es, will avail
to hide him. The secret lies in the skill with which the search is
pursued and the object revealed. We do not, of course, mean to say that
M. Sainte-Beuve is the originator of biographical criticism, which in
England especially, favored by the portly Reviews, has been carried to
an extent undreamt of elsewhere. But in general it may be noticed that
English articles of this kind have been simply biographies accompanied
with criticism; their model is to be found in Johnson's "Lives of the
Poets." The critical articles of Mr. Carlyle are a striking exception.
Of Carlyle it may be said, as it has been said of M. Sainte-Beuve, that
"what chiefly interests him in a book is the author, and in the author
the very mystery of his personality." In other words, each looks upon a
literary work, not as the production of certain impersonal intellectual
faculties, but as a manifestation of the author in the totality of his
nature. But while the point of view is thus identical, there is little
similarity in the treatment. In the one case a powerful imagination
causes the figure to stand out in bold relief, while a luminous humor
plays upon every feature. The method of the _Portraits_--again we cite
the author's own language--is "descriptive, analytical, inquisitive." We
are led along through a series of details, each lightly touched, each
contributing to the elucidation of the enigma, by a train of closely
linked and subtile observation, which penetrates all the obscurities,
unravels all the intricacies, of the subject. And the result is, not
that broad but mingled conception which arises from personal intimacy or
from the art which simulates it, but that idea, that distilled essence,
which is obtained when what is most characteristic, what is purely
mental and individual, has been selected and condensed.

The sympathetic nature of the critic displays itself in his general
treatment of the theme, in the post of observation which he chooses. He
is not an advocate or an apologist. But the opinions in which he does
not coincide, the defects which he has no interest in concealing, he
sets in their natural connection, and regards as portions of a living
organism. Put before him a nature the most opposite to his own,--narrow,
rigorous, systematic. Shall he oppose or condemn it because of this
contrariety? But why, then, has he himself been endowed with suppleness
and insight, why is he a critic, unless that he may enter into oth