lose 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, t