1830 may be said to derive, whether it deals with
literature, with the theatre, or with art, from three masters,
Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, and Janin. The method of the first has been
sufficiently explained. Gautier's was rather the expression of a fine
critical appreciation in the most exquisite style, and Janin's, the far
easier, and, after a short time, unimportant plan of gossiping amiably
and amusingly about, it might be the subject, it might be something
quite different. The only successor to Gautier was Paul de Saint-Victor,
who, however, was inferior to his master in appreciative power, and
exaggerated his habit of relying on style to carry him through. Paul de
Saint-Victor was not a frequent writer, and his collected works as yet
do not fill many volumes. _Hommes et Dieux_, which is perhaps the
principal of them, exhibits a deficiency of catholicity in literary
appreciation. His latest book, _Les Deux Masques_, an unfinished study
of the history of the stage, contains much brilliant writing, but is
wanting in solid qualities. As a theatrical critic, Janin was succeeded
by a curiously different person, M. Francisque Sarcey, who has chiefly
been noteworthy for severity and a kind of pedagogic common sense, as
unlike as possible to the good-humoured gossip of Janin. M. de
Pontmartin was an acrid but vigorous critic on the royalist and orthodox
side. M. Hippolyte Taine, chief of Sainte-Beuve's followers, has
somewhat caricatured his master's method. Sainte-Beuve's principle was,
it must be remembered, to examine carefully the circumstances of his
author's time, in order to ascertain their bearing upon him. In M.
Taine's hands this wise practice changed itself into a theory--the
theory that every man is a kind of product of the circumstances, and
that, by examining the latter, the man is necessarily explained. M.
Taine chose for his principal exercising ground the history of English
literature. He produced under that title a series of studies often
acute, always brilliant in style, but constantly showing the faults of
the critical method just indicated. Of other literary critics, the two
chief besides M. Taine are M. Edmond Scherer and M. Emile Montegut. The
latter is a critic of a very fine and delicate appreciation. A short
essay of his on Boccaccio may be specified as one of the best of French
contemporary critical exercises. M. Scherer has a good deal of common
sense, a considerable acquaintance with literature, and a