Morning journal and courier., 1883-07-21
"Reminiscences of Ernest Renan.


 From the August Atlanticl
 M. Renan is the great apostle of the deli ! cate he upholds this waning fashion on ev- I cry occasion. His mission is to say delicate things, to plead the cause of intellectual good manners, and he is wonderfully compe- tent to discharge it. No one to day says such things so well, though in our own 1an- guage MT. Matthew Arnold often approaches l him. Among his own countrymen, Sainte- Beuye cultivated the same art, and there was nothing too delicate for Sainte-Beuve to at | tempt to say. But he spoke less simply-his | delicacy wRs always a greater complexity. M Renau, on the other hand, delivers him. self of those truths which he has arrived at | through the finenees of his perception and | the purity of his taste with a candid conh- | dence, an absence of personal precautions, which leave the image as perfect and as
 naked as an old Greek statue. It is needless
 to say that there is nothing crude in M. Re- l nan but the soft serenity with which, in
 the presence of 8 mocking world, he leaves | his usual plea for the ideal to any fate that | may await it is an example of how extremes | may sometimes meet. It is not enough to
 say of him that he has the courage of his l opinions for that, after all, is a compara-
 lively frequent virtue He has the resigna- | ton; he has the indifference he has. above all, the good humor. He combines qualities | the most diverse, and lighted up as he is by l the interesting confessions of the volume be- | fore us, he presents himself as an extraordi- 1 nary figure He makes the remark that in I his opinion less importance will be attached | to talent as the world goes on what we l shall care for will be simply truth. This declaration is singular in many ways, among others in this that it appears to overlook | the fact that one of the great uses of talent will always be to discover truth and present | 1t and that, being an eminently personal l thing and therefore susceptible of great va-
 riety, it can hardly fail to be included in the | estimate that the world will continue to make | of persons. M. Renan makes light of his ! own talent-he can well afford to if he ap- pears to be quite conscious of the degree in which it exists, he minimizes as much as pos | sible the merit that attaches to it. This is a | part of that constant play of taste which an | imates his style, governs his judgments, col ors all his thought for nothing can be in better taste, of course, than to temper the
 violence with which you happen to strike | people, To make your estimate of your own | gifts as low as may seem probable is form
 of high consideration for others it corre- spends perfectly with that canon of good | manners which requires us to take up mod crate space at table. At the feast of exis- l tence we may not jostle our neighbors, and l to be considerate is for M. Renan an inde- | feasible necessity. He informs us of this himself it is true that we had long ago guessed it. He places the fact before us, l however, in a relation to other facts, which
 makes it doubly interesting he gives us the
 history of his modeaty, his erudition, his
 amiability, temperance of appetite, his indif- l ference to gain. The reader will easily per-
 ceive the value that must attach to such ex-
 plantations on the part of man of M. Re- | mans intelligence. He finds himself in con-
 stant agreement with the author, who does
 nothing but interpret with extraordinary tact the latent impressions of his critic.
 M. Renan carries to such high point the
 art of pleasing that we enter without pro-
 test into the pleasantness of the account he gives of himself. He is incapable of evil, learned, happy, cheerful, witty, devoted to
 the ideal, indifferent to every vulgar aim. He demonstrates all this with such grace, such discretion and good humor, that the opera tion, exempt from vulgar vanity, from mo- lives of self-interest, M. Renan being at that point of literary eminence where 8 writer has nothing moro to gain, seems to go on in the pure ether of the abstract, among the causes-of things and above all questions of relative success