Note C — SAINTE-BEUVE.

At the moment when we are sending this sketch to press a specimen of the sort of criticism to which we have alluded comes to us in the form of an article in the Quarterly Review for January,—the subject, M. Sainte-Beuve himself. One wonders how it is that the writer, who, if really familiar with the productions he criticises, must have been indebted to them for many hours of enjoyment, much curious information, and a multitude of suggestions and stimulants to reflection, should have had no feeling of kindliness or gratitude for the author. But then the question comes up, Was he in reality familiar with the works? Several of his statements might provoke a doubt upon this point. We cite a single example. Speaking of M. Sainte-Beuve's temporary connection with the Saint-Simonians, he says: "For a brief season he appears to have felt some of the zeal of a neophyte, speaking the speech and talking the vague nonsense of his new friends. But soon his native good-sense seems to have perceived that the whole thing was only a fevered dream of a diseased age." Now the reviewer, if he knows anything of the doctrines in question, is entitled to express his opinion of them, even if he does it in tautological and slipshod English. But he has no right to attribute his own opinions to M. Sainte-Beuve, who is so far from holding them that, in articles written so lately as in 1861 (Nouveaux Lundis, I.), he has not only traced the enduring influence of Saint-Simonianism upon some of the ablest minds in France, but has contended that what were once considered the wildest dreams of that system have since been substantially realized. Perhaps the reviewer thinks that, as M. Sainte-Beuve is "a chameleon," with scarcely one single fixed opinion on any problem, literary, philosophical, political, or religious, there can be no harm in fathering upon him any notion from whatever source. But on one point at least—the duty of being accurate in the statement of other persons' opinions—M. Sainte-Beuve has shown an unwavering consistency.