it had the defect of not being conclusive. There was still a certain obliquity in his way of looking at his subject; the point of view chosen was not central and directly in front as in later times. The articles of this period are collected in the series called Portraits des Contemporains,' to which the student of French literature will always refer with delight and instruction. All the chief writers of Sainte-Beuve's time are passed under review in these volumes. But not only are the judgments passed on his contemporaries less evenly balanced than those which he passed in the full maturity of his critical faculty, -requiring the supplementary restrictions of corrective notes, added to late editions, which signalise Sainte-Beuve's changes of literary opinion, but the style is more involved and the diction less simple, more strained, more insidiously twisted than in the Causeries de Lundi.' Prolixity of expression, discursiveness, and consequently a frequent failure of direct, logical, consecutive interest, are faults in those early literary studies which Sainte-Beuve contrived wholly to avoid after he began his Lundis' in the Constitu'tionnel.'

The revolution of 1830, indeed, brought afresh a great change in the moral and social ideas of Sainte-Beuve. He had become a proselyte anew, and that to the visionary schemes of SaintSimon for the transformation of society, which, notwithstanding their Utopian character, enrolled among their adherents some of the most eminent intellects in France; for, strangely enough, among the early adepts of Saint-Simonism may be counted men who have since become famous, men of administrative and practical capacity, of whom M. Michel Chevalier is one, distinguished for their just application to commercial affairs of the rigorous principles of political economy. The time from 1830 to 1840 was indeed a peculiar period of transformation and transition in the life of Sainte-Beuve, for it was not until 1840 that he arrived at compressing all those vague and mystic aspirations which mark the first years of his manhood into that unchanging code of rationalism, both in politics and religion, which was the creed of the last thirty years of his life. After the Revolution of July, M. Pierre Leroux had succeeded to the editorship of the Globe,' and under his auspices he laboured at the propagation of Saint-Simonian doctrines in the columns of that journal. A large sympathy with humanity and with the sorrows of his fellow-men was always characteristic of Sainte-Beuve; and he now addressed himself to the Romantic School, and invited them not to confine their energies to the domain of pure art, but to assist in the

general work of the amelioration of human social conditions. Soon after this he became acquainted with Lamennais. The ardent religious spirit of the prophet and reformer, the very proofs of whose Paroles d'un Croyant' set the printers of the establishment where they were printed in a state of spiritual commotion characteristic of the time, had a strange attraction for him. It was, in fact, by his mediation that the Paroles d'un Croyant' first saw the light. He now went wild with enthusiasm for Lamennais; and while under the influence of this relationship he wrote the novel of Volupté,' the leading personage of which is a priest, who previous to his consecration is subject to a long and painful conflict of sensual and spiritual desires, out of which the spiritual qualities at last emerge victorious. It was at this period also that he conceived the idea of writing the history of Port Royal, which to those who are only acquainted with the latter half of his life and writings must always have appeared as an undertaking marked with some incongruity.

It assuredly is a singular fact in literary history that a writer who finished his career like Sainte-Beuve should have chosen such a subject for the greater labour of his life; and that, although the idea of the work was conceived under the influence of a certain religious mysticism, which had entirely evaporated before the author had published the first volume, he continued nevertheless to labour intermittently at his enterprise for more than twenty years, with the same devotion and the same scrupulous exactness and completeness; and that it is only in the final page-where he takes farewell of the reader after the fashion of Gibbon-that the author reveals that he has been studying this evolution of religious sentiment, this ferment and conflict of spiritual forces, with the same sort of impartial curiosity with which a naturalist might observe the doings of bees in a glass house.

If our reader has followed us so far, he will feel it time that some estimate or attempt at explanation should be made of the excessive mobility of Sainte-Beuve's nature, which has become sufficiently apparent in the course of this article.

Sainte-Beuve has been described somewhere as a soul constantly on the look-out to espouse some other soul, and then, as soon as the espousals were consummated, to have been as constantly looking out for reasons for divorce-a sort of Don Juan, in fact, of a literary kind. Enthusiasm and repent'ance,' it has been said, might form the epigraph of the collections of his criticism. A characteristic story has been told of the way in which he treated the portrait of a novelist of the

day. Sainte-Beuve having written a favourable criticism on his first novel, the author, in the first gush of gratitude, arrived with his portrait under his arm as a present to his illustrious critic. The portrait was allowed a prominent place in SainteBeuve's study. A second novel appeared inferior to the first; the portrait was banished to the ground floor. After the appearance of a third novel by the same author, the portrait went out of the house altogether, and was heard of subsequently as migrating from friend's house to friend's house, till it vanished in undistinguishable regions.

One can indeed hardly forbear from a smile in contrasting the modified expressions of Sainte-Beuve of later years with the signs of enthusiasm for his literary contemporaries which abound in the Consolations.' Alfred de Vigny-author of Éloa and Moïse was the chantre-élu, the ange, the séraphin, the apôtre of his time. The volume itself was dedicated to Victor Hugo, whom he spoke of as Notre grand Victor,' and with respect to Victor Hugo it must be noticed, that, in spite of broken ties of friendship and a change of literary opinions, he abstained in later times from all direct renunciation of the praise offered to the object of his early idolatry.

It was in the year 1835 that Sainte-Beuve began to separate himself from the Romantic School; and in this year appeared a very remarkable article from his pen, entitled Du Génie critique de Bayle,' which may be regarded as a sort of literary apology for his desertion from the ranks of the Romanticists, and at the same time as a philosophic investigation into the critical nature, based on deductions drawn, we may believe, from his own experience. After setting forth that indifference was one of the chief characteristics of Bayle, he adds:

'Cette indifférence du fond, cette tolérance prompte et facile, aiguisée de plaisir, est une des conditions essentielles du génie critique. Ce génie prend tout en considération, fait tout valoir, et se laisse d'abord aller sauf à revenir bientôt. Il ne craint pas de se mésallier: il va partout, le long des rues s'informant, accostant, la curiosité l'allèche, et il ne s'épargne pas les régals qui se presentent. L'infidélité est le trait de ces esprits divers et intelligents.'

It is hardly possible to erect infidelity into a virtue with more charming candour; but there is a sonnet of Sainte-Beuve's in Joseph Delorme' in which he celebrates the satisfaction which he feels in breaking the bonds of servitude and passion; which may also in some measure be applied equally to describe the sense of delight which he experienced at recovering his inde

pendence, and at finding himself liberated from a system of literary partisanship in behalf of principles to which he could no longer adhere:

'Osons tout et disons nos sentiments divers;

Nul moment n'est plus doux au cœur mâle et sauvage
Que lorsqu'après des mois d'un trop ingrat servage,
Un matin par bonheur il a brisé les fers.

La flèche le perçait, et pénétrant ses chairs,
Elle le suivait partout: de bocage en bocage
Il errait. Mais le trait tout d'un coup se dégage,
Il le rejette au loin tout sanglant dans les airs.
O joie! O cri d'orgueil! O liberté rendue!
Espace retrouvé, courses dans l'étendue
Que les ardents soleils l'inondent maintenant !
Comme un guerrier, mais que l'épreuve rassure,
À mainte cicatrice ajoutant sa blessure,

Je porte haut la tête et triomphe en saignant.'

It would be unfair to drive the deduction which might be drawn from this love sonnet too far; but it is clear that in the early part of Sainte-Beuve's career his judgment and admiration were liable to be rapidly and successively captivated by the various enthusiasms of his time, and that, after yielding for a while to the new impulse, his mind cooled into the reflective stage, and he looked about for reasons to establish himself in a state of dispassionate independence. His curiosity led him to wish to investigate every subject capable of interesting a manendowed with earnest literary energy, from which a certain amount of spirituality is rarely absent, and in the ardour of youth he became for a while impassioned for ideas on which he learned to look with serene indifference. Being endowed with a mind in which the critical faculties were far more active than the creative, the critical faculties at last gained complete possession of the field; and in 1840, at the age of thirty-six, he settled down into his final stage. The age of faith with him was over-that of reason took its place; and henceforth, although liable to be moved for a time even then to admiration too fervent to be permanent, he preserved with jealous watchfulness his integrity of judgment.

The novel of Volupté,' notwithstanding its many remarkable qualities, affords in our opinion sufficient proof that SainteBeuve was not endowed with the creative faculties necessary to constitute a writer of pure fiction. The novel may indeed be said to have been successful, since it formed a constituent part of his early claim to literary fame, and is still read; but one novel, unless it form as great an event in literary history

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as Paul and Virginia,' or the Vicar of Wakefield,' can hardly be considered as giving a title to its author to rank as a novelist. Volupté,' as the writer indeed declared, is evidently a study drawn from the observation and recollections of persons and circumstances intimately connected with himself. The characters are well drawn, and have distinct individuality; many pages of psychological analysis show a minute faculty of self-examination; the description of the interior life of a seminary-in which however Sainte-Beuve was aided by Lacordaire -is eminently truthful, and is delicately touched. The language, too, is as elegant as might be expected from the pen of Sainte-Beuve, but the story lacks interest, action, passion and power. It had in its own day formidable competitors in the Notre-Dame' of Victor Hugo, the Jocelyn' of Lamartine, and the Lélia' of George Sand, and would, we imagine, have few readers at the present time were it not that it bears the name of Sainte-Beuve on the title-page.

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Sainte-Beuve's claim to take rank as a historian by his history of Port Royal is of a more serious order. The same tendency of taste is noticeable in the choice of the subject of his historical enterprise as in those of his poetry and that of his romance-a predilection for the study of characters who had wrought and striven in retirement, apart from the broad highways of the world; and that predilection, directed by the current of religious inspiration under which he wrote the "Consolations,' led him to choose the lives and workings of the Solitaires of Port Royal, and that surprising revival of religious faith in the seventeenth century known by the name of Jansenism.

He had long entertained the project of writing such a history, and had collected for this purpose a large quantity of materials, when in the summer of 1837 he made an excursion to Switzerland. In the course of his journey he visited some Swiss friends with whom he had been acquainted in Paris, and to them he mentioned the fact that the daily exigencies of his periodical labours in Paris arrested the progress of his work, for the completion of which a year's undisturbed application was necessary. His friends, who happened to have influence with the Conseil de l'Instruction publique and with the Conseil d'État of the Canton de Vaud, took heed of Sainte-Beuve's words, and submitted, unknown to him, a project to the authorities, which was adopted, and Sainte-Beuve was solicited to give a course of lectures for a year at the Academy of Lausanne. In the autumn he transported himself and his Jansenist books to Lausanne, and during the following