that they may set their readers thinking what it is that makes
Sainte-Beuve so famous a critic and so delightful a writer. His volumes
are very numerous. 'All Balzac's novels occupy a shelf,' says Browning's
Bishop; Sainte-Beuve's criticisms take up quite as much room. The
_Causeries du Lundi_ and the _Nouveaux Lundis_ fill some twenty-eight
tomes. _À priori_, one would be disposed to mutter, 'This is too much.'
Can any man turned fifty truthfully declare that he wishes De Quincey
had left thirty volumes behind him instead of fifteen? Great is De
Quincey, but so elaborate are his movements, so tremendous his literary
contortions, that when you have done with him you feel it would be
cruelty to keep him stretched upon the rack of his own style for a
moment longer. Sainte-Beuve is as easy as may be. Never before or since
has there been an author so well content with his subject, whatever it
might chance to be; so willing to be bound within its confines, and not
to travel beyond it. In this excellent 'stay-at-home' quality, he
reminds the English reader more of Addison than of any of our later
critics and essayists. These latter are too anxious to please, far too
disposed to believe that, apart from themselves and their flashing wits,
their readers can have no possible interest in the subject they have in
hand. They are ever seeking to adorn their theme instead of exploring
it. They are always prancing, seldom willing to take a brisk
constitutional along an honest, turnpike road. Even so admirable, so
sensible a writer as Mr. Lowell is apt to worry us with his Elizabethan
profusion of imagery, epithet, and wit. 'Something too much of this,' we
cry out before we are half-way through. William Hazlitt, again, is
really too witty. It is uncanny. Sainte-Beuve never teases his readers
this way. You often catch yourself wondering, so matter-of-fact is his
narrative, why it is you are interested. The dates of the births and
deaths of his authors, the facts as to their parentage and education,
are placed before you with stern simplicity, and without a single one of
those quips and cranks which Carlyle ('God rest his soul!--he was a
merry man') scattered with full hands over his explosive pages. But yet
if you are interested, as for the most part you are, what a triumph for
sobriety and good sense! A noisy author is as bad as a barrel-organ; a
quiet one is as refreshing as a long pause in a foolish sermon.
Sainte-Beuve covered an enormous range in his criticism; he took the
Whole Literature as his province. It is an amusing trait of many living
authors whose odd craze it is to take themselves and what they are fond
of calling their 'work'--by which, if you please, they mean their rhymes
and stories--very seriously indeed, to believe that critics exist for
the purpose of calling attention to them--these living solemnities--and
pointing out their varied excellences, or promise of excellence, to an
eager book-buying public. To detect in some infant's squall the rich
futurity of a George Eliot, to predict a glorious career for Gus
Hoskins--this it is to be a true critic. For my part, I think a critic
better occupied, though he be destitute of the genius of Lamb or
Coleridge, in calling attention to the real greatnesses or shortcomings
of dead authors than in dictating to his neighbours what they ought to
think about living ones. If you teach me or help me to think aright
about Milton, you can leave me to deal with _The Light of Asia_ on my
own account. Addison was better employed expounding the beauties of
_Paradise Lost_ to an unappreciative age than when he was puffing
Philips and belittling Pope, or even than he would have been had he
puffed Pope and belittled Philips.
Sainte-Beuve was certainly happier snuffing the 'parfums du passée' than
when ranging amongst the celebrities of his own day. His admiration for
Victor Hugo, which so notoriously grew cool, is supposed to have been by
no means remotely connected with an admiration for Victor Hugo's wife.
These things cannot be helped, but if you confine yourself to the past
they cannot happen.
The method pursued by this distinguished critic during the years he was
producing his weekly _Causerie_, was to shut himself up alone with his
selected author--that is, with his author's writings, letters, and
cognate works--for five days in the week. This was his period of
immersion, of saturation. On the sixth day he wrote his criticism. On
the seventh he did no manner of work. The following day the _Causerie_
appeared, and its author shut himself up again with another set of books
to produce another criticism. This was a workmanlike method.
Sainte-Beuve had a genuine zeal to be a good workman in his own
trade--the true instinct of the craftsman, always honoured in France,
not so honoured as it deserves to be in England.
Sainte-Beuve's most careless reader cannot fail to observe his
contentment with his subject, his restraint, and his good sense--all
workmanlike qualities: but a more careful study of his writings fully
warrants his title to the possession of other qualities it would be
rash to rank higher, but which, here in England, we are accustomed to
reward with more lavish praise--namely, insight, sympathy, and feeling.
To begin with, he was endlessly curious about people, without being in
the least bit a gossip or a tattler. His interest never fails him, yet
never leads him astray. His skill in collecting the salient facts and in
emphasising the important ones is marvellous. How unerring was his
instinct in these matters the English reader is best able to judge by
his handling of English authors, so diverse and so difficult as Cowper,
Gibbon, and Chesterfield. He never so much as stumbles. He understands
Olney as well as Lausanne, Lady Austen and Mrs. Unwin as well as Madame
Neckar or the Hampshire Militia. One feels sure that he could have
written a better paper on John Bunyan than Macaulay did, a wiser on John
Wesley than anybody has ever done.
Next to his curiosity must be ranked his sympathy, a sympathy all the
more contagious because so quietly expressed, and never purporting to
be based on intellectual accord. He handles mankind tenderly though
firmly. His interest in them is not merely scientific--his methods are
scientific, but his heart is human. Read his three papers on Cowper over
again, and you will agree with me. How thoroughly he appreciates the
charm of Cowper's happy hours--his pleasant humour--his scholar-like
fancies--his witty verse! No clumsy jesting about old women and balls of
worsted. It is the mixture of insight with sympathy that is so
peculiarly delightful.
Sainte-Beuve's feeling is displayed doubtless in many ways, but to me it
is always most apparent when he is upholding modesty and grace and
wisdom against their loud-mouthed opposites. When he is doing this, his
words seem to quiver with emotion--the critic almost becomes the
preacher. I gladly take an example from one of the volumes already
referred to. It occurs at the close of a paper on Camille Desmoulins, of
whom Sainte-Beuve does his best to speak kindly, but the reaction
comes--powerful, overwhelming, sweeping all before it:
'What a longing we feel after reading these pages, encrusted with mire
and blood--pages which are the living image of the disorder in the souls
and morals of those times! What a need we experience of taking up some
wise book, where common-sense predominates, and in which the good
language is but the reflection of a delicate and honest soul, reared in
habits of honour and virtue! We exclaim: Oh! for the style of honest
men--of men who have revered everything worthy of respect; whose innate
feelings have ever been governed by the principles of good taste! Oh!
for the polished, pure, and moderate writers! Oh! for Nicole's Essays,
for D'Aguesseau writing the Life of his Father. Oh! Vauvenargues! Oh!
Pellisson!'
I have quoted from one volume; let me now quote from the other. I will
take a passage from the paper on Madame de Souza:--
'In stirring times, in moments of incoherent and confused imagination
like the present, it is natural to make for the most important point, to
busy one's self with the general working, and everywhere, even in
literature, to strike boldly, aim high, and shout through trumpets and
speaking-tubes. The modest graces will perhaps come back after a while,
and come with an expression appropriate to their new surroundings. I
would fain believe it; but while hoping for the best, I feel sure that
it will not be to-morrow that their sentiments and their speech will
once more prevail.'
But I must conclude with a sentence from Sainte-Beuve's own pen. Of
Joubert he says: 'Il a une manière qui fait qu'il ne dit rien,
absolument rien comme un autre. Cela est sensible dans les lettres qu'il
écrit, et ne laisse pas de fatiguer à la longue.' Of such a judgment,
one can only scribble in the margin, 'How true!' Sainte-Beuve was always
willing to write like another man. Joubert was not. And yet, strange
paradox! there will be always more men able to write in the strained
style of Joubert than in the natural style of Sainte-Beuve. It is easier
to be odd, intense, over-wise, enigmatic, than to be sensible, simple,
and to see the plain truth about things.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Last Essays of Elia_, 52.
[2] Since abandoned, _Laus Deo!_
[3] Richardson in a letter says this of her, 'the weak, the insipid, the
runaway, the inn-frequenting Sophia;' and calls her lover 'her
illegitimate Tom.' But nobody else need say this of Sophia, and as for
Tom he was declared to be a foundling from the first.
[4] Jocelyn, founder of the Roden peerage.
[5] By which title he refers to Mrs. Cornwallis, a lively lady who used
to get her right reverend lord, himself a capital hand at whist, into
great trouble by persisting in giving routs on Sunday.
[6] See _Essays in Criticism_, p. 23.
[7] _Letters of Charles Lamb._ Newly arranged, with additions; and a New
Portrait. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by the Rev. Alfred
Ainger, M.A., Canon of Bristol. 2 vols. London, 1888.
[8] Donaldson was a well-known man in Edinburgh. He was Boswell's first
publisher, and on one occasion gave that gentleman a dinner consisting
mainly of pig. Johnson's view of his larcenous proceedings is stated in
the Life. Thurlow was his counsel in this litigation. Donaldson's
Hospital in Edinburgh represents the fortune made by this publisher.
[9] I was wrong, and this very volume is protected by law in the United
States of America--but it still remains pleasingly uncertain whether the
book-buying public across the water who were willing to buy _Obiter
Dicta_ for twelve cents will give a dollar for _Res Judicata_.
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[Transcriber's Notes: Typographical errors have been corrected as
follows:
Page 14 - "series of familiar letter" replaced with "series of familiar
letters"
Page 24 - Question mark added to "Do you remember Thackeray's
account..."
Page 95 - "pains of hell gat hold" replaced with "pains of hell got
hold"
Page 108 - "jusqu aux" replaced with "jusqu'aux"
Page 127 - "perference" replaced with "preference"
Page 127 - "inbecile" replaced with "imbecile"
Page 196 - Correct single-double quotes before "We live no more" and
"More strictly, then"
Page 224 - "vemon" replaced with "venom"
Page 253 - "ligitations" replaced with "litigations"
Page 282 - "his people, which has" replaced with "his people, which
have"
Page 287 - "marches" replaced with "marshes"]