Barbe at Paris, where his scholarship was rewarded by several prizes. But his voracious reading of French and English poetry, fiction, and philosophy has probably done more for him than scholastic training. Like so many other novelists, he began his literary life with journalism; and in 1872 became collaborator on the Renaissance, living frugally meantime, and studying Paris from her cafés and boulevards as any poor man may.