We are unwilling to emerge from our subject at its least agreeable angle. Our strain, however feeble, shall not close with a discord. And indeed, in looking back, we are pained to perceive how slight is the justice we have been able to render to the rare combination of powers exhibited in the works we have enumerated. We have left unnoticed the wonderful extent and accuracy of the learning, the compass and profundity of the thought, the inexhaustible spirit, ever preserving the happy mean between mental languor and nervous excitement. In these twenty-seven volumes of criticism, scarcely an error has been detected, scarcely a single repetition is met with; there is scarcely a page which a reader, unpressed for time, would be inclined to skip. Where you least agree with the author, there you will perhaps have the most reason to thank him for his hints and elucidations. Is it not then with reason that M. Sainte-Beuve has been styled "the prince of contemporaneous criticism"? His decisions have been accepted by the public, and he has founded a school which does honor to France.
How is it that our own language offers no such example? How is it that the English literature of the present century, superior to that of France in so many departments, richer therefore in the material of criticism, has nothing to show in this way, we will not say equal, but—taking quantity as well as quality into the account—in any degree similar? How is it that nothing has been written on the highest minds and chief productions of the day—on Tennyson, on Thackeray, on Carlyle—which is worth preserving or remembering? Is it that criticism has been almost abandoned to a class of writers who have no sense of their responsibilities, no enlightened interest in their art, no liberality of views,—who make their position and the influence attached to it subservient either to their interests or to their vanity? Descend, gentlemen reviewers, from the heights on which you have perched yourselves; lay aside your airs and your tricks, your pretences and affectations! Have the honesty not to misrepresent your author, the decency not to abuse him, the patience to read, and if possible to understand him! Point out his blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate his faults; it is your duty,—he himself will have reason to thank you. But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of judging, vitiate your faculty of tasting. Recognize the importance, the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have piqued yourselves on despising,—that sympathy which is the sum of experience, the condition of insight, the root of tolerance, the seal of culture!
FOOTNOTES:
[C] At the moment when we are sending this sketch to press a specimen of the sort of criticism to which we have alluded comes to us in the form of an article in the Quarterly Review for January,—the subject, M. Sainte-Beuve himself. One wonders how it is that the writer, who, if really familiar with the productions he criticises, must have been indebted to them for many hours of enjoyment, much curious information, and a multitude of suggestions and stimulants to reflection, should have had no feeling of kindliness or gratitude for the author. But then the question comes up, Was he in reality familiar with the works? Several of his statements might provoke a doubt upon this point. We cite a single example. Speaking of M. Sainte-Beuve's temporary connection with the Saint-Simonians, he says: "For a brief season he appears to have felt some of the zeal of a neophyte, speaking the speech and talking the vague nonsense of his new friends. But soon his native good-sense seems to have perceived that the whole thing was only a fevered dream of a diseased age." Now the reviewer, if he knows anything of the doctrines in question, is entitled to express his opinion of them, even if he does it in tautological and slipshod English. But he has no right to attribute his own opinions to M. Sainte-Beuve, who is so far from holding them that, in articles written so lately as in 1861 (Nouveaux Lundis, I.), he has not only traced the enduring influence of Saint-Simonianism upon some of the ablest minds in France, but has contended that what were once considered the wildest dreams of that system have since been substantially realized. Perhaps the reviewer thinks that, as M. Sainte-Beuve is "a chameleon," with scarcely one single fixed opinion on any problem, literary, philosophical, political, or religious, there can be no harm in fathering upon him any notion from whatever source. But on one point at least—the duty of being accurate in the statement of other persons' opinions—M. Sainte-Beuve has shown an unwavering consistency.
[D] Here is, quite apropos, a frank admission to that effect from the Quarterly Reviewer before mentioned: "We confess we should be glad to meet with some passages in the writings of M. Sainte-Beuve which would prove him capable of downright scorn or anger." Yes, but if they had been there, how stern would have been the rebuke!
[E] A Quarterly Reviewer must now be added.
DE SPIRIDIONE EPISCOPO.
This is the story of Spiridion,
Bishop of Cyprus by the grace of God,
Told by Ruffinus in his history.