Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/183

Rh S A I S A I 165 wrote it was indeed a veek's work. The " irresponsible indolent reviewer " should read his notes to his friend and provider with books, M. Paul Cheron of the National Library. Here is a note dated the 2d of January 1 853 : " Good-day and a happy New Year. To-day I set to work on Grimm. A little dry; but after St Frangois de Sales" (his Monday article just finished) "one requires a little relief from roses. I have of Grimm the edition of his Correspondence by M. Taschereau. I have also the Memoirs of Madame d'Epinay, where there are many letters of his. But it is possible that there may be notices of him men- tioned in the bibliographical book of that German whose name I have forgotten. I should like, too, to have the first editions of his Correspondence ; they came out in successive parts." Thus he prepared himself, not for a grand review article once a quarter, but for a newspaper review once a week. His adhesion to the empire caused him to be habitually represented by the Orleanists and the Republicans as without character and patriotism, and to be charged with baseness and corruption. The Orleanists had, in a great degree, possession of the higher press in France and of English opinion, of Liberal English opinion more especi- ally. And with English Liberals his indifference to parlia- mentary government was indeed a grievous fault in him ; "you Whigs," as Croker happily says, "are like quack doctors, who have but one specific for all constitutions." To him either the doctrine of English Liberals, or the doctrine of Republicanism, applied absolutely, was what he called a "fiction," one of those fictions which "always end by obscuring the truth." Not -even on M. de Tocque- ville's authority would he consent to receive "les hypotheses dites les plus honorables," " the suppositions which pass for the most respectable." All suppositions he demanded to sift, to see them at work, to know the place and time and men to which they were to be applied. For the France before his eyes in 1849 he thought that something "solid and stable" un mur, "a wall," as he said was requisite, and that the government of Louis Napoleon sup- plied this wall. But no one judged the empire more inde- pendently than he did, no one saw and enounced its faults more clearly ; he described himself as being, in his own single person, " the gauche of the empire," and the descrip- tion was just. To these merits of mental independence, industry, measure, lucidity, his criticism adds the merit of happy temper and disposition. Goethe long ago noticed that, whereas Germans reviewed one another as enemies whom they hated, the critics of the Globe reviewed one another as gentlemen. This arose from the higher social develop- ment of France and from the closer relations of literature with life there. But Sainte-Beuve has more, as a critic, than the external politeness which once at any rate dis- tinguished his countrymen : he has a personal charm of manner due to a sweet and humane temper. He com- plained of un peu de durete, " a certain dose of hardness," in the new generation of writers. The personality of an author had a peculiar importance for him ; the poetical side of his subjects, however latent it might be, always attracted him and he always sought to extricate it. This was because he had in himself the moderate, gracious, amiably human instincts of the true poetic nature. "Let me beg of you," he says in thanking a reviewer who praised him, "to alter one or two expressions at any rate. I can- not bear to have it said that I am the first in anything whatever, as a writer least of all ; it is not a thing which can be admitted, and these ways of classing people give offence." Literary man and loyal to the French Academy as he was, he can yet write to an old friend after his election : "All these academies, between you and me, are pieces of childishness ; at any rate the French Academy is. Our least quarter of an hour of solitary reverie or of serious talk, yours and mine, in our youth, was better em- ployed ; but, as one gets old, one falls back into the power of these nothings ; only it is well to know that nothings they are." Perhaps the best way to get a sense of the value and extent of the work done in the last twenty years of his life by the critic thus excellently endowed is to take a single volume of the Causeries du Lundi, to look through its list of subjects, and to remember that with the quali- ties above mentioned all these subjects are treated. Any volume will serve ; let us take the fourth. This volume consists of articles on twenty-four subjects. Twenty of these are the following : Mirabeau and Sophie, Montaigne, Mirabeau and Comte de la Marck, Mademoiselle de Scudery, Andre" Ch6nier as politician, Saint-Evremond and Ninon, Joseph de Maistre, Madame de Lambert, Madame Necker, the Abb6 Maury, the Due de Lauzun of Louis XVI.'s reign, Marie Antoinette, Buffon, Madame de Maintenon, De Bonald, Amyot, Mallet du Pan, Marmontel, Chamfort, Ruhliere. Almost every personage is French, it is true ; Sainte-Beuve had a maxim that the critic should prefer subjects which he possesses familiarly. But we should re- cognize more fully than we do the immense importance and interest of French literature. Certain productions of this literature Mr Saintsbury may misjudge and over- praise ; but he is entirely right in insisting on its immense importance. More than any modern literature it has been in the most intimate correspondence with the social life and development of the nation producing it. Now it so happens that the great place of France in the world is very much due to her eminent gift for social life and development ; and this gift French literature has accom- panied, fashioned, perfected, and continues to reflect. This gives a special interest to French literature, and an interest independent even of the excellence of individual French writers, high as that often is. And nowhere shall we find such interest more completely and charmingly brought out than in the Causeries du Lundi and the Nouveaux Lundis of the consummate critic of whom we have been speaking. As a guide to bring us to a knowledge of the French genius and literature he is unrivalled, perfect, so far as a poor mortal critic can be perfect, in knowledge of his subject, in judgment, in tact, and tone. Certain spirits are of an excellence almost ideal in certain lines ; the human race might willingly adopt them as its spokesmen, recognizing that on these lines their style and utterance may stand as those, not of bounded individuals, but of the human race. So Homer speaks for the human race, and with an excellence which is ideal, in epic narration ; Plato in the treatment at once beautiful and profound of philosophical questions; Shakespeare in the present- ation of human character; Voltaire in light verse and ironical discussion. A list of perfect ones, indeed, each in his own line ! and we may almost venture to add to their number, in his line of literary criticism, Sainte- Beuve. (M. A.) SAINTE- CLAIRE DEVILLE, ETIENNE HENRI (1818- 1881), French chemist, was born on llth March 1818 in the island of St Thomas, West Indies, where his father was French consul. He was educated in Paris along with his elder brother Charles at the College Rollin. In 1844, having graduated as doctor of medicine and doctor of science, he was appointed dean of the new faculty of science at Besangon by Thenard. In 1851 he succeeded Balard in the Ecole Normale and in the Sorbonne. He died at Boulogne-sur-Seine on 1st July 1881. Sainte-Claire Deville began his experimental work in 1841 with investigations on oil of turpentine and balsam of tolu, in the course