-smooth beauties,
a certain tameness and petted languidness, with certain excessive and
exclusive refinements? In a word, to love Racine so much, it is to run
the risk of having too much of what in France is called taste, and
which brings so much distaste.

"To love Boileau--but no, one does not love Boileau, one esteems him,
one respects him; we admire his uprightness, his understanding, at
times his animation, and if we are tempted to love him, it is solely
for that sovereign equity which made him do such unshaken justice to
the great poets his contemporaries, and especially to him whom he
proclaims the first of all, Moliere.

"To love La Fontaine, is almost the same thing as to love
Moliere; it is, to love nature, the whole of nature, humanity
ingenuously depicted, a representation of the grand comedy "of a
hundred different acts," unrolling itself, cutting itself up before
our eyes into a thousand little scenes with the graces and freedoms
that are so becoming, with weaknesses also, and liberties which are
never found in the simple, manly genius of the master of masters. But
why separate them? La Fontaine and Moliere--we must not part them, we
love them united."

* * * * *

The number of "Putnam's Magazine," containing this paper, was sent to
M. Sainte-Beuve accompanied by a note. In due time I received an
answer to the note, saying that the Magazine had not reached him.
Hereupon I sent the article by itself. On receiving it he wrote the
following acknowledgment.

In my note I referred to a rumor of his illness. His disease was, by
_post-mortem_ examination, discovered to be as the newspapers had
reported, the stone. But a consultation of physicians declared that it
was what he states it to be in his letter. Had they not made so gross
a mistake, his life might have been prolonged.

"PARIS, 6 _Decembre_, 1868, No. 11 Rue Mont Parnasse.

"CHER MONSIEUR:--

"Oh! Cette fois je recois bien decidement le tres aimable et si bien
etudie portrait du _critique_. Comment exprimer comme je le
sens ma gratitude pour tant de soin, d'attention penetrante, de desir
d'etre agreable tout en restant juste? Il y avait certes moyen
d'insister bien plus sur les variations, les disparates et les
defaillances momentanees de la pensee et du jugement a travers cette
suite de volumes. C'est toujours un sujet d'etonnement pour moi, et
cette fois autant que jamais, de voir comment un lecteur ami et un
juge d