SAINTE-BEUVE 



ST ELIAS 



85 



which saved him from the necessity of hasty pro- 

 duction. During the next eight j'ears he wrote 

 mainly for the Revue dea Deux Mondes, to which 

 he had been an intermittent contributor since its 

 foundation in 1831. As one of the most distin- 

 guished literary workers of the day, he was in 

 1845 elected member of the French Academy, his 

 eulogium being pronounced by Victor Hugo. The 

 political confusions of 1848 led Sainte-Beuve to 

 accept the professorship of French literature at 

 Liege, where he delivered a course of lectures after- 

 wards published under the title of Chateaubriand 

 et son Groupe Litteraire sous I' Empire. In 1849 he 

 returned to Paris, when he entered on an engage- 

 ment which was to afford him the precise sphere 

 he needed for the adequate display of his powers 

 and attainments as a literary critic. This was to 

 write for the Const itiitiounel an article on some 

 literary subject to appear on the Monday of every 

 week. For the next twenty years Sainte-Beuve, 

 with little intermission, carried on this task. 

 On Monday he settled down to his task, and 

 on five successive days worked for twelve hours 

 at the preparation of his materials and the 

 composition of his article. Saturday he devoted 

 to a careful revision of proofs, and on Sunday he 

 allowed himself a holiday. In 1861 these tanneries 

 du Lundi, as they were called, were transferred 

 to the Moniteur, an official organ of Napoleon 

 III. ; in 1867 back to the Constitutionnel, and 

 finally in 1869 to the '/'.,/,.,. The papers thus 

 written make up in all twenty-eight volumes, of 

 which the first fifteen are entitled Cauteries du 

 Lundi, and the succeeding volumes Nouveaux 

 Lundis. 



By his acceptance of the government of Napoleon 

 III. Sainte-Beuve gave offence to many of his 

 former friends ; but his justification was that 

 forms of government were indifferent to him pro- 

 vided he might pursue his own objects in peace. 

 In 1854, on the occasion of his appointment as 

 professor of Latin Poetry at the College de France, 

 the students refused to listen to his lectures, and 

 he was forced to demit both the office and its 

 emoluments. The lectures he intended to deliver, 

 a critical estimate of Virgil, were subsequently 

 published as a separate volume. Nominated a 

 senator in 1885, he regained popularity by his 

 spirited speeches in favour of that liberty of 

 thought which the government was doing its 

 utmost to suppress. In his last years Sainte- 

 Benve lived the life of a hermit in his modest house 

 in the Hue Mont-Parnasse, though he counted 

 among his friends and admirers the first men of 

 letters in France. He died on 13th October 1 869 of a 

 malady from which he had long suffered. It was his 

 special instruct inn that he should be buried with- 

 out religious ceremony and without the customary 

 enlogiiiui. His funeral, however, was attended by 

 a multitnde estimated at ten thousand, but the 

 only words pronounced at his grave were 'Adieu, 

 Suintc Beuve; adieu, our friend.' 



It is by the amount and variety of his work, 

 and the range of qualities it displays, that Sainte- 

 Benve holds the first place among literary critics. 

 Others have equalled or surpassed him in individual 

 effects ; where he is unapproachable is in his faculty 

 of educing the interest and significance of the most 

 various types of human character, and the most 

 various forms of creative effort. To his marvellous 

 insight, range of sympathy, and knowledge of 

 detail he added an experience of men and things 

 exceptionally rich and varied for one whose main 

 function was literary criticism. But, besides their 

 value as criticism, the works of Sainte-Beuve are 

 an inexhaustible mine of facts and reflections bear- 

 ing on every interest of human life. Regarded in 

 HB totality, his work is in its essential tendency 



identical with that of Montaigne. In both we 

 have the point of view of the uncommitted observer, 

 the same many-sided presentment of life, the same 

 inconclusive philosophy ; and in both a personal 

 character equally void of every heroic element. 

 Supreme as he is in his own department, however, 

 Sainte-Beuve is not a European man of letters like 

 Erasmus, or Voltaire, or Renan. The subjects he 

 treated were not of universal interest, and his 

 literary methods are as far as possible from the 

 simplicity and directness which are the crowning 

 qualities of these three writers. Nevertheless, the 

 work of Sainte-Beuve marks an epoch in the 

 intellectual history of Europe. By its delicacy, 

 subtlety, and precision it extended the limits of 

 the study of human character and of the products 

 of human intelligence. 



The chief authority for the life of Sainte-Beuve is the 

 strongly prejudiced book of the Vicomte d'Haussonville, 

 C. A. Sainte-Seure, a Vie et tes (Em-res (1875). See 

 also Sainte-Beuve's own ' Ma Biographic ' in Nouveaux 

 Lvndit, vol. xiii. Amongst numerous works, one of the 

 most read is Souvenirs by his last secretary, M. Trouhat 

 (1890). The worksof Sainte-Beuve are as follow: Tableau 

 Historique et Critique de la Potsie Francaise et du Thidtre 

 Francois au X VI' SVcle ; Pofsies Completes ( 2 vols. ) ; 

 Voluptf ; Port-Royal ( 7 vols. 1 860 ) ; Chateaubriand et son 

 Groupe Litteraire sou* I' Empire (2 vols 1860) ; Critiques 

 et Portraits LitUraires ( 5 vols. ) ; Portraits Contemporains 

 ( 5 vols.) ; Portraits de femmes ; Causeries du Lundi ( 15 

 vols. ) ; Nouveaux Lundis ( 13 vols. ) ; Souvenirs et In- 

 discrftions ; Premiers Lundis (3 vols.) ; Les Cahiers de 

 3f. Sainte-Beuve ; Chroniques Parisiennes ; Lettres a la 

 Princense ; Etude fur Virgile ; Le Gtneral Jomini ; 

 Monsieur de Talleyrand ; P. J. Proudhon, sa Vie et m 

 Corretpondanee ; Corretpondance de C. A. Sainte-Beuve 

 (2 vok). 



Sainte-Claire Devllle, HENRI ETIENNE, 

 French chemist, was born on llth March 1818, in 

 St Thomas, West Indies, and was educated in 

 Paris. In 1844 he was commissioned to organise 

 the Faculty of Sciences at Besancon, and in 1851 

 obtained the chair of Chemistry in the Normal 

 School at Paris, and shortly afterwards the similar 

 chair to the Sorbonne. He died in Paris on 1st 

 July 1881. He began his work as a chemical 

 investigator by inquiring into the composition of 

 certain resins, but soon transferred his energies to 

 the investigation of metallurgic substances. It 

 was Sainte-Claire Deville who first produced alu- 

 minium ( 1855 ) and platinum in commercial quan- 

 tities, and demonstrated the general theory of the 

 dissociation of chemical compounds at a high 

 temperature. Amongst other results that were due 

 to his skill and ingenuity, he discovered (1849) 

 anhydrous nitric acid ; examined the forms of 

 boron and silicon ; devised methods for fusing 

 platinum, indium, cobalt, &c. ; determined the 

 density of metallic vapours at exceedingly high 

 temperatures ; produced artificially sapphire, alu- 

 minium, and similar substances ; and invented a 

 way of getting crystallised oxides. His labours for 

 producing globules of aluminium, which he ex- 

 hibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1855, were in 

 continuation of Wohler's, dating from 1827. The 

 platinum metals he studied along with Debray. 

 His papers were published in Comptes Bendus of 

 the Academy of Sciences, and in Annales de Chimie. 

 He also published De V Aluminium (Paris, 1859), 

 and Metallurgie du Piatine (2 vols. 1863). 



Sainte ciroix. See SANTA CRUZ. 



St Ellas, MOUNT, a great volcanic mountain just 

 inside the Canadian frontier of Alaska, long believed 

 to be the highest mountain on the American conti- 

 nent, 19,5(10 feet high. Again it has been reduced to 

 13,500 ; but in 1892 it was found by triangulation to 

 be 18,010 feet lower than Orizaba ( 18,340 ft. ). It 

 stands in a wild, inaccessible region, and is clothed 

 almost from base to summit with eternal snow. 



