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 c