which connected him with the old parties were severed. The democratic
and socialistic instincts which had drawn him to Armand Carrel and the
Saint-Simonists now drew him to the Second Empire. Like all the other
men of 1830, with the solitary exception of Auguste Barbier, a poet of
high principles but mediocre talent, Sainte-Beuve shared to a certain
extent the popular enthusiasm for Napoleon; to him the Empire was an
imperialism which had its support in the people and was inimical to the
domination of the bourgeoisie; and now, in his famous and much abused
article, _Les Regrets_, he not merely proclaimed his allegiance to
Napoleon III., but wrote of Orleanists and Legitimists with a strangely
oblivious scorn. He was a regular contributor to the _Constitutionnel_,
then for a time wrote in the _Moniteur officiel_, afterwards resuming
his connection with the _Constitutionnel_. During the last years of
his life he wrote for the Opposition newspaper, the _Temps_. He was
evidently perfectly honest; it was not for the sake of any advantage
to himself that he changed his opinions; he simply now, as always,
involuntarily allowed himself to be influenced--with the result of a
clear gain of insight and understanding for his future criticism. He
came very little into personal contact with the Emperor; in politics he
was an adherent of the "Left"; Princess Mathilde and Prince Napoleon
treated him as an honoured friend, and he turned the Princess's
friendship to account in the most disinterested manner, namely, in the
furtherance of unobtrusive, genuinely benevolent schemes.
It was not till the last stage of his career that Sainte-Beuve's talent
attained to its full development. The chances are that an uncritical
author will deteriorate as he grows older, but that a critic will
improve; Sainte-Beuve improved year by year, to the very end of his
life. The absolute truthfulness, which was naturally as marked a
feature of his character as his industry, but which had often been held
in check by one consideration or another, allowed itself ever freer
play; and the capacity for work remained as great as in his youth.
Sainte-Beuve's writings fill fifty volumes, and in all these volumes
there is not a careless line, and inaccuracies are of the rarest
occurrence. But it was not until the last stage of his career that he
was courageous enough to give perfectly free expression to his real
opinions on religious and philosophical subjects. He now eased his
mind of everything that he had repressed since the youthful days when
he studied the philosophers of the eighteenth century. His want of
appreciation of Balzac and Beyle, the one a man of a much coarser, the
other of a much more eccentric nature than his own, must not render us
oblivious of the courage and determination with which he championed the
rising generation of French authors, even such writers as Flaubert and
the Goncourt brothers, whom he did not altogether understand. Nor ought
it to be forgotten that he refused to write an article on Napoleon's
_Vie de César_, and that in the Senate he distinguished himself as the
solitary but determined opponent of clericalism.
In March 1867 he defended Renan and his _Vie de Jésus_. In June of
the same year, when it was proposed (apropos of a complaint from the
magnates of the town of Saint-Etienne) to exclude from the public
libraries accessible to the people all literature objectionable to
the clergy, including the works of Voltaire, Rabelais, &c, he was
the solitary member of the servile, priest-ridden Senate who boldly
championed intellectual liberty and warmly defended the honour of
French literature. The students, who in 1855 had hissed him as an
Imperialist, now honoured him with a deputation and a banquet. The
lying rumours spread by the clerical press on the subject of a small
dinner-party which he inadvertently happened to give on Good Friday,
1868, represented him in the light of an antichrist, of a reincarnated
Voltaire; and when in May 1869 he made a last effort, and with a weak
voice but stout heart spoke in the Senate in defence of liberty of
the press and against the Catholic Universities Bill, his name became
a war-cry, became the symbol of free thought. In January 1869 he
renounced his allegiance to Imperialism. In October of the same year
he died, after five years of illness and a long period of terrible
suffering, borne with stoic fortitude.
Sainte-Beuve, with his exceptionally impressionable nature, underwent
a whole series of religious, literary, and political transformations.
These constituted the school he had to pass through to become the
founder of modern criticism. Despite all his changes of opinion, we
are safe in asserting that he was honest. Private interest can have
had little power in great things over a man with a nature as truthful
as that which reveals itself in his writings. Truth and honesty are,
as Franklin says, like fire and flame; they have a certain natural
brightness which cannot be counterfeited.
[1] See Sainte-Beuve's article on Alfred de Vigny's reception into the
Academy, and also the letter, published by himself, which was written
to him by a lady (Madame Hugo) on the occasion of the same event.
[2] _Lettres parisiennes_, i v. 170.
[3] He was accused of having accepted bribes from the secret fund of
Louis Philippe's government. What lay at the foundation of the charge
proved to have been a grant of a sum of--one hundred francs--for the
repairing of a stove in the Mazarin Library, of which Sainte-Beuve was
librarian.
XXXI
SAINTE-BEUVE AND MODERN CRITICISM
_Port-Royal_ (1840-59), Sainte-Beuve's longest piece of connected
writing, is a unique work of its kind. Disinclination to tread the
beaten track, and the Romanticist's sympathy with religious enthusiasm,
two characteristics which early distinguished him, influenced him in
choosing the history of Jansenism in France as his subject. Jansenism
was an enthusiastic, intelligent, intense form of piety, which, though
evolved and retained within the pale of Catholicism, was nevertheless
distinguished by a personal, that is to say, heretical, passion for
truth, which appeals to our understanding by its independence and to
our sympathies by its heroically courageous defiance of persecution and
coercion. Like its history, _Port-Royal_, it reaches its highest level
in Pascal, whose frail, emaciated figure as its embodiment presents a
curious contrast to that of the plethoric, more healthy-minded German
who, in a neighbouring country a century earlier, had carried on a
very similar, though more successful struggle against ecclesiastical
attempts at compromise.
Sainte-Beuve possessed all the qualifications required of the historian
of Jansenism. He was not a believer, but he had been, or believed
that he had been one. A man is seldom capable of criticising the
views he holds himself, and as seldom of understanding those which
he has never held; what we all understand best are the views we once
shared, but share no longer. If any one doubts Sainte-Beuve's ability
to understand these medieval emotions, that impulse to forsake the
world, that strife of the awakened soul with nature, and its repentant,
anxious recourse to grace; if any one doubts his comprehension of the
real spirit inspiring these sermons and theological pamphlets, of the
hearts beating under these nuns' habits, of the devotion, the hopes,
and the longings, the mystical ecstasies and the sacred enthusiasm,
which flourished on that little spot of holy ground, let that doubter
read the first two volumes of _Port-Royal_, as far as the chapter on
Pascal, who was easier of comprehension because he was a figure of more
magnitude and was already better known. Let him study the masterly
portraits of St. François de Sales and St. Cyran, and observe how with
the help of letters, reported conversations, and a few pamphlets and
sermons, Sainte-Beuve succeeds in placing before us two figures which
are so true to nature, so human, that we seem to be living with them.
We are frequently reminded of the fact that Sainte-Beuve was originally
a novelist. The scenes among the innocent dwellers in that dovecote,
the convent, for instance, have all the vividness of well-written
fiction. And Sainte-Beuve employs his imagination only in describing;
he never invents or misrepresents.
It is a defect in the book that its first parts, though they are much
the best reading, are not conceived in the historical style. We are too
vividly reminded that the _feuilleton_ has hitherto been their author's
vehicle of expression. In these earlier volumes Sainte-Beuve simply
takes Port-Royal as his starting-point. The old monastery is not much
more than his citadel, from which he makes one sortie after another;
he hunts out parallels, discovers analogies, now in literature,
now in real life--interesting, but often far-fetched, and leading
to disquisitions not only upon such writers as Corneille, Racine,
Molière, Voltaire, and Vauvenargues, but upon modern authors, such as
Lamartine and George Sand. The later volumes, on the other hand, the
style of which is more soberly historical, lack the attraction of these
interpolations; and the subject is too much of a special subject to
interest long, in spite of the loving care which has been bestowed on
it.
Though _Port-Royal_ is supposed to be his chief work, Sainte-Beuve
reaches a far higher level in the long series of volumes known as
_Causeries du Lundi_ and _Nouveaux Lundis_, which contain the shorter
articles written during his most perfect period. It will be long before
these articles are forgotten. At the time of their author's death,
Ulbach wrote: "I cannot tell how much of the literature of which we
are now so proud will be preserved by time. Some of Lamartine's and
Victor Hugo's verses? some of Balzac's novels? One thing, however, is
certain--that it will be impossible to write history without having
recourse to Sainte-Beuve and reading him from beginning to end."
Sainte-Beuve has two styles, the youthful and the mature. At the time
of his study of sixteenth century literature (from the vocabulary
of which he, like the other young Romanticists, adopted various
expressions) he got into the habit of picking and choosing his words
and polishing and refining his periods to such an extent that he drew
down upon himself some justifiably severe criticism--though he hardly
deserved the violent reproaches showered on him by Balzac, whom he had
annoyed by some sarcastic articles. But when he took to journalism
this ultra-refinement of style disappeared. As Littré remarked, "After
he had bound himself to send in a _feuilleton_ every week, he had no
time to spoil his articles." A style like Sainte-Beuve's second--keen
and flexible as a sword-blade--is not easy to characterise. In the
first place, it is by no means a striking style. The reader who is
not particularly well versed in French literature will not be aware
of anything that can be called style. The periods succeed one another
unrhythmically; they are not grouped, but proceed carelessly, as
Zouaves march; we never come upon a pompous and seldom on a passionate
one; occasionally there is an interjection--"Ô poet!" or the like. The
language flows like gently rippling water. But the observant reader is
charmed by its noble Atticism. The tone is not assertive, but calmly
and quietly sceptic. I give a few examples, taken from different works.
"Is there stability or instability at the basis of his character? You
think instability. But under that instability is there not something
more stable? You believe that there is. But under this again is there
not something less stable than ever?" How often in their study of
character must psychologists query thus, but how few of them could put
the question with such delicate precision! What has been called the
eccentricity of Sainte-Beuve's style is often only something surprising
in his imagery; yet the metaphor itself is always surprisingly
correct. In describing a great, austere sixteenth-century preacher
of repentance, he tells that this ecclesiastic's contemporaries
compared him, because of his dry severity, to a thorn-bush. Later,
after giving an account of a vigorous outburst of noble indignation on
the part of this man, he adds: "Si j'ai pu dire de M. de Saint-Cyran
qu'il était parfois un buisson et un buisson sans jamais de rieurs,
il faut ajouter qu'il est souvent aussi un buisson ardent." Observe
how the pliant style lends itself to irony and satire. Sainte-Beuve
is criticising the style of a literary rival, Nisard; amongst much
bitter-sweet praise he insinuates the little remark: "Un académicien
lui a trouvé du nerf; les savants lui trouvent de la grâce." Of Cousin
he says: "He is a hare with the eye of an eagle." For an example of
the power of characterisation latent in the style, take the following
sentence from a criticism of De Musset: "Ce n'était pas des couleurs
combinées, surajoutées par un procédé successif, mais bien le réel
se dorant ça et là comme un atôme à un rayon du matin, et s'envolant
tout d'un coup au regard dans une transfiguration divinisée." And for
an example of its capacity, equable as it is, to express indignation,
take the following passage, which also throws light on the character
of the man. He is writing on the subject of a work to which the
Academy in full conclave had refused to give the prize adjudged it by
a committee of experts, because the "atheistical" principles on which
the work was based were at variance with the eclectic philosophy then
officially recognised. "There really does exist a small class of sober,
unassuming philosophers, who live upon very little, do not intrigue,
and are entirely occupied in conscientiously seeking after truth
and cultivating their intellects. They refrain from the indulgence
of every other passion, and fix their whole attention upon the laws
which govern the universe, listening and investigating wherever in
the realm of nature the world-soul, the world-thought reveals itself
to them. These are men who at heart are stoics, who try to do good
and to think as accurately and rightly as they can, even without the
hope of any personal reward in the future, content to feel at harmony
with themselves and in accord with the harmony of the universe. Is
it fitting, I ask, to stamp these men with an odious name on this
account, to ostracise them, or at best only to tolerate them with such
tolerance as we show to the erring and guilty? Have they not even yet
won for themselves in our country a place on which the sunlight falls?
Have they not, O ye noble Eclectics, with whom it gives me pleasure
to compare them, ye whose invariable and absolute disinterestedness
and whose unalterable high-mindedness are known to God and man, have
they not the right to be placed at least on an equal footing with you,
in virtue of the purity of their doctrine, the uprightness of their
motives, and the innocence of their lives? This last great progressive
step, worthy of the nineteenth century, I would fain see taken before
I die." Sainte-Beuve made various reforms in the art of criticism. In
the first place, he put solid ground beneath its feet, gave it the
firm foothold of history and science. The old, so-called philosophic
criticism treated the literary document as if it had fallen from the
clouds, judged it without taking its author into account at all, and
placed it under some particular heading in a historical or aesthetic
chart. Sainte-Beuve found the author in his work; behind the paper he
discovered the man. He taught his own generation and the generations
to come, that no book, no document of the past, can be understood
before we have gained an understanding of the psychical conditions
which produced it, and formed an idea of the personality of the man
who wrote it. Not until then does the document live. Not until then
does a soul animate history. Not until then does the work of art become
transparently intelligible.
Sainte-Beuve's most marked characteristic was an insatiable thirst
for knowledge, a quality which he possessed in the form that may be
called scientific inquisitiveness. This directed his life even before
it expressed itself in his criticism. At first it is only faintly
perceptible in his works, because he began with unlimited praise of
his contemporaries, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Alfred de
Vigny, and others, a good deal of which he was obliged subsequently
to retract--thus progressing in the opposite direction from Théophile
Gautier, who began with severity and gradually declined into a
nerveless leniency. But it is possible to trace even Sainte-Beuve's
first uncritical praise to his critical instincts. Its exaggeratedness
was due to the fact that he stood, as a young man, too near to the
personages he criticised; but this circumstance was itself attributable
to his curiosity. Before he knew, he dimly divined the difference
between books and life, and was less apt than others to accept the
author's own account of himself, the image of himself which he desired,
by means of his book, to imprint on his readers' minds; and it was
the unconscious instinct of investigation, the keen interest of the
born psychologist, the longing to see for himself and close at hand,
the inclination to pass by all that was official and conventional and
make straight for the truth that is concealed, the small facts which
explain--that led him to seek personal acquaintance; though he himself
believed that it was his enthusiasm for ideas which attracted him
irresistibly to their originators.
And here the critic is confronted by one of his greatest
difficulties--he knows the truth only about the living, but may
speak it only of the dead. And there is no doubt that it makes a
disagreeable impression when the death of an author entirely changes
the tone of criticism, as Sainte-Beuve's criticism of Chateaubriand,
for example, was altered by the latter's death. His earliest article
on Chateaubriand was incense pure and simple. We are conscious of the
social pressure under which it was written, of the awe and veneration,
the personal sympathies and relations, the fear of angry glances from
lovely eyes, the impossibility of hurting the feelings of so charming
a lady as Madame Récamier by criticising her domestic idol, in short,
of all the influences which combined to make the first sketch of
Chateaubriand simply an adulatory narrative. The long work and the
later articles are, on the contrary, inspired by a perfect rage for
saying "No," for tearing off masks.
But when he is at his best, Sainte-Beuve succeeds in finding the golden
mean. He does not admire everything and attribute everything to noble
motives, but neither does he search for base ones. He neither praises
nor depreciates human nature. He understands it. And intercourse with
men and women of every description, constant critical observation,
French delicacy of perception, and a Parisian training, have given him
an extraordinary power of discernment. At his best, the many-sidedness
of his mind actually reminds us of Goethe. We are at times tempted to
call him "wise"; and few indeed are the critics who tempt us to apply
this adjective to them. He very seldom allows himself to be confused or
influenced by the popular sentiment connected with a name, no matter
whether it is lofty, or pathetic, or depreciatory. He inquires into
the pedigree of his author, his constitution and health, his economic
position; he snaps up some involuntary confession he has made, and
shows that it is supported by other utterances, and that it throws
light on, and explains the actions of the man. He describes him in his
bright and noble moments; he surprises him in déshabille; with his
marvellous capacity for "finding a needle in a haystack," he discovers
what the dead man concealed in the inmost recesses of his heart. With
the judicial calm of the scientific investigator, he enumerates his
tendencies towards good and his tendencies towards evil, and weighs
them in the balance. And by such means he produces a trustworthy
portrait--or rather, a series of portraits, each one of which is
trustworthy, though some of them contradict each other. For, notable
critic as Sainte-Beuve is, he invariably shirks one of the greatest
difficulties with which the critic has to contend. A conscientious
critic has, as a rule, read the work which he undertakes to interpret
and criticise, many times and at various stages of his development;
each time he has been struck by something different; and in the end
he has seen the work from so many different points of view that it is
impossible for him, without doing a sort of inward violence to himself,
to maintain one single standpoint, one attitude of feeling. And if
he happens to be dealing, not with a single work, but with a highly
productive author who has passed through many stages of development,
or possibly even with a whole school of literature, the difficulty of
making one comprehensive picture out of the many different impressions
received under totally different psychical conditions, becomes
proportionately greater. A building which we have seen only once, half
of it in sunlight, half in the shadow of a heavy cloud, stands out
distinctly in our memory in a certain light against a particular sky;
but a building we have seen at every hour of day, in the dusk and in
moonlight, from all sides, from various elevations, and as often from
the inside as the outside, a building in which we have lived, and the
size of which has dwindled in our eyes as we grew--of such a building
we find it difficult to give a single, fully descriptive picture.
This difficulty Sainte-Beuve avoids by constantly producing fresh
descriptions and fresh criticisms of the same men and their works,
leaving it to the reader to draw his own conclusions. It was with good
reason that he chose as the motto for a series of his works the saying
of Sénac de Meilhan: "Nous sommes mobiles et nous jugeons des êtres
mobiles."
The latter of these propositions, namely, that every human being whom
we judge has altered, has developed steadily, Sainte-Beuve understood
better than it had ever been understood before. He not only changes his
tone every time he changes his theme, but changes it every time there
is a change in the man or woman who is his theme for the time being;
his agile talent imitates all the movements of the individual human
soul during its development process.[1] Hence his manner is as
changeable as his subject; he is now the biographer, now the critic;
he packs as many limiting and defining parentheses into his periods as
possible; connects sentences which modify one another; uses technical
words which introduce a whole train of ideas and memories; and vague
expressions which may mean much more than they say. For though he moves
through the dim depths of a man's life with the certainty of the diver
who sees the submarine growths through the water, he nevertheless, for
many reasons, prefers to write with a certain amount of vagueness of
what he has seen. When he is writing of the living it is, of course,
only permissible to make vague allusions to their private life; and the
dead have, as a rule, descendants or relatives who keep jealous guard
over their reputation. Sainte-Beuve, therefore, generally contents
himself with showing that he divines or knows much on which he does not
choose to dwell.