New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-11-06
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. New York

fancies that he is adjoining great theme When
he pumps up magniloquent phrases about IT, we
feel that it is like coming upon cool ana
sweet spring in the desert to come upon such
words as these in Sainte- Beuve's note on the
history of the French Academy:
true classic as I should like to hear it defined,
Is an author who has enriched the human mind,
who has really augmented it's treasury. who has
caused it to take step in advance, who has DIS
covered moral truth that is not equiyocaI or
eternal passion in the heart where all seemed
known ana explored who has read@rFd nus Im0G I'm
ter what. if it be broad and grand refined ana
rational. healthful and beautiful in Itself; who
to be that for all the world a new style without
neologsms. new yet ancient easily contemporane-
Such a classic may be for a moment revolution
he is not he has never violently attacked that
which around him, he has Oyerthrown that
which hindered him only to reestabliSh. as soon as
possible the equilibrium to the profit Of the orderly
and the beautiful
n it is argued that Sainte-Beuve does not
say here all that is to be said the subject,
we shall not complain. He himself adds,
little further on that his definition of the classic
sis rather outside of the idea that usually
companies that title" But we quote the pas
sage not so much for it's substance. though that
is Of high value as for the air of candid sim
plicity ii wears. Here is humorlesS pontif,
playing the oracle with a SNUG consciousness of
his authority, but man of the world who
has been taught by experience to recognize the
interdependence of literature and life, and ad-
dresses his readers, as a matter OF course, with
an eye to essentials. He goes to the point, sweep
ing metaphy steal vapors aside along with all
the formula of the schools We can imagine a
strictly literary person fioundering through
pages and pages without coming as close to a
practicable definition of "a true classic as
Sainte-Beuve comes in the few lines we have
q
tidious horror of what constitutes the very salt
of Sainte-Beuves criticism, common sense
We put the manifestation of that quality that
is visible in his method in the foreground, Tor
in Sainte- Beuve's method lies much OF MS
charm and much of the force of the lesson which
he gives the modern critic. But it is also part
Of the charm. and part of the lesson. that his
method leaves you so free to enjoy its results
Though he did not have it in him to be eff
fective either as poet or as a novelist some
thing of the power exerted by both seems to
have passed into his criticism 1t is the power
TO realize a dramatic figure, to portray his
torical personage, for example, with vivid
h,ush The results achieved by that unaf
fccted method OF his are extraordinarily full of
vitality When he is dealing with Richelieu or
Mazarin with Ninon or La Grande Mademoiselle.
he does not Sc TO be the scholar; but there is
no question about his also playing the part of
the historical portrait painter. He seeks out
the little human traits that speak OF the heart
of his subject he selects the episodes which
show a human soul In action. and draws you
a likeness before he pronounces judgment Some
times he is so absorbed in the likeness that he
very nearly forgets his estimate. This is es
peciaIly noticeable in the essays which fill Miss
Wormeley's first volume historical essays all
One must turn to the second volume. to the
studies of Moliere, Bossuet, Nine. de Sevigne,
Pascal, Boileau. Racine, and on. to get the
full flavor of his quality critic. But I'm
literature as in history. he is still the maker of
portraits the of insight and sympathy
the interpreter of emotions well the
analyst of literary values