SAINTE-BEUVB 



Coil Hot, was the daughter of an Englishwoman 

 who had married a Boulogne sailor. This connec- 

 tion of his mother with England partly explains 

 that interest in English literature, and especially in 

 English poetry, which Sainte-Beuve showed from 

 first to last of his literary career. She wan a woman 

 of character and practical sense, but with so little 

 regard for any ideal interests of life that she was 

 never reconciled to her son's choice of a literary 

 career till his election as a member of the Academ y 

 in his forty-first year. Her husband had left her 

 in straitened circumstances, and it was only by 

 considerable sacrifice on her part that her son 

 received the advantage of a liberal education. 

 Incessant toil and a modest return was to be Sainte- 

 Beuve's own fortune throughout life, and this early 

 acquaintance with a simple economy schooled him 

 to a subsequent scale of living in which many 

 would have forfeited their independence and self- 

 respect. 



Till his fourteenth year Sainte-Beuve attended 

 the school of a M. Bleriot in Boulogne, where he 

 received a thorough grounding in Latin, and where 

 he gave unmistakable proofs of unusual gifts. By 

 his own desire he was then sent to Paris, where, 

 boarding with a freethinking professor, M. Landry, 

 he attended the College Charlemagne. At this 

 school a l-i i he gave further promise of future dis- 

 tinction. Though he had thus shown such special 

 aptitudes in the direction of literature, for the next 

 three years (1824-27) he followed a course of 

 medical study, and for another year even walked 

 the hospitals apparently out of deference to his 

 mother's wishes. 



It was in 1824, when Sainte-Beuve was in his 

 twentieth year, aud while he was still a medical 

 student, that he began that career as a man of 

 letters which he was to follow with such assidu- 

 ity and devotion to the end. In that year M. 

 Dulmis, who had been one of his teachers at 

 the College Charlemagne, founded a literary and 

 political paper called the Globe. Supported by 

 such writers as Jouffroy, Remu&at, Ampere, and 

 Merimce, the Globe became one of the leading 

 organs of the day, and was hailed by Goethe as 

 heralding a new departure in the intellectual life 

 of France. On the invitation of Dubois, who had 

 recognised the promise of his pupil, Sainte-Beuve 

 took his place on the regular staff of contributors. 

 For three years he wrote short articles on various 

 subjects, wliich were collected after his death, and 

 published under the title of Premiers Lundis. 

 With the doctrinaire attitude of the chief contribu- 

 tors of the Globe Sainte-Beuve was never in com- 

 plete sympathy, and in 1827 he came under a new 

 influence, which forms one of the turning points in 

 his life. In that year he wrote a eulogistic review 

 of the Odes et Ballades of Victor Hugo, which Ird tn 

 the closest relations between the poet and his critic. 

 Supreme as he is in hi* own department. Sainte- 

 Benve was not of those who dominate other minds 

 by the fervour of their own convictions, or the fury 

 of their own creative impulse. Before he attained 

 his full powers, therefore, and while his suscepti- 

 bility was stronger than his judgment, he came 

 under a succession of influences of the most diverse 

 character and tendency. Under the influence of 

 Hugo Sainte-Benve became for a time the zealous 

 advocate of that romantic movement of which Hugo 

 was the acknowledged leader, and of which Sainte- 

 lieuve himself was eventually the most judicious 

 critic. As a member of the romantic renarle wliich 

 counted in it- number Hugo, I.amartine, De Mnnset, 

 and Alfred de Vigny, Siiinlr -Itruve emlmdied his 

 new ideals and his new experiences lx>th in poetry 

 and prose. In 1828 he published his Tableau de la 

 Point Franfaise an Seizieme Siecle, with the double 

 object of justifying the romantic movement and of 



directing attention to what was of real value in the 

 French poetry of the 16th century. In 1829 and 

 1830 successively appeared Vie et Potties de Josepk 

 Delorme and Ltx Connotations, poems which, while 

 they show intellectual subtlety ami ingenious fancy, 

 are fraught with morbid feeling Minutely disson- 

 ant from the buoyancy and serenity of the writer's 

 later years. In 1829, also, in the pages of the 

 Berne de Paris, the predecessor of the Revue de* 

 Deux Mondes, he l>egan the first of those longer 

 critical articles on French literature which, under 

 the name of Cauteries, he was afterwards to carry 

 to such perfection. 



The revolution of July 1830 brought Sainte- 

 Beuve under a new set of influences. The Globe 

 now passed into the hands of the Saint Simoniens, 

 and for a year he became one of its contributors 

 under the new direction. All his life Sainte-Beuve 

 hod a keen interest in questions relating to the 

 well-being of the people ; but his new colleagues 

 soon passed the limits of his sympathy, and we 

 find him for the next three \i-ai- on the staff of the 

 National, then edited by Arinand Carrel. An 

 article by Sainte-Beuve in that journal, which was 

 the organ of extreme republicanism, led to a rup- 

 ture with the editor, and he discontinued his con- 

 tributions. It was during this period (1830-36), 

 also, that Sainte-Beuve became a sympathetic 

 listener of one of the most interesting men of the 

 century, the famous Lamennais. In his later 

 years Sainte-Beuve insisted that the foundation 

 of his intellectual life was the French materialism 

 of the 18th century ; yet both his relations with 

 Lamennais and his private correspondence prove 

 that at this period of his life, at least, religious 

 questions seriously engaged his attention. \Viih 

 the extreme democratic opinions of Lamennais 

 after his breach with Rome Sainte-Beuve could 

 have no sympathy, and by 1836 their intimate 

 relations ceased. Later in life he expressed him- 

 self very frankly regarding Lamennais' career, but 

 his final judgment is virtually that of all judicious 

 critics. His solitary novel, Voluptt ( 1834 ), also 

 belongs to this period of his life, a period appar- 

 ently of mental and spiritual unrest, of which this 

 novel ia the somewhat morbid expression. In 1837 

 he proceeded to Lausanne, where he delivered a 

 series of lectures on the history of Port-KoyaL 

 Subsequently, as the result of 'the intermittent 

 labour of twenty years, these lectures took the 

 shape of a book of five volumes, which contain 

 some of Sainte-Beuve's finest work. Whereas in 

 the first two volumes, however, he is to a certain 

 extent in sympathy with Jansenism, in the last 

 three his point of view is that of the purely dis- 

 interested critic. At Lausanne Sainte-Beuve was 

 deeply impressed bv the character and views of 

 Alexandre Vinet, and, though he eventually diverged 

 far from Vinet's teaching, he treasured his memory 

 as one of the noblest hearts and minds it had been 

 his fortune to know. During his stay at Lausanne 

 Sainte-Beuve produced his last volume of poetry, 

 Penates d"A6ut, in which with but moderate success 

 he attempted, as a departure from the usual 

 rhetorical character of French verse, a simpler form 

 of expression and more familiar turns of thought. 

 From Lausanne he made n journey into Italy, 

 visiting Home, Naples, and other cities; and with 

 this journey closes the first period of his life, during 

 which he was still groping his way to his true 

 function. 



From 1840, according to Sainte-Beuve himself, 

 dates a new departure in his criticism. Thence- 

 forward he claims to have lieen master of himself, 

 and in his own words to ! the disinterested 

 'naturalist of minds.' In that year he was again 

 in Paris, where an appointment as keeper of the 

 Mazurin Library brought him a modest competence, 



