The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866

"If M. Génin had lived in the world, in society, during the fifteen years previous to 1848 which I had passed in it, he would have comprehended how a man of letters, without fortune, without ambition, of retiring manners, and keeping strictly to his own place, may yet—by his intellect perhaps, by his character, by his tact, and by his general conduct—obtain an honorable and agreeable position, and live with persons of every rank, the most distinguished in their several walks,—persons not precisely of his own class,—on that insensible footing of equality which is, or which was, the charm and honor of social life in France. For my own part, during those years,—happy ones I may call them,—I had endeavored, not without a fair degree of success, to arrange an existence combining dignity with ease. To write from time to time things which it might be agreeable to read; to read what was not only agreeable but instructive; above all, not to write too much, to cultivate friendships, to keep the mind at liberty for the intercourse of each day and be able to draw upon it without fear of exhausting it; giving more to one's intimates than to the public, and reserving the finest and tenderest thoughts, the flower of one's nature, for the inner sanctuary;—such was the mode of life I had conceived as suitable to a literary knight, who should not allow has professional pursuits and associations to domineer over and repress the essential elements of his heart and soul. Since then necessity has seized upon me and constrained me to renounce what I considered the only happiness. It is gone, it has forever vanished, that better time, adorned with study and leisure, passed in a chosen circle, where I once received, from a fair friend whose loss has been irreparable, this charming counsel insinuated in the form of praise: 'If you think yourself dependent on the approbation of certain people, believe me, that others are dependent upon yours. And what better, sweeter bond can there be between persons who esteem each other, than this mutual dependence on moral approbation, balancing, so to speak, one's own sentiment of freedom. To desire to please and at the same time to remain free,—this is the rule we ought to follow.' I accepted the motto; I promised myself to be faithful to it in all that I might write; my productions at that period will show perhaps the degree in which I was influenced by it. But I perceive that I have strayed from my text.

"I had forgotten to mention that, on the same day on which I wrote the letter inserted first in the Journal des Débats, and afterwards in the Moniteur, I forwarded to Messieurs Reynaud and Carnot the resignation of my place at the Mazarine. I did not wish to expose myself to interrogatories and explanations where I could be less sure of being questioned in a friendly spirit and listened to with confidence. From the moment of taking this step there was no longer much choice for me. I had to live by my pen; and during the year 1848, literature in my understanding of that term—and indeed literature of every kind—formed one of those branches of industry, devoted to the production of luxuries, which were struck with a sudden interdict, a temporary death. I was asked in conversation if I knew any man of letters who would accept a place in Belgium as professor of French literature. Learning that the vacancy was at the University of Liége, I offered myself. I went to Brussels to confer on the project with M. Charles Rogier, Minister of the Interior, whom I had known a long time, and I accepted with gratitude the propositions that were made to me.

"I left France in October, 1848. The press of Paris noticed my departure only with raillery. When a man of letters has no party, no followers, at his back, when he takes his way alone and independently, the least that can be expected is that the world should give itself the pleasure of insulting him a little on his passage. In Belgium I met with unexpected difficulties, thrown in my way by hostile compatriots. Pamphlets containing incredible calumnies were published against me. I have reason to speak with praise of the youth of Belgium, who decided to wait, and to judge me only by my acts and words. In spite of obstacles I succeeded. The present book, which was entirely composed and was to have been published before the end of 1849, represents one of the two courses which I delivered.

"P.S. I had almost forgotten to recur to the famous lists. The one containing my name appeared at last in the Revue rétrospective. 'M. Sainte-Beuve, 100 francs,'—this was what was to be read there. The fabulous ciphers had vanished. On seeing this entry a ray of light dawned upon my memory. I recollected my smoky chimney of 1847, the repair of which was to have cost about that sum. But for this incident, I should never have been led to deliver the course now submitted to the reader, and the one circumstance has occasioned my mention of the other."

It must be confessed that the chimney that drove M. Sainte-Beuve into temporary exile, and led to the production of a work in which his views on many important topics were enunciated with a clearness and force he had hitherto held in reserve, had smoked to some purpose. We may be permitted to believe that his integrity had never been seriously questioned; that the pretext for a brief abandonment of his beloved Paris while she was in a state of excitement and dishabille had not been altogether unwelcome. Though no admirer of the government of Louis Philippe, he had, as he still acknowledges, appreciated "the mildness of that régime, its humanity, and the facilities it afforded for intellectual culture and the development of pacific interests of every kind." The sudden overthrow, the turmoil, the vagaries that ensued, were little to his taste. He was content to stand aside, availing himself of the general dislocation to look around and choose for himself a new field, a more independent position.

Here then begins the third, and, as we must suppose, the final stage of his career. In September, 1849, he returned to Paris, feeling "a great need of activity," as if his mind had been "refreshed by a year of study and solitude." What was he to undertake? No sooner did the question arise, than an answer presented itself in the form of an offer from one whose coadjutor he had become on a previous and similar occasion. M. le docteur Véron, now the proprietor of the Constitutionnel, and as sagacious as ever in catering for the public taste, proposed to him to furnish every Monday an article on some literary topic. The notion of writing for the masses, of adapting his style to the requirements of a newspaper, gave him a momentary shock. Hitherto he had addressed only the most select audiences. But, after all, he was conscious of an almost boundless versatility, and no plan could better satisfy the desire which he had long felt of becoming "a critic in the full sense of the word, with the advantages of ripeness and perhaps of boldness." Such a change would be suited also to the new aspect of society. In literature it was no longer the time for training, tending, and watering, but the season of gathering the fruit, selecting the good and rejecting the unsound. Romanticism as a school had done its work and was now extinct. Every one went his separate way. Questions of form were no longer mooted; the public tolerated everything. Whoever had an idea on any subject wrote about it, and whoever chose to write was a littérateur. "With such a noise in the streets it was necessary to raise one's voice in order to be heard. Accordingly," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "I set to work for the first time on that kind of criticism, frank and outspoken, which belongs to the open country and the broad day."

With the old manner he laid aside the old title. The term Portraits, which in its literary signification recalled the times of the Rochefoucaulds and the Sévignés, was exchanged for the more modern one of Conversations,—Causeries de Lundis. Begun in the Constitutionnel on the 1st of October, 1849, they were continued three years later in the Moniteur, and in 1861 again resumed, under the title of Nouveaux Lundis, in the first-named journal, where they are still in progress. More than once the author has intimated his intention to bring them to a close. But neither his own powers nor the appetite of his readers having suffered any abatement, one series has followed upon another, until, in their reprinted form, they now fill nineteen volumes, while more are eagerly expected.

The transformation of style which was visible at the very outset is one of the miracles of literary art. Simplicity, swiftness, precision, all the qualities which were conspicuously absent, we will not say wanting, in the Portraits,—these are the characteristics, and that in a surpassing degree, of the Causeries. The whole arrangement, too, is different. There is no preluding, there are no intricate harmonies: the key-note is struck in the opening chord, and the theme is kept conspicuously in view throughout all the modulations. The papers at once acquired a popularity which of course had never attended the earlier ones. "He has not the time to make them bad," was the praise accorded by some of their admirers, and smilingly accepted by the author. But is this indeed the explanation? Had he merely taken to "dashing off" his thoughts, after the general manner of newspaper writers? Had he deserted "art," and fallen back upon the crudities misnamed "nature"? If such had been the case, there would have been no occasion for the present notice. His fame would long since have been buried under the rubbish he had himself piled up. The fact is very different. "Natural fluency"—that is to say, the inborn capacity of the writer—he undoubtedly possessed; but "acquired difficulty,"—this was the school in which he had practised, this was the discipline which enabled him, when the need arose, to carry on a campaign of forced marches, brilliant and incessant skirmishes, without severing his lines or suffering a mishap. It was in wielding the lance that he had acquired the vigor and agility to handle the javelin with consummate address. Contrasted as are his earlier and later styles, they have some essential qualities in common;—an exquisite fitness of expression; a total exemption from harshness, vulgarity, and all the vices that have grown so common; a method, a sequence, which is at once the closest and the least obtrusive to be found in any prose of the present day.

We pass from the style to the substance. The criticism, as we have seen, was to be "frank and outspoken." It became so at a single bound. The subject of the second number of the Causeries was the Confidences of M. de Lamartine, and the article opens with these words: "And why, then, should I not speak of it? I know the difficulty of speaking of it with propriety; the time of illusions and of complaisances has passed; it is absolutely necessary to speak truths; and this may seem cruel, so well chosen is the moment. Yet when such a man as M. de Lamartine has deemed it becoming not to close the year 1848 without giving to the public the confessions of his youth and crowning his political career with idyls, shall criticism hesitate to follow him and to say what it thinks of his book? shall it exhibit a discretion and a shamefacedness for which no one, the author least of all, would care?" And what follows? An outpouring of ridicule, of severity, such as the same book received from so many quarters? Nothing of the sort; nothing more than a thoroughly candid and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic or the poet at fault?

And so it has been in all the subsequent articles of M. Sainte-Beuve. It matters not who or what is the subject,—let it be a long-established reputation, like that of M. Guizot; a youthful aspirant, such as M. Hyppolite Rigault and many others; a brother critic, like M. Prevost-Paradol; a fanatical controversialist, like M. Veuillot; a personal friend, like M. Flaubert; or a bitter and unscrupulous assailant, like M. de Pontmartin,—the treatment is ever the same, sincere, impartial, unaffected. "To say nothing of writers, even of those who are the most opposed to us, but what their judicious friends already think and would be forced to admit,—this is the height of my ambition." Such was his proclamation, such has been his practice. No one has ever been bold enough to gainsay it. An equity so great, so unvarying, has almost staggered his brethren of the craft. "It is grand, it is royal," says M. Scherer,—who has himself approached near enough to the same summit to appreciate its height,—"only in him it cannot be called a virtue: it belongs to the intellect, which in him is blended with the character."

"But he professes neutrality! He has no doctrines, no belief, no emotions! He discusses everything, not with any regard to the eternal considerations of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, but solely in the view of literature and art!" So cry certain voices, loudest among them that of M. de Pontmartin. It is certainly somewhat surprising that a man without opinions, without emotions, should be made the object of violent attacks, that according to M. de Pontmartin himself, whose authority, however, upon this point we may take the liberty of rejecting, there should be "few men more generally hated." Mere jealousy can have nothing to do with it. "There is not," remarks M. Scherer, "the trace of a literary rivalry to be found in his whole career." The truth is, that M. Sainte-Beuve has, on all the subjects he has examined, convictions which are strong, decided, earnestly and powerfully maintained. But he differs from the rest of us in this, that he not only professes, but enforces, a perfect freedom of opinion, a perfect equality in discussion. In religion he attaches more importance to the sentiment than to the creed. In morals he sets up a higher standard than conventionalism. In politics, as we shall presently see, he has even given in his adhesion to a system; but, treating politics, like medicine, as an experimental science, he refuses to see in any system an article of faith to be adopted and proclaimed irrespective of its results. In questions of literature and art he declines to apply any test but the principles of art, the literary taste "pure and simple." In all matters he prefers to look at the practical rather than the dogmatic side, to study living forces rather than dead forms. Hence the charge of indifference. He would better please those who differ from him, were he one-sided, narrow, rancorous. It is because his armor is without a flaw that they detest him.4

We have spoken frequently of M. de Pontmartin. It is time to speak of him a little more definitely. As M. Sainte-Beuve has remarked, "the subject is not a difficult one." He belongs to the old aristocracy, and takes care that his readers shall not forget the fact. In religion and politics—with him, as with so many others, the two words have much the same meaning—he adheres consistently and chivalrously to causes once great and resplendent, now only fit subjects for elegies. As a writer, he is a master of the critique spirituelle,—that species which is so brilliant in display, so unsubstantial in results. He sparkles and glows; but his light only directs the brown nightingale where to find its repast. Armed cap-à-pie, glittering with epigram, rhetoric, and irony, he entered the lists against M. Sainte-Beuve, ostensibly to defend the reputation of Chateaubriand, provoked in reality by the causes already noticed. We have no space for the controversy that ensued. It is worthy of remark that the assault was directed, not against the censures which had been passed upon Chateaubriand,—M. de Pontmartin took good care not to aim at his adversary's shield,—but against the motives which had led to their suppression while the object was alive, and to their publication after he was dead. Now there are in the book on Chateaubriand some disclosures which might better have been spared. But in determining motives we shall go utterly astray if we leave character out of sight; and the whole career of M. Sainte-Beuve rises up against the implication that he was prompted in this instance by any other impulse than that spirit of investigation, that desire to penetrate to the heart of his subject, to unveil truth and dissipate illusions, which has grown stronger and more imperative at every step of his advance. We pass over his immediate replies. When, in the regular course of his avocation, he found an opportunity for expressing his opinion of M. de Pontmartin, he did it in a characteristic manner. There is not a particle of temper, not the slightest assumption of superiority, in the article. It is not "scathing" or "crushing,"—as we have seen it described. It has all the keenness, merely because it has all the simplicity, of truth. The playful but searching satire which the author has ever at command just touches the declamation of his opponent, and it falls like a house of cards. He sums up with a judgment as fair and as calm as if he had been speaking of a writer of some distant period. Astonished at the sleight of hand which had disarmed, and at the generosity which had spared him, M. de Pontmartin, in the first moment of his defeat,—before he had had time to recover his (bad) temper, to arm himself for more fiery assaults to be followed by fresh overthrows,—declared that, in spite of the susceptibility of his friends, he himself was well satisfied with a criticism which "assigned to him nearly all the merit to which he could pretend," and in which, "for the first time in his literary life, he had seen himself discussed, appreciated, and valued without either the indulgences of friendship or the violence of hatred."

One point still remains to be touched upon. M. Sainte-Beuve has been from the first a steady supporter of the present Empire. This of course accounts for a portion of the enmity with which he has been "honored." In 1852 he received the appointment of Professor of Latin in the Collége de France; but his opening lecture was interrupted by the clamors of the students, and the course was never resumed. From 1857 to 1861 he held a position in connection with the superintendence of the École Normale. In April, 1865, he was raised to the dignity of a Senator. No one, so far as we know, in France,—no one out of France, so far as we know, but a Saturday Reviewer,5—has ever been foolish enough to insinuate that he had purchased his elevation by a sacrifice of principle. It seems to us that the grounds on which such a man defends a system still on its probation before the world are worth examining. He has stated them more than once with his usual clearness and frankness. We extract some passages, with only the slight verbal alterations indispensable for condensation.

"Liberty! the name is so beautiful, so responsive to our noblest aspirations, that we hesitate to analyze it. But politics are, after all, not a mere matter of enthusiasm. I ask, therefore, of what liberty we are disputing? The word conveys many different ideas. Have we to do with an article of faith, some divine dogma not to be touched without sacrilege? Modern liberty, which keeps altogether in view the security of the individual, the free exercise of his faculties, is a very complex thing. If under a bad government, though it be in form republican, I cannot walk the streets with safety at night, then my liberty is curtailed. On the other hand, every advantage, every improvement, which science, civilization, a good police, or a watchful and philanthropic government furnishes to the masses and to individuals, is a liberty acquired, a liberty not the less practical, positive, and fruitful for being unwritten, unestablished by any charter. These, I shall be told, are 'little liberties.' I do not call them such. But we have a greater and more essential one,—the right of the representatives of the nation to discuss and vote on the budget; and this supposes others,—it brings with it publicity, and the liberty of touching upon such questions in the press. Here the difference of opinion is one of degree; some demand an unqualified freedom of discussion, others stop at a point more or less advanced.

"In human society, liberty, like everything else, is relative, and dependent on a multitude of circumstances. A sober, orderly, laborious, educated people can support a larger dose than one less richly gifted in these respects. Liberty is, thank God! a progressive conquest; that portion of it which is denied us to-day we can always hope to acquire to-morrow. Let us develop, as far as it lies with us, intelligence, morality, habits of industry, in all the classes of society; that done, we may die tranquilly; France will be free, not with that absolute freedom which is not of this world, but with the relative freedom which corresponds with the imperfect, but perfectible, conditions of our nature.

"This, however, will not satisfy those who are faithful to the primary idea of liberty as absolute and indivisible. After every concession, there must still remain two distinct classes of minds, divided by a broad line of demarcation.

"One embraces those who hold firmly to that generous inspiration which, under all diversities of time and circumstances, has had the same moral source; who contend that such champions of liberty as Brutus, William of Orange, De Witt, Chatham, however haughty and aristocratic the ideas of some of them, were yet of the same political faith, filled with ideas of human nobleness and dignity, conceding much, if not to the masses, at least to the advanced and enlightened classes which in their eyes represented humanity. Thinkers of this kind are not far to seek; witness Scherer, Rémusat, Tocqueville,—the last of whom was so imbued and penetrated with the idea that all his language vibrated with it; and, most striking example of all, that great minister too early removed, Cavour, who, confident in the patriotic sentiment of his countrymen, adopted it as a principle and a point of honor not to govern or reform without letting the air of liberty blow and even bluster around him.

"It will not be said that I undervalue this class. I will come boldly to the other, composed of those who are neither servile not absolutists,—I repel this name, in my turn, with all the pride to which every sincere conviction has a right,—but who believe that humanity has in all times owed much to the mind and character of particular individuals; that there have always been, and always will be, what were formerly called heroes, what under one name or another are to be recognized as directors, guides, superior men,—men who, whether born or raised to power, cause their countrymen, their contemporaries, to take some of those decisive steps which would otherwise have been retarded or indefinitely adjourned. I picture to myself the first progress of society as having taken place in this way: tribes or collections of men stop short at a stage of civilization which indolence or ignorance leads them to be content with; in order that they shall pass beyond it, it is necessary that a superior and far-seeing mind, the civilizer, should assist them, should draw them to himself, raise them a degree by sheer force, as in the 'Deluge' of Poussin, those on the upper terraces stretch their hands to those below, clutch and lift them up. But humanity, I shall be told, is at last emancipated; it has no longer any deluge to fear; it has attained its majority; it finds within itself all the motives and stimulants to action; light circulates; every one has the right to speak and to be heard; the sum total of all opinions, the net result of discussion, may be accepted as the voice of truth itself! I do not deny that in certain questions of general interest and utility, on which every one may be tolerably well informed, the voice of all has, in our mild and instructed ages, its share of reason, and even of wisdom; ideas ripen by the mere conjunction of forces and the course of the seasons. And yet has routine altogether ceased? Is prejudice, that monster with a thousand forms which has the quality of never recognizing its own visage, as far removed as we flatter ourselves? Is progress, true progress, as entirely the order of the day as it is believed to be? How many steps are there still to take,—steps which I am persuaded never will be taken save by the impulsion and at the signal of a firm and vigorous head, which shall take the direction upon itself!