New-York tribune., 1905-01-15
O5e Netn'2lo1.k gribarores
SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 1905.
ILLUSTRATED SUPPLEMENT.


ley are anxious to erect monument to him |
and have formed n committee which will endeaV- /
or TO raise subscriptions for the purpose. The !
bust which ROdin made of him many years ago |
will be embodied in the memorial Scuptured |
setting for the bronze being also supplied by |
the famous Frenchman who thus pays grace |
full tribute to one who quick to appreciate |
him when others passed by the other side.
The Dean and Chapter of st. PauTs have al |
ready agreed to give a site in the cathedral. |
Lord Windsor is chairman of the committee, !
which includes Mr.. BalfOur, Lord ROSebery, |
Lord Roberts, Mr.. Joseph Conrad, Mr.. Rudyard |
Kipling and Mr. George Meredith. The success
of the enterprise may be assumed as matter |
Of course. Its ultimate justification is not by |
any means to be taken a matter of course. |
We do not grudge Henley his memorial, yet |
we must confess that it strikes US as unduly |
magnifying his Importance. Though he was a |
vigorous journalist, his influence was bad, |
since it made for cOnceited and swashbuck-
ling mode of writing. Though he was clever
man of letters and agreeable minor poet he |
wrote nothing really memorable. The idea of
hOnOring him with a monument in st. PaurS |
suggests, more than anything else, the modern
tendency to force the temporary idol of clique |
into the company of the mmortals.
The celebrations at Paris and at BOulOgne
sur-Mur of the centenary of Sainte Beuve have
had, as was to be expected, their reverbera-
tons across the Channel and these have testi-
fed in the main, to warm appreciation of his
work. At the same time there have appeared
in the English press some curious signs of that |
disposition to pick flaws in a great literary rep
utaton which it is difficult to explain on a |
purely literary hypothesis. The critic of ''The |
Times" for example. has discovered that
Sainte-BeUve was not gentleman Mr.. Fran
els Gribble writing about him in the Fort
nightly finds it necessary to retail more than
one of the dubious anecdotes which have been |
told TO show that the great critic was not, in
his private life, all that great critic should .
be- The truth must be told. When the detn- |
tive biography of Sainte- Beuve comes to be
written, his imperfectiOnS well his merits {
will have to be placed on record. But in the
mean time it is stupid, to say the least, to dig
up the vulgar tattle of his contemporaries, and
to beStOW superior SneerS upon failingS which |
have nothing to do with the thing which con
Germs us most, the great mass of admirable lit
erature he left behind him. The GOncOurt
brothers could not help writing shabbily about
him; that sort of thing in their natures.
The critic of to-day, who owes much to those
incompatible "Causeries' might well cOntine
himself to the better side of the man who
wrote them, if he must touch personal ques-
tions at all, and leave the duties of the scav-
enger to be fulfilled by someone else. Espe
Sainte- Beuve's better side He was not Il saint,
but he had his virtues. And, we repeat, the
"Causeres' are always there to show that in
the part he was born to play he preserved n
fine character inviOlate.
Last week it was Mr.. Andrew Lang who was
complaining that the new novels of the moment
are often dull or dirty, and frequently are
both" This week it is the Rev. John Watson.
better known as Ian Maclaren,' from whom
Ap hear the same subject. He has been
delivering an address on kindness in Fiction"
.nd the result of his inquest appears to have
Jcen that in modern fiction the note of kind
'cSS is conspicuous by its absence. in what
accounted the best writer's of today he
aid. you will be struck rather by a want of
ympathy and humanity" He admitted that
hey drew slum life, for example, with accu-
acy and with much descriptive power, but he
complained that they did not touch it with
,cntle hand, but, in fact treated the life of
,oor streets and poor people much as an anatO-
mist treated a body the dissecting table.
The misery of unsuitable marriage" he went
1n lis treated with much brlliancy of style,
but the result is to diSparage the institution on
which s-ciety is built Or such writer's take
the life of society and before the reader puts
the book down he is left with the idea. proba-
bly, erroneous, that i'll what is called society