of us bearers of burdens, is it not natural that a weight, even though in reality fully as heavy, should seem lighter, if what we carry be roses ?" As a fact, however, Sainte-Beuve passed under the "door of humility," and became a prose writer and a critic pure and simple. In that capacity, he did, it seems to me, work that of its kind is unequalled in interest and merit. He is the best companion I know; and oral conversation should indeed be good to wean us from his Causeries. He is an unrivalled talker with his pen. You will say it is monologue, which, as Byron said, speaking of his father-in-law, Sir Ralph Milbanke, "old gentlemen mistake for conversation!" But Sainte-Beuve has nothing of the old gentleman about him, in Byron's sense. He is the perfect gentleman of later middle-life, when judgment and manner are at their best, and when experience comes to the aid of good breeding, and weds abundant matter to a courtly air. Neither are Sainte-Beuve's "talks" like the talk of Macaulay or Lord Brougham. He never dogmatises. It is you who are listening, rather than he who is talking; and a man must be amazingly fond of hearing his own voice or expounding his own opinions, who wants to put in his oar where Sainte-Beuve is evenly and equably skimming along, making no ripple, leaving no trail. If I am asked to describe his style, I cannot. He is almost the only good writer I know who has not got one. Good conversation has no style; and neither has Sainte-Beuve. He is, what he describes himself, a talker. For this specially is to be noted in him, that he never- —or at any rate very rarely -soliloquises. You are always before him, and he talks to you, but never at you. He is no rhetorician; no good talker ever is. He never argues; no good talker ever does. I was not thinking of justifying my choice of Sainte-Beuve, as the author I would decide to have on a desert island. I was only trying to describe him as he is. But I perceive I have arrived at an account of him which at any rate explains my preferOn a desert island the most unsociable person would infallibly crave for a companion, and for a companion that would talk. Here is an author who does nothing but talk. There are some writers-writers, no doubt, far greater than Sainte-Beuve can profess to be--who transport you out of this world and above this world, and, as it were, apotheosize the loneliness of your spirit, by taking you into the pure ether of thought and sentiment. Reading Sainte-Beuve one can never feel alone. More than that. It is not only that he talks to you, the individual reader of the moment; he addresses all intelligent and well-bred people, on subjects that interest intelligent and well-bred people, and in a manner that satisfies intelligent and well-bred people. Reading him on a desert island would be the nearest possible equivalent to moving in the best society. ence. Such is his manner, his style, if you will, though I just now said that he had none. His matter, I submit, equally justifies my imaginary decision. Quite apart from its supernatural advantages, the Bible is a work of stupendous interest. But though it deals with the very begin VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 223. 2. ning of things, it suddenly breaks off eighteen hundred years ago; and a good deal has happened during the last eighteen hundred years which must be pronounced to be exceedingly interesting to the modern mind. One has a great esteem, and a profound reverence for one's grandfather; but one would hardly elect to live with him exclusively and always. Living with the Bible only, would be living with ancestors remoter even than one's grandsires. Shakspeare, no doubt, is "for all time." But Shakspeare makes a considerable demand upon his reader. He takes us up to empyrean heights, where we dwell with rapture for a time, and then confess that we want to descend. He has "taken it out of us; " and the carnal mind needs repose. He confers pleasure such as it is given only to the master-spirits to confer. But master-spirits cannot be our constant companions. Shakspeare himself would have found "always Shakspeare," could there have been a second, a great bore. Sainte Beuve is neither ancient history, nor "finely-touched." He is essentially modern, and, using the word in too literal a sense, homely. He talks about things and people that everybody cares about, in a manner everybody can appreciate. In fact, his manner would escape them, in their attention to what it is he says. Like Wordsworth's perfect woman, is not too good for daily food, on a desert island or off it. He never gets away into the air, like Ariel, and bids us follow him, if we would hear him singing. He is an honest pedestrian, though not in the current sense of going ever so many miles an hour. On the contrary, he is essentially a lounger and saunters up and down the gravel paths of thought and observation at a leisurely pace, his arms crossed behind his back, not swinging at his sides. he I have said he is essentially a modern. But when does modern life begin? No doubt that is rather like the question, Where is the North which Pope answers so capitally in the Essay on Man, or like SainteBeuve's own question, on which he has written a charming “Lundi,” "Qu'est-ce qu'un Classique?" Still though no one would now-a-days dream of writing down a date-though poor old Rollin would have done so-and saying all this side of it is modern, and all that side ancient history, every one feels that there are ancient writers and modern writers conquerors of old and captains of to-day. Marlborough is a modern, and so is Montaigne. So that we get tolerably far back, even under our nomenclature of modern. Sainte-Beuve has a Causerie upon almost every Frenchman or Frenchwoman of eminence in any department of litera ture or action, since France was properly France, say since the days of Louis XI. What a host of subjects, what a multitude of people are thus given him to discourse about, kings, ministers, poets, soldiers, orators, beauties, great men scarcely yet appreciated, little men who have not even yet found their level, saints, heroes, brilliant impostors, devotees, dramatists, lyrists, satirists, writers of memoirs, memoirs of writers, and there they all are, Monday after Monday, fifty-two of them in every year, for year after year. If you were thrown on a desert island, how long would you like to live? Beuve ought to amuse you for all that time. Say, thirty years. Sainte- a book as though it were a newspaper or a novel, you might get to the end of him in a year or two. But I fancy Sainte-Beuve would soon cure the reader of the worst and most confirmed bad habits, of this greedy trick of bolting mental pabulum. His own pace is so measured, that you necessarily end by imitating it. He is a writer to be read slowly, and one "Lundi" ought to be enough for a day. Let us suppose that the whole course was exhausted at the end of five years. Where is the man who could not begin and read them all over again? Fortunately the power of modern memory is limited, and we are not all Macaulays. A "Lundi" not perused for five years, or for even a shorter period than that, is a new "Lundi." At a second reading, moreover, the desert islander might discard the plan of his first reading, which was to read "straight on end," and dip into the good array of volumes at will. There is matter for all tastes. For it is not only French history, French reigns, French memoirs, French poetry, French wits, coxcombs, and philosophers, that are handled and dissected. Nearly all that Germany has produced in literature worth notice, and much that England has developed, of the same sort, come within the scope of this Monday interlocutor. Thackeray would have it that men of letters are week-day preachers; and certainly most of them are as longsome as any pulpiteer. Some of them, too, are wearisome, addicted to preaching sermons, as though one day in the week was not enough to be specially set apart for that purpose. Sainte-Beuve never sermonizes; and I doubt if a page of his ever sent the dullest reader to sleep. He is always short, never obscure, and ready to finish sooner than you are. My only fear is that, were one wrecked with him on this supposititious island and had one him alone for company for a dozen years, the cry a sail, a sail!" would come too late; and we should be restored to the tongues of men only to find them vulgar and tiresome. 66 But what has all this got to do with Sainte-Beuve's critical method? Something, as you would find out, were you left with all his "Causeries" on a desert island. For he has, or thinks he has, a critical method, though I confess I never found it out till he told me of it himself. I do not speak of any special confidence. He has described this method in one of the "Nouveaux Lundis," and it is abundantly evident that, modest writer as he ostensibly is, he greatly piqued himself on it. I may say at once that I do not set a much higher value on it than I believe one does on Wordsworth's laws for writing poetry. When Wordsworth wrote beautiful poetry, as we all know he continually did, he did so by flinging to the wind what he calls his laws of metrical composition. Sainte-Beuve does pretty much the same with his critical method, and with the men, women, and books he criticises. There is nothing in the world more unsatisfactory and inconclusive than men's explanations about themselves. A living English painter, who, more than all his contemporaries, deserves the designation of a man of genius, when asked to explain how he paints his pictures, is said invariably to answer, "I really don't know how I do them." That may be exaggeration, and perhaps, to some extent, affectation. But an artist of any sort had better leave explanations of his method to other people. "I have often," says Sainte-Beuve, "heard modern criticism, and mine in particular, reproached with having no theory, with being altogether historical, altogether individual. Those who treat me with the greatest amount of favour have been pleased to say that I am an excellent judge, but that I am without a code. I have a method, nevertheless, and though it may have had no pre-existence in my own mind, and may not at first have arrived at the condition of a theory, it has shaped itself with me by practice, and a long series of applications of it has only confirmed its value in my eyes." This is exceedingly precise, and justifies us in inquiring what this method is. Sainte-Beuve does not set it forth with all the exactness the foregoing sentences would cause one to anticipate. But he is, as usual, ! thoroughly intelligible; and I will endeavour briefly to explain what he designates his system. Literary production, then, according to Sainte-Beuve, is not something distinct or separable from the writer that produces it and his organisation. One can taste of a work, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to judge it, independently of a knowledge of the man himself. One must say, such a tree produces such fruit. "L'étude littéraire me mène ainsi tout naturellement à l'étude morale." I am sorry to interrupt the synopsis of Sainte-Beuve's method at this early stage. But is it not necessary to inquire already whether, even in the foregoing few sentences, two assertions are not made, perfectly distinct, with one of which we must necessarily agree, from the other of which we may possibly be compelled to dissent. The man and the work unquestionably are one; just as the man and the fingers, or the man and the eyes, are one. No one would dream of contesting that point. But is it wise, or is it even fair, to judge the work in all, or in part, from the man Ex pede Herculem, it is said; but I dare say there have been some Hercules that had small feet. Far from being able to allow that it is difficult to judge a book of consequence, "independently of one's acquaintance with the man himself," I should rather be disposed to say that this latter knowledge renders it difficult to judge the work "independently." If this were not so, how comes the proverb, that no one is a hero to his own valet? Mr. Carlyle's proffered explanation that it is not because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is a valet, though ingenious and delightfully epigrammatic, will not hold water. No one knows a man so well as his valet, if the valet has been long enough with him, whether the master be a hero or the reverse. Thus, on the threshold, I, who have the privilege of remaining anonymous, or the controversy would seem too arrogant, and, were SainteBeuve alive, too unequal, venture to raise an objection. Sainte-Beuve himself was perhaps not insensible to the fact that it might be raised, for he takes care to allow that, where ancient writers are our theme, we are without the means of observation requisite for the employment of his method. That seems to me to be a considerable, not to say a fatal concession. To get hold of the man, he allows, book in hand, is nearly always impossible in the case of the great writers of antiquity, and the utmost our scrutiny can command is a half-broken statue. All that can be done under such circumstances is "to comment on the work, to admire it, and to rêver l'auteur et le poète à travers.' I should have thought that was quite enough, and I confess I hardly seem to be reading Sainte-Beuve, or even a critic at all, but rather-shall I say?—some sonorous, plausible, but shallow word-compeller of the type of M. Victor Hugo, when he passes away from the difficulty with a majestic wave of the hand, and the following pretty phrase: "A mighty river, and rarely fordable, separates us from the great men of old. Let us salute them across the stream!" That is very nice. But had anyone else written it, Sainte-Beuve would have been the first man to observe that it is neither "l'étude littéraire" nor "l'étude morale." It would have been more logical and more pertinent to say that we cannot properly estimate the value of the great works of antiquity. But it would not have been true, however much in keeping with "critical method." Were it true, Shakspeare would be the English author whose merits Englishmen would feel the greatest difficulty in deciding. Sainte-Beuve then goes on to say that he looks forward to the advent of a time when science, having greatly progressed in its career of conquest, there will be formed great families of character, whose principal divisions will be known and determined. In other words, psychology will do for men and women what the conchologist does for shells, though of course not quite so accurately, and subject to greater risks of error; and human society will be one great classified museum, though we presume we shall not be compelled to live in glass cases. Sainte-Beuve, for himself, disclaims any such complete powers of classification; he makes only simple monographs. But he indicates the road, and follows it to the best of his ability. How, then, whilst waiting for the completion of this magnificent psychological system, which is ultimately to divide us all off into convenient sections and subsections-whereby any intelligent critic will be able to tell at a glance what we are, and what our looks necessarily must be is the intelligent observer to arrive at a proper measure of some superior personage who has written a volume of poems? How is one to proceed, asks Sainte-Beuve, if one is to rid oneself of these oldfashioned rhetorical judgments, and to be as little as possible the dupe of phrases, of words, of pretty conventionalities, and the rest? To know the man himself is, as we have seen, of the utmost impor tance. But our familiarity with him must not end here, nor, indeed, even begin here. We must first find out, if we can, what is his birthplace, |