_Sainte Beuve_
Sainte Beuve writes as if he had always said the last word, as if he
were precisely at the needle of the scales. Yet I feel that this writer
is not as infallible as he thinks. His interest lies in his anecdote, in
his malevolent insinuation, in his bawdry. Beyond these, he has the same
Mediterranean features as the rest of us.
_Taine_
Hippolyte Taine is also one of those persons who think they understand
everything. And there are times when he understands nothing. His
_History of English Literature_, which makes an effort to be broad
and generous, is one of the pettiest, most niggardly histories ever
written anywhere. His articles on Shakespeare, Walter Scott and Dickens
have been fabricated by a French professor, which is to say that they
are among the most wooden productions of the universities of Europe.
_Ruskin_
He impresses me as the Prince of Upstarts, grandiloquent and at the same
time unctuous, a General in a Salvation Army of Art, or a monk who is a
devotee of an esthetic Doctrine which has been drawn up by a Congress of
Tourists.
_Croce_
The esthetic theory of Benedetto Croce has proved another delusion to
me. Rather than an esthetic theory, it is a study of esthetic theories.
As in most Latin productions, the fundamental question is not discussed
therein, but the method of approaching that question.
_Clarin_ [Footnote: Pseudonym of Leopoldo Alas, a Spanish critic
and novelist of the transition, born in Asturias, whose influence was
widely felt in Spanish letters. He died in 1905.]
I have a poor opinion of Clarin, although some of my friends regard him
with admiration. As a man, he must have been envious; as a novelist, he
is dull and unhappy; as a critic, I am not certain that he was ever in
the right.
V