SAINTE-BEUVE,-THE MASTER-CRITIC. A FEW months ago all France was appalled at the sad intelligence that its master-critic lay cold in death. To all appearances he was in the prime of his physical and intellectual strength, although for some forty years he had been an active worker in the field of refined and delicate criticism, and was long the acknowledged victor in the arena where he knew no equal. A few days of suffering, during which he was scarcely willing even to keep his couch, terminated his marvellously busy life. He emphatically died in harness, and surrounded by his weapons. The few intimate friends who hastened to relieve his sufferings could scarcely gain access to him over the piles of books and manuscripts by which he was environed, and those who would hasten to do honor to his name in funeral procession, and gather mournfully around his tomb, were informed that his dying commands forbid any demonstration. He wished no announcement of the funeral, no invitation to friends, and no ceremony at the grave -alike rejecting the tears of friendship, and the consoling accents of the priestly office. Thus strangely died this man who had so strangely lived. No one fully comprehended him in life, and his death added to the obscurity of the enigma, And he is still far from being understood, and any sketch of his career at this early period must necessarily be fragmentary and imperfect. But while waiting for the maturer developments of his busy life, that must necessarily ere long be given to the world by those who knew him intimately, we take advantage of what information we may gain from the first lamentations of those who had studied his career and his deeds, and present a brief outline of his life and labors that may be the more acceptable because his memory is still green, and the voice of lamentation is still heard in the places that he has left vacant. Sainte-Beuve was a poet, a novelist, a historian, a critic; and in these expressions we pass to a climax, the latter member of which swallows up all the rest, for he was ever a critic whatever form his labors might assume. His poems were not sung because he could not help singing, but because he had critically thought much concerning the poetic art. The only novel he ever wrote was not the loved creation of his brain, but rather a critical analysis of the principal characters of his book. And thus his remarkable history of Port Royal is not a calm and satisfactory narrative of events, but rather a critical investigation of the labors and theories of the Port Royalists. And all his criticisms are peculiar and inestimable; they are unselfish in the highest degree, and possess the gift of discovering and duly appreciating the most opposite qualities and most hidden characteristics of their subjects. But it is well to discuss his works as we discuss the man, for he was ever passing through some new and strange phase of development, and ever active in the study of men and events; he thus enjoyed a practical education such as few living men have attained to. He was on terms of the greatest intimacy with a large number of the best writers and deepest thinkers of France, and the intellectual life of Paris for the last forty years may indeed be said to be his life. A list of his works would form a complete library of literary research for the period of his activity, and surprise us not only by their numbers, but by the boundless comprehensiveness of their contents, and the endlessly varying character and contrasts of their pages. His life was one uninterrupted race towards a goal that he finally never reached; but he never flagged in speed nor wavered in his purpose. He knew neither rest nor repose, and was untiring, enduring, and ever unsatiated in his greed for knowledge. He was born in the old city of Bou lougne-on-the-sea, in 1804. His mother was the widow of a revenue official, and was doomed at his birth to lay him in an orphan's cradle. She was an English woman of some talent and much real worth, and devoted her meagre means and strength to the education of her only son. Until his fourteenth year he knew no other teacher; at that period she sent him to Paris to complete his education in the best schools, and he fully justified her maternal care and sacrifices. He showed a diligence and activity very rare for his age, and seldom returned home during his vacations without some prize or testimonial to gladden the widowed mother's heart. His teachers all became his personal friends, and some of them exerted a controlling influence on his subsequent course. Having finished his collegiate studies, he decided on the medical profession as one in which he could soonest be enabled to provide for his own support. But he was not long in discovering that the prosaic character of its duties was in no accord with the aspirations of his heart, and the mental struggle within his breast soon drove him to find relief in poetic effusions. These took form, and shape, and name, and the world was thus at a later period presented with a volume bearing the title Joseph Delorme. The work was scarcely a poem; it was rather a poetical narrative of his own soul development and his own lifestruggles. The hero was an only son, and an orphan. He had been tenderly reared by his mother, came to Paris in his fourteenth year, was successful in his higher studies, adopted medicine as a career, became disgusted with its prosy details, and dissatisfied with the world. In this gloomy state he forgot the pious teachings received at his mother's knee, and leaned to the irreligion of the period. He even gave up at times to despair and melancholy, and dwelt on suicidal thoughts. This mental struggle was largely caused by the material needs of the world in their combats with the as pirations of the muses. Joseph Delorme hesitated for some time to venture on the literary arena as a means of gaining a livelihood, but at last decided on the fatal step, and thus in the poem the hero follows in the footsteps of his author, and tells the latter's story. Sainte-Beuve then left the scalpel and the lancet for the pen, and in his twentieth year, through the intercession of his former teacher and friend, secured an engagement on the journal known as the Globe. This was the organ of the liberal party of the day, and counted among its contributors such noted names as Guizot and Cousin. It was a most favorable period to enter on a literary career, as such men as Thiers, Victor Hugo, and Lamartine were beginning their path of glory, and giving birth to new needs and aspirations in the field of French literature. Sainte-Beuve, though a mere novice in his new occupation, received such encouragement that he soon decided to devote himself entirely to literary labor and depend on it for a support. His first stroke of good fortune was to make the acquaintance of Victor Hugo under very favorable circumstances. This poet of romanticism was then, though young, on the highest ladder of fame; he had come upon the literary arena like an apparition, and was moving like a conqueror. His favor would secure all that a neophyte could wish, and Sainte-Beuve determined, if possible, to have it. The Globe had just contained an ode of Hugo's that was highly praised, and while the editor was in a favorable mood he had promised also to Sainte-Beuve the opportunity of furnishing criticisms on certain notabilities. But the young author feared that when this exaltation had passed the order might be revoked, and he determined to appeal to Hugo for his support and influence. The successful poet received the young man with great suavity, and promised him his support, and a mutual friendship sprang up between them. Hugo soon conquered Sainte-Beuve so completely that he yielded to the influence of the romantic poet, and joined his school of poetry and coteric of friends; and he has frequently asserted that this was the only influence that he ever succumbed to, as it was the first. This led him to the study of poetry as an art, and finally to the composition of a treatise on the French poetry of the sixteenth century. He was led to commence this labor by the offer of a prize from the French Academy for an essay on this theme; but his work so increased under his hands that he found it impossible to satisfy himself with less than an extended treatise that grew to the size of a portly volume of great value. His object was to remind the French people of what they seemed entirely to have forgotten, that the poets of the age of Louis the Fourteenth-Corneille, Racine, Boileau, and their successors-did not represent the sum total of French poetry, but that the earlier ages of the poesy of the nation possessed great merits that were by no means to be entirely obscured by the age of gold or its succeeding era. The author displayed in his pages a power of criticism of details, of delicacy of style, and mastery of his native tongue, that stamped him as no ordinary adventurer in this long-neglected field. The success of this treatise of the early poets led him to venture on the publication of his own poems in the form of the first volume of Delorme, already alluded to as his own heart-history. But the melancholy sentimentality that dwelt on little else than death and suicide, and misery and disease, insured it no very favorable reception, and it became the subject of some very caustic criticisms. The severest charge made against his poetry was the entire absence of the sublime; and this very accusation he met in a later poem entitled Autumnal Thoughts, by the assertion that Lamartine and Hugo had exhausted that field before he came upon the stage, and as he desired a new path he was absolutely obliged to choose some other sphere. This he found in the ordinary events of every-day life and the analysis of the hidden feelings of the heart. His ten dency to this style of poetry led him to a great resemblance with Wordsworth, whom he frequently imitated or translated. But the resemblance was far more in outer form than spirit: Wordsworth was the fragrant flower of the forest, while Sainte-Beuve was the forced bloom of the hot-house. A year later he published another poem, entitled the Consolations. This was also a mirror of his own thoughts and feelings, and depicted the change that his mind was gradually undergoing. The name itself indicates its character, and shows a calmer mental condition. The author now ceases to whine and lament at life, and to desire death even by the hand of violence. He finds consolation for the anxieties of life and the tribulations that had crossed his path. For nearly the only period in his life he believes and is happy. This blissful state he attributes to the influence of Hugo, and his dependence on him in whom he then had implicit confidence. But the events of daily life are still the substance of his poems, though they may conceal quite other thoughts. Critics regard the Consolations as the best of his poems, and far superior to the Autumnal Thoughts, that appeared about seven years later. These were marked by a gloomy confusion and a prosaic coldness. The poet had passed into a new phase of feeling and was reaping the continual fruits of his labors; he had now tasted them and found them bitter. He now discovers that truth is a phantom, and regards religion and humanity as figured tapestry behind which are hidden all material and selfish interests. Friendship is an empty name; reputation and success are the reward of men without merit, and even when gained are of but little value. Thus the poems of SainteBeuve are an exact counterpart of the changes taking place within his own breast from spring to summer and autumn.. But he fails in the true essentials of a poet; instead of giving us new creations and fanciful pictures, he enters the field of analysis; he dissects where he should create. As a poet he is a com parative failure, and we hasten to the sphere in which he is an acknowledged master. That sphere is pen portraiture; his literary portraits are the rarest productions of French literature, and will remain its brightest ornaments while the language lasts. Under the influence of Hugo he had left the Globe, which was of too political a nature to suit his fancy, and accepted an engagement on the Revue de Paris, just then beginning its career. And though but twenty-five years of age, the place of honor was accorded to him, and he led off with an article on Boileau. This was a most happy specimen of the "Portraits" that for years he painted in this journal; a combination of biography and criticism, fields in which lay his peculiar forte. He regarded his career in connection with this review as a campaign, and ever spoke of it as such. He had taken up arms for romanticism, and analyzed the merits of the demi-gods of classicism in his portraits of Boileau, Corneille, and Racine. His essays were full of wholesome wit, and delicate and finished criticism, and the style was less artificial than that of some of his efforts of after years. But he could not worship this god solely for any great length of time, and soon began to yield to other influences in connection with these. The revolution of 1830 had raised many of the literary men who had helped call it into existence to seats of power, and their organ, the Globe, changed hands and was purchased by the representatives of a new and rising sect, the followers of Saint-Simon. Their creed was a vague mixture of religion and civil and political economy, the offspring of a period of social disintegration, nurtured by the vagaries of wild and disordered brains. But it was some thing new, and seemed for a time quite imposing, and as such attracted SainteBeuve by its novelty and boldness, who was never satisfied with what he had achieved. For a short time he showed all the enthusiasm of a new convert, and babbled away with his teachers and col leagues in the same confusing and incomprehensible strain. The good sense within him, however, soon taught him that the whole was a feverish dream of a sickly period, and he soon abandoned this folly. Sainte-Beuve now took refuge in the most sensible radicalism of his whole career. Louis Philippe, when safely on his throne, began to disappoint the liberal friends who had made him a "citizen-king," and thus prepared a fair field for his republican opponents to cultivate. The most sensible and reasonable of these, and one who was greatly esteemed even by his enemies, was Carrel, for many years the director of the National, the moderate republican organ of that period. Sainte-Beuve joined hands with Carrel in the management of this sheet, and soon became a more ardent republican than its director; he attended liberal meetings, made liberal speeches, and wrote liberal articles for the journal. But this fever did not last a great while for two reasons: our hero was too devoted to literature to find very lasting pleasure in political activity; and Carrel, though a liberal in politics, was a thorough conservative in literature. These steeds, therefore, did not work well in harness, and the litterateur left the politician to his strifes. This was in 1831, and just at the commencement of the career of the famous Revue des deux Mondes. Its founder knew the merits of Sainte-Beuve, and was wise enough to secure his co-operation. From the very commencement he wrote much and frequently for the Revue, and for eighteen years was a constant contributor; he indeed never ceased to write for it at seasons, and his last article appeared in March, 1868. The most of these were portraits, and have since been reprinted in compact form, filling seven volumes with the most interesting, delicate, and generous criticism, But still Sainte-Beuve has not exhausted all the phases of which his nature is capable, nor arrived at the point of perfect independence. He yet seems to need the support of a master, and, to the utter surprise of his friends, he chooses the recalcitrant priest of his day, the famous Lamennais, the forerunner of Lacordaire and Hyacinthe. This choice can only be explained by the law of contraries. The principal peculiarities of this democratic priest were absolute confidence in the truth of his own opinions, and the readiness with which he branded all others as false and cowardly. Now Sainte-Beuve was most free from these faults, and it is probable that he was attracted to Lamennais by the intenser earnestness with which he pressed his convictions, making his disciple believe that he was simply unable to appreciate them. The period of their first association was one of great beauty and attraction to the mind of Sainte-Beuve, being the moment of Lamennais's return from Rome, and the failure of all his hopes as to an alliance between Romanism and Democracy, and the period of the great struggle in his heart between subjection to papal infallibility and the consciousness of his own personal rights. For a time Sainte-Beuve found himself under the religious control of Lamennais, and this pious influence produced on his mind a significant and lasting influence which probably induced him to write the Consolations in a religious vein of thought. But Lamennais at last raised the standard of revolt, and Sainte-Beuve was perfectly ready to join him; he even took upon himself the task of putting to press the famous protest of Lamennais, entitled the Words of a Believer, which was so stinging in its assertions as to call down upon it the papal anathema. And whilst in this friendly intercourse with Lamennais, Sainte-Beuve wrote the only novel that he ever penned. He entitled it Pleasure, and gave it to the world as the autobiography of a priest written in the hours of leisure during a journey in America. Said priest is a sensualist and libertine, and the story is a medley of mysticism and immorality. The language is beautiful and chosen, and deals with feelings and opinions reVOL. XI.-24 garding the social order of society, but presents no ennobling views and rather indicates that Sainte-Beuve is becoming tired of his priestly associates. Just at this period an incident occurred that drew Sainte-Beuve into new relations, and finally led him to the creation of the greatest single work of his life. He made a pleasure excursion to Switzerland, and formed such pleasant relations in Lausanne that he accepted an invitation to deliver the following winter a series of historical lectures in the university of that ancient town. This is a Protestant city, and a Protestant university, and our author's stay here gave him an opportunity to study an entirely new phase of religious life. But above all it gave him an opportunity to become acquainted with the greatest thinker and author of French Protestantism in the present century Alexander Vinet. Sainte-Beuve was so pleased with Vinet's mind and character that on his first return to Paris he wrote a most complimentary article regarding him, and thus introduced him for the first time to the literary world of France through the columns of the Revue des deux Mondes. Vinet was frightened at this attention, and wrote to Sainte-Beuve protesting that he was not worthy to be thus drawn out of his comparative obscurity, but this seemed only to increase SainteBeuve's opinion of the Swiss author, and knit a closer friendship between them on his return to deliver the lectures. These were on the history of the famous convent of Port Royal, and the study devoted to them showed SainteBeuve that he had a mine so rich that he finally devoted some sixteen years of patient investigation and labor to the subject, and in the course of this period gave to the world his remarkable history in five immortal volumes, actually embarrassed with wealth of thought and ́ the perfection of criticism. He had now fairly assumed the position of the master-critic of his nation, and in the very next book that he wrote-a treatise on Chateaubriand-he laid down his ideal! of criticism in terms so clear, concise,. |