Matthew Arnold

“ 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 development 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 distinguished his countrymen he has a personal charm of manner due to a sweet and humane temper. ”

“ I cannot 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. ”

“ They do not seem made for it, he says. This admirable critic knew, indeed, the radical inadequacy of French poetry. It is to English poetry that he resorts in order to find his term of comparison, and to award the praise which to French poetry he refuses. “Since you are fond of the poets,” he writes to a friend, “I should like to see you read and look for poets in another language, in English for instance. ”

“ In 1823 he began to study medicine, attending lectures on anatomy and physiology and walking the hospitals. But meanwhile a Liberal newspaper, the Globe, was founded in 1827 by Paul Francois Dubois, one of Sainte-Beuve’s old teachers at the College Charlemagne. Dubois called to his aid his former pupil, who, now quitting the study of medicine, contributed historical and literary articles to the Globe, among them two, which attracted the notice of Goethe, on Victor Hugo’s Odes et ballades. ”

“ But the strain upon him of his weekly labour was great. “I am not a monsieur nor a gentleman,” he writes in 1864, “but a Workman by the piece and by the hour.” “I look upon myself as a player forced to go on acting at an age when he ought to retire, and who can see no term to his engagement.” ”

“ They have the copiousness and enthusiasm of youth; they have also its exuberance. He judged in later life Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo more coolly, judged them differently. But the Critiques et portraits contain a number of articles on personages, other than contemporary French poets and romance-writers, which have much of the soundness of his later work, and, in addition, an abundance and fervour of their own which are not without their attraction. Many of these are delightful reading. The articles on the Greek poets and on Leopardi have been already mentioned. ”

“ But the critic in him grew to. prevail more and more and pushed out the poet. [2] In 1831 the Revue des deux morzdes was founded in rivalry with the Revue de Paris, and from the first Sainte-Beuve was one of the most active and important contributors. He brought out his novel of Volupté in 1834, his third and last volume of poetry, the Peusées d'aout, in 1837. He himself thought that the activity which he -had in the meanwhile exercised as a critic, and the offence which in some quarters his criticism had given, were the cause of the less favourable reception which this volume received. ”