No More Learning

Thou knowest that we are helpless and miserable, sunk under
the weight of low desires,
And that these rebellious desires rush on with so much impet-
uosity, that wisdom is unable to check the rein.
For they come on in the spirit and power of Satan; and how
can the ant contend with an army of tigers?
O lead me in the way of those who walk in thy way; and
from those enemies grant me thy asylum!
By the essence of thy majesty, O God; by thine attributes
without comparison or likeness;
By the "Great is God" of the pilgrim in the Holy House; by
him who is buried at Yathreb - on whom be peace!
By the shout of the men of the sword, who account their
antagonists in the battle as woman;
By the devotion of the aged, tried, and approved; by the
purity of the young, just arisen;
In the whirlpool of the last breath, O save us in the last cry
from the shame of apostasy!
There is hope in those who have been obedient, that they
may be allowed to make intercession for those who have not
been obedient.


## p. 12657 (#71) ###########################################

SA'DI
12657
For the sake of the pure, keep me far from contamination;
and if error escape me, hold me excused.
By the aged, whose backs are bowed in obedience, whose
eyes, through shame of their past misdeeds, look down upon their
feet,
Grant that mine eye may not be blind to the face of happi-
ness; that my tongue may not be mute in bearing witness to the
Faith!
Grant that the lamp of Truth may shine upon my path; that
my hand may be cut off from committing evil!
Cause mine eyes to be free from blindness; withhold my hand
from all that is unseemly.
A mere atom, carried about by the wind, O stay me in thy
favor!
Mean as I am, existence and non-existence in me are but one
thing.
From the sun of thy graciousness a single ray sufficeth me;
for except in thy ray, no one would perceive me.
Look upon my evil; for on whomsoever thou lookest, he is
the better; courtesy from a king is enough for the beggar.
If in thy justice and mercy thou receive me, shall I complain
that the remission was not promised me?
O God, drive me not out on account of my errors from thy
door, for even in imagination I can see no other door.
And if in my ignorance I became for some days a stranger to
thee, now that I am returned shut not thy door in my face.
What excuse shall I bring for the disgrace of my sensuality,
except to plead my weakness before the Rich One?
Leave me not- the poor one - in my crimes and sins! The
rich man is pitiful to him who is poor.
Why weep over my feeble condition? If I am feeble, I have
thee for my refuge.
-
XXII-792
—
O God, we have wasted our lives in carelessness! What can
the struggling hand do against the power of Fate?
What can we contrive with all our planning? Our only prop
is apology for our faults.
All that I have done thou hast utterly shattered!
strength hath our self-will against the strength of God?
My head I cannot withdraw from thy sentence, when once thy
sentence hath been passed on my head.
Graf's Text. Translation of S. Robinson.
What


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12658
SA'DI
BE CONTENT
From The Rose-Garden>
I
NEVER complained of the vicissitudes of fortune, nor suffered
my face to be overcast at the revolution of the heavens,
except once, when my feet were bare and I had not the
means of obtaining shoes. I came to the chief mosque of Kūfah
in a state of much dejection, and saw there a man who had no
feet. I returned thanks to God and acknowledged his mercies,
and endured my want of shoes with patience, and exclaimed:-
STANZA
Roast fowl to him that's sated will seem less
Upon the board than leaves of garden-cress;
While, in the sight of helpless poverty,
Boiled turnip will a roasted pullet be.
Translation of E. B. Eastwick.


## p. 12659 (#73) ###########################################

12659
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
(1804-1869)
BY BENJAMIN W. WELLS
HARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE, who was born at Boulogne-
sur-Mer, December 23d, 1804, and died at Paris, October
13th, 1869, was one of the most brilliant French essayists and
one of the finest critical minds of the world's literature. He takes in
the France of the nineteenth century the place that Dr. Johnson held
in the England of the eighteenth; while his culture was as delicate
as, and his sympathies wider than, those of
Matthew Arnold, with whom it is natural
to compare him in our own day. He gave
himself so wholly to the humane life, to
the joy that he found in books, and to the
views of human nature that they opened to
him, that his literary studies, his 'Portraits'
and Monday Chats,' form his best biogra-
phy, and almost make superfluous the recol-
lections of his secretaries, Levallois, Pons,
and Troubat, or the labored biography of
his fellow academician Haussonville. It is
worth noting however that his first studies
were medical; for it was to this that he
attributed "the spirit of philosophy, the love
of exactness and physiological reality," that always marked his criti-
cal method,- even in those first contributions to the Globe, the
present Premiers Lundis,' where, as he said himself in later years,
"youth painted youth. "
The landmarks in Sainte-Beuve's uneventful life are his meeting
with Victor Hugo in 1827, his election to the Academy in 1845, his
nominations as Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1859 and as
Senator in 1865. For a half-century he was almost continuously a
resident of Paris. Twice he left it, to lecture at Lausanne and at
Liège; but wherever he was and whatever his functions,-journal-.
ist, professor, senator,- he was always the unwearied "naturalist
of human minds," the clear-sighted critic and generous advocate of
literary freedom.

C. A. SAINTE-BEUVE


## p. 12660 (#74) ###########################################

12660
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
.
To most men, Sainte-Beuve is known as the author of fifteen
volumes of 'Monday Chats' (the 'Causeries du Lundi ') and of their
continuation in the thirteen volumes of the 'New Monday Chats,' the
'Nouveaux Lundis. ' And it is for these that he best deserves to be
known; but before we turn to an attempt to estimate their qualities
and worth, the reader may be reminded that he is also the author of
two volumes of poetry (originally three), which are very significant in
the history of French prosody, where his signature can often be rec-
ognized in the verses of Baudelaire and Banville, and in that of the
lyric of democracy as it afterward came to be represented by Manuel
and Coppée. He wrote also a novel, 'Volupté,' which found "fit
audience though few"; and a History of Port-Royal,' the Jansenist
seminary made illustrious by Pascal, of which the seven volumes
are a monument of astounding industry and critical acumen. But the
'Monday Chats' by no means exhaust his purely literary work; which
under various titles Literary Critiques and Portraits,' 'Literary
Portraits,'
› Contemporary Portraits,' 'Portraits of Women,' 'Château-
briand and his Literary Group'— makes up a total of from forty to
fifty volumes.
This imposing mass is divided by the Revolution of 1848. Before
that date he is striving for the critical mastery, but making incur-
sions also into other fields. After his return from Liège in 1849 he
is the critical autocrat, always honored though not always beloved.
Yet the work of his apprentice years was of great importance in its
day. The portraits have not indeed the charm and winning grace
of the mature artist who wrote the passages that have been chosen
here to illustrate his genius; but they are full of art as well as
scholarship, and constructed almost from the very first on the critical
lines that he has laid down in his essay on Châteaubriand. To the
young Sainte-Beuve is due, more than to any of his contemporaries,
the revival of interest in the sixteenth century and in Ronsard.
These studies influenced, and for a time guided, the development of
romanticism, and stirred in Sainte-Beuve himself a faint poetic flame;
but even in verse he was a critic of his own sensations, and wooed
a refractory Muse.
With the weekly Monday Chats,' begun in Le Constitutionnel
newspaper in 1850, and continued in various journals with but one
considerable interruption until his death, began the epoch-making
work that will long keep his memory green among all lovers of the
humanities. Already he had made criticism a fine art; but he had
been too generous in his praise of his fellow romanticists. Now the
critical touch became more precise, the shading more exact. Nor
was the least remarkable thing about these essays the speed and
regularity of their production. Week after week, for year after year,


## p. 12661 (#75) ###########################################

CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
12661
saw its acute and learned study of from 7,000 to 7,500 words, full of
minute research and profound erudition, written, corrected, published.
He became, as he said of himself, "a workman by the piece and the
hour. " This method of production left no place for correction and
repentance. As the tree fell so it must lie. But this only seemed to
enhance the spontaneity of his essays. As a contemporary said, "He
had no time to spoil them. " And under this pressure his style grew
ever more supple, more concise and yet more popular, though it
never ceased to be scholarly and profound.
What other writing has ever appeared in daily journals at regular
intervals for a score of years, and has left such a permanent impress
on the world of letters as this? In France Sainte-Beuve's works form
the nucleus of every critical library. In England and in America
selections continue to be translated and read; among which the most
recent and perhaps the most representative are the 'Essays on Men
and Women' edited by William Sharp (London, 1890), and 'Select
Essays' translated by A. J. Butler (London, 1894). A reference to
Poole and Fletcher's 'Index to Periodical Literature' reveals no less
than thirty articles in English journals concerning the life and works.
of this genial lover of letters.
The subjects of his criticism were as world-wide as literature;
and into everything that he touched he put, as he said he sought
to do, "a sort of charm and at the same time more reality. " To all
his work he brought the calm temper of the scientific mind, rarely
crossed by querulous clouds or heated by the passion of controversy,
and not often roused to a glowing and self-forgetful enthusiasm. "I
have but one diversion, one pursuit," he said: "I analyze, I botanize.
I am a naturalist of minds. What I would fain create is literary
natural history. "
This mood is naturally drawn to the serious and austere. And
so Pascal, Bossuet, Shakespeare, and the Lake Poets attract Sainte-
Beuve more than Rabelais and Molière, or Chaucer and Byron. But
nothing human is wholly foreign to this collector of talents. He
passes with easy flight from Firdausī to General Jomini, from Madame
Desbordes-Valmore to the Comte de Saxe. He is naturally tolerant
of risin talent and of eccentric natures, and perhaps too ern to
those contemporaries who have achieved success and need correction
rather than encouragement. The unclassified attracts him; for to the
last he remains essentially subjective in his judgments, praising what
pleases him without measuring it on the procrustean bed of any crit-
ical code. And yet he felt that his method had in it the possibilities
of an exact science; and with this prophetic vision he prepared the
chosen people of literature to enter (with Taine for their Joshua) the
Canaan of critical naturalism.


## p. 12662 (#76) ###########################################

12662
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
Sainte-Beuve was more consistent in criticism than in ethics. Fund-
amentally he thought he had most in common with the materialists
of the eighteenth century: but while he was under the romantic spell
of Hugo, the smiles of a fair proselyter almost won him to Catholi-
cism; and later his restless mind seemed to sympathize, now with the
communism of Saint-Simon, now with the spiritual absolutism of Cal-
vin, now with the liberalism of Lamennais. But from each of these
moral experiments he came back to his first conception of life; and
in it he found perhaps as much mental repose as so restless a mind
could hope to enjoy or attain. He was not, and did not aspire to be,
a model of the distinctively Christian virtues; but he was always hon-
orable, single-minded, kindly, cheerful, and ready to make great sac-
rifices for the integrity of his critical independence. If his manifold
ethical experiments suggest a facile morality, yet they contributed to
give him a deep insight into human nature and a catholic sympathy
with it. Men may differ in their judgment of the man, but they are
constrained to unite in their admiration of the critic.
Ban, M. Mall
A CRITIC'S ACCOUNT OF HIS OWN CRITICAL METHOD
From the Nouveaux Lundis
I
Is understood then that to-day [July 22, 1862] you will allow
me to enter into some details about the course and method
that I have thought best to follow in studying books and tal-
ents. For me, literature-literary production-is not distinct,
or at least not separable, from the rest of the man and from its
environment. I can enjoy a work, but I can hardly judge it,
independently of a knowledge of the man himself. "The tree
is known by its fruits," as I might say; and so literary study
leads me quite naturally to the study of morals.
A day will come of which I have caught glimpses in the
course of my observations, a day when the science [of criti-
cism] will be established, when the great mental families and
their principal divisions will be known and determined. Then,
when the principal characteristic of a mind is given, we shall be
able to deduce many others from it. With men, no doubt, one


## p. 12663 (#77) ###########################################

CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
12663
can never work exactly as with animals or plants. Man is ethi-
cally more complex. He has what we call liberty, and what in
any case presupposes a great mobility of possible combinations.
But however that may be, we shall succeed in time, I think, in
establishing moral science on a broader basis. To-day it is at
the point where botany was before Jussieu and comparative
anatomy before Cuvier, in the stage, so to speak, of anecdote.
We for our part are making mere monographs, amassing detailed
observations: but I catch glimpses of connections, relations; and
a broader mind, more enlightened and yet keen in the perception
of detail, will be able some day to discover the great natural
divisions that represent the genera of minds.
But even when mental science shall be organized as one may
imagine it from afar, it will be always so delicate and so mobile
that it will exist only for those who have a natural vocation and
talent for observation. It will always be an art that will demand
a skillful artist; just as medicine demands medical tact in him
who practices it, as philosophy ought to demand philosophic tact
from those who pretend to be philosophers, as poetry demands
to be essayed only by a poet.
Suppose we have under observation a superior man, or one
merely noteworthy for his productions; an author whose works.
we have read, and who may be worth the trouble of a searching
study. How shall we go about it if we wish to omit nothing
important and essential, if we wish to shake off the old-fashioned
rhetorical judgments,-to be as little as possible the dupes of
phrases, words, conventional sentiments, and to attain the truth
as in a study of nature?
We shall surely recognize and rediscover the superior man,
at least in part, in his parents, especially in the mother; in his
sisters too, in his brothers, and even in his children. We shall
find there essential characteristics that in the great man are often
masked, because they are too condensed or too amalgamated. In
others of his blood we shall find his character more in its simple,
naked state. Nature herself has done the analysis for us.
It is enough to indicate my thought. I will not abuse it.
When you have informed yourself as far as possible about the
origin, the immediate and near relations of an eminent writer,
the essential point, after discussing his studies and his education,
is his first environment, — the first group of friends and contem-
poraries in which he found himself at the moment when his
-


## p. 12664 (#78) ###########################################

12664
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
For
talent was revealed, took material form and became adult.
be sure his talent will bear the mark of it, and whatever he may
do later he will feel it always.
The very great men depend on no group; they make cen-
tres themselves; people gather around them: but it is the group,
association, alliance, and active exchange of ideas, a perpetual
emulation in presence of one's equals and peers,- that gives
to the man of talent all his productive energy, his development,
and his value. There are talents that share at the same time
in several groups, and never cease to pass through successive
environments; perfecting, transforming, or deforming themselves.
Then it is important to note, even in these variations and slow
or sudden conversions, the hidden and unchanging impulse, the
persistent force.
Each work of an author examined in this way, in its place,
after you have put it back into its framework and surrounded it
with all the circumstances that marked its birth, acquires its
full significance,- its historic, literary significance; it recovers its
just degree of novelty, originality, or imitation: and you run no
risk in your criticism of discovering beauties amiss, and admiring
beside the mark, as is inevitable when you depend on rhetorical
criticism alone.
-
For the critic who is studying a talent, there is nothing like
catching it in its first fire, its first outpouring; nothing like
breathing it in its morning hour, in its efflorescence of soul and
youth. The first proof of an engraved portrait has for the artist
and the man of taste a price which nothing that follows can
equal. I know no joy for the critic more exquisite than to com-
prehend and portray a young talent in its freshness, in its frank
and primitive aspect, anticipating all the foreign and perhaps
factitious elements that may mingle with it.
O first and fruitful hour from which all takes its date! Inef-
fable moment! It is among men of the same age, and of the
same hour almost, that talent loves to choose for the rest of its
career, or for the longer half of it, its companions, its witnesses,
its emulators,- its rivals too, and its adversaries. Each chooses
his own opponent, his own point of view. There are such rival-
ries, challenges, piques, among equals or almost equals, that last
a whole lifetime. But even though we should be a little infe-
rior, let us never desire that a man of our generation should
fall and disappear, even though he were a rival and though he


## p. 12665 (#79) ###########################################

CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
12665
should pass for an enemy.
For if we have true worth, he too,
at need and on occasion, will warn the coming ignorant genera-
tions and the insolence of youth, that in us they have to do with
an old athlete whom they may not despise or dismiss with levity.
His own self-esteem is interested in it. He has measured him-
self with us in the good old times. He has known us in our
best days. I will clothe my thought with illustrious names.
is still Cicero who renders the noblest homage to Hortensius.
phrase of Æschines remains the fairest eulogy of Demosthenes.
And the Greek hero Diomedes, speaking of Æneas in Virgil, and
wishing to give a lofty idea of him: "Trust him," said he, "who
has measured his own strength with him. "
It
It is not only important to catch a talent at the moment of
its first essay, at its first outburst, when it appears full-formed
and more than adolescent, when it declares its own majority.
There is a second period to note, not less decisive if one wishes
to take in the whole man. It is the moment when he begins to
spoil, to decay, to fail, or to err. Some stiffen and dry, some
yield and lose their hold, some grow hard, some heavy, some
bitter. The smile becomes a wrinkle. After the first moment
when talent in its brilliant blossoming has become man,- the
young man confident and proud,—one must note this second, sad
moment when age unmakes and changes him.
One cannot take too many ways to know a man, nor ap-
proach him from too many sides; for a man is something quite
different from pure spirit. Until you have asked yourself a cer-
tain number of questions about an author, and answered them,
though only to yourself and under your breath, you are not sure
that you have him wholly, though those questions may seem.
most foreign to the nature of his writings: What did he think
about religion? How was he affected by the spectacle of nature?
How did he bear himself in regard to women, and to money?
Was he rich? Was he poor? What was his regimen, his daily
habit of life? And so on. In short, What was his vice or his
foible? Everybody has one. None of these responses is indif-
ferent to the judgment of the author of a book, and of the book
itself, unless the book be a treatise on pure geometry; not if it
is at all a literary work,- that is to say, a book into which he
enters at all. .
-
-
Up to a certain point one can study talents in their moral
posterity, in their disciples and natural admirers. That is a last


## p. 12666 (#80) ###########################################

12666
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
easy and convenient means of observation. Such affinities either
proclaim or betray themselves. Genius is a king who creates
his people.
Tell me who loves, who admires you, and I
will tell you who you are.
The disciples who imitate the
manner and taste of their model in writing are very curious to
follow, and best suited in their turn to cast light on him. The
disciple usually exaggerates or parodies his master without sus-
pecting it. In rhetorical schools he enfeebles, in picturesque and
naturalistic schools he forces, heightens to excess, exaggerates.
He is an enlarging mirror. When the master is negligent, and
the disciple careful and dressed in Sunday clothes, they resem-
ble one another. On days when Châteaubriand writes badly
and Marchangy does his best, they have a deceptive resemblance.
From a little further off, from behind, and by moonlight, you
might mistake them for one another.
If it is just to judge a talent by his friends and natural fol-
lowers, it is not less legitimate to judge him and counter-judge
him (for it is in fact a sort of counter-proof) by the enemies
whom he rouses and unwittingly attracts; by his contraries, his
antipathies; by those who instinctively cannot bear him. Nothing
serves better to mark the limits of a talent, to circumscribe its
sphere and domain, than to know the exact points where revolt
against it begins. In its detail this even becomes piquant to
watch. In literature people detest one another sometimes all
their lives, and yet have never met. So the antagonism between
mental genera grows clear. What would you have? It's in the
blood, in the temperament, in first prejudices which often do
not depend on ourselves. When it is not low envy, it is racial
hatred. How will you make Boileau enjoy Quinault, and Fon-
tenelle think highly of Boileau, and Joseph de Maistre or Monta-
lembert love Voltaire? But I have said enough to-day about the
natural method in literature.
ALFRED DE MUSSET
From 'Causeries du Lundi,' May 11th, 1857. (Abridged. )
I
T Is the duty of each generation, as it is of an army, to bury
its dead and to do them the last honors. It would not be
just that the charming poet who has just been taken away
should disappear without receiving-amid all that has been said


## p.
12667 (#81) ###########################################

CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
12667
and what will be said, true and heart-felt, of his talent -- some
special words of farewell from an old friend, from a witness of
his first steps. The melodious strain of Alfred de Musset was so
familiar to us, so dear from the very first; it had so penetrated
our hearts in its freshness and buoyant novelty; it was, though
more youthful, so part of our own generation,-a generation
then all poetry and all devoted to feeling and expression. It is
nineteen years ago; and I see him still making his entry in the
literary world,-first in the intimate circle of Victor Hugo, then
in that of Alfred de Vigny and the Deschamps brothers. What
a début! What easy graciousness! and at the very first verses
that he recited,- his 'Andalouse,' his 'Don Paez,' and his
'Juana,' what surprise, what rapture he aroused among us! It
was spring itself; a whole springtime of poetry that budded be-
fore our eyes. He was not eighteen. His forehead was strong
and proud. His downy cheek still preserved the roses of child-
hood, his nostrils swelled with the breath of desire. He advanced
with firm tread and eye upcast, as though sure of conquest and
full of the pride of life. No one at the first sight gave a bet-
ter idea of adolescent genius. All those brilliant couplets, those
outpourings of verse that their very success has since caused
to be outworn, but which were then so new in French poetry;
all those passages marked as if with a Shakespearean accent,
those furious rushes mingled with petulant audacities and smiles,
those flashes of heat and precocious storm,—seemed to promise
a Byron to France.
The graceful delicate songs that flitted each morning from
his lips, and presently were running over the lips of all, were
indeed of his age. But passion was to him a divination. He
breathed it in with might, he sought to outrun it. He asked
its secret of friends richer in experience, still dripping from
their shipwreck.
At the dance, at receptions and gay
festivals, when he met pleasure he did not restrain himself; he
sought by reflection to distill its sadness, its bitterness. He said
to himself, even as he gave himself up with an appearance of
self-surrendering transport, and even as it were to increase its
savor, that this was only a fleeting instant, soon to be irrepara-
ble, that would never recur in this same light. And in all he
sought a stronger, keener sensation, in accord with the key to
which he had tuned his soul. He found that the roses of a day
did not fade fast enough. He would gladly uproot them all that


## p. 12668 (#82) ###########################################

12668
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
he might the better breathe them in and press from them their
essence.
I only touch the subject; but if we take up and glance over
again, now that he is no more, many of the pieces and person-
ages of Alfred de Musset, we shall now perceive in this child of
genius just the opposite of Goethe: of that Goethe who detached
himself in time from his creations, even from those most inti-
mate in their origin; who worked out his characters only to a
certain point; who cut the bond in time, abandoned them to the
world, being already himself altogether elsewhere; and for whom
"poetry was a deliverance. " Goethe, even from his youth, from
the time of Werther, was preparing to live till past eighty. For
Alfred de Musset, poetry was the opposite of that.
His poetry
was himself. He was riveted wholly to it. He cast himself into
it recklessly. It was his youthful soul, it was his flesh and blood
that flowed; and when he had cast to others these shreds, these
glorious limbs of the poet, that seemed at times like limbs of
Phaëthon and of a young god (recall, for instance, the magnifi-
cent apostrophes and invocations of 'Rolla '), he kept still his
own shred, his bleeding heart, his burning weary heart. Why
was he not patient? All would have come in due time. But he
hasted to condense and to devour the years.
·
•
Musset was poet only. He wished to feel. He was of a gen-
eration whose password, the first wish inscribed at the bottom
of their hearts, had been, Poetry for its own sake, Poetry above
all. "In all the period of my fair youth," one of the poets of
that same epoch has said, "there was nothing that I desired or
summoned so with prayers or adored as I did holy Passion, "—
passion; that is to say, the living substance of poetry. So Mus-
set was superlatively prodigal above all. Like a reckless soldier,
he would not provide in advance for the second half of the jour-
He would have disdained to accept what men call wisdom,
and what seemed to him the gradual ebbing of life. It was not
for him to transform himself. When he attained the summit,
and even while he was still climbing the hillside, it seemed to
him that he had reached and passed the goal of all desires.
Satiety had laid hold on him.
Recall his first songs of page or knightly lover,
and
put opposite to this that admirable and pitiful final sonnet: the
whole poetic career of Alfred de Musset is embraced between
these two,- Glory and Pardon. What a brilliant track, boldly


## p. 12669 (#83) ###########################################

CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
12669
traced; what light, what eclipse, and what shadow! Poet who
was but a dazzling type of many obscurer souls of his age, who
has symbolized their flights and their falls, their grandeurs and
their miseries,- his name will not die. Let us guard it en-
graven with peculiar care; us to whom he left the burdens of
age, and who could say that day, with truth, as we returned
from his funeral, "For years our youth was dead, but we have
just buried it with him. " Let us admire, let us continue to love
and honor in its better part, the spirit, deep or fleeting, that he
breathed into his songs. But let us draw from it also this wit-
ness to the infirmity that clings to our being, and never let us
presume in pride on the gifts that human nature has received.
GOETHE: AND BETTINA BRENTANO
From Portraits of Men'
IT
IT MAY be remembered that we have already seen Jean Jacques
Rousseau in correspondence with one of his admirers, whose
partiality towards him ultimately developed into a warmer
sentiment. After reading 'La Nouvelle Heloïse,' Madame de la
Tour-Franqueville became extremely enthusiastic, believing her-
self to be a Julie d'Etange; and thereupon indited somewhat
ardent love-letters to the great author, who in his misanthropical
way treated her far from well. It is curious to note, in a simi-
lar case, how differently Goethe, the great poet of Germany,
behaved to one of his admirers who declared her love with such
wild bursts of enthusiasm. But not more in this case than in
the other must we expect to find a true, natural, and mutual
affection, the love of two beings who exchange and mingle their
most cherished feelings. The adoration in question is not real
love it is merely a kind of worship, which requires the god
and the priestess. Only, Rousseau was an invalid,- a fretful
god, suffering from hypochondria, who had fewer good than bad
days; Goethe, on the other hand, was a superior god, calm and
equable, in good health and benevolent,-in fact, the Olympian
Jupiter, who looks on smiling.
In the spring of 1807 there lived at Frankfort a charming
young girl nineteen years of age,* though of such small stature
fact twenty-two, having been born April 4, 1785. — Ed.
* She was


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CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
that she only appeared to be twelve or thirteen. Bettina Bren-
tano, the child of an Italian father, who had settled and married
at Frankfort, came of a family noted for its originality, each
member having some singular or fantastic characteristic.
said in the town that "madness only began in the Brentano
family where it ended in other people. " Little Bettina consid-
ered this saying as a compliment. "What others call eccentricity
is quite comprehensible to me," she would remark, "and is part
of some esoteric quality that I cannot define. " She had in her
much of the devil and the imp; in fact, all that is the reverse
of the bourgeois and conventional mind, against which she waged
eternal war. A true Italian as regards her highly colored, pict-
uresque, and vivid imagination, she was quite German in her
dreamy enthusiasm, which at times verged on hallucination. She
would sometimes exclaim, "There is a demon in me, opposed to
all practical reality. " Poetry was her natural world. She felt
art and nature as they are only felt in Italy; but her essentially
Italian conceptions, after having assumed all the colors of the
rainbow, usually ended in mere vagaries. In short, in spite of
the rare qualities with which little Bettina was endowed, she
lacked what might be called sound common-sense,- a quality
hardly in keeping with all her other gifts. It seemed as if
Bettina's family, in leaving Italy for Germany, had instead of
passing through France come by the way of Tyrol, with some
band of gay Bohemians. The faults to which I have just alluded
grow sometimes graver the older one becomes; but at nineteen
they merely lend an additional charm and piquancy. It is almost
necessary to apologize in speaking so freely in relation to Bet-
tina; for Signorina Brentano-having become Frau d'Arnim, and
subsequently widow of Achim d'Arnim, one of the most distin-
guished poets of Germany-is now living in Berlin, surrounded
by some of the most remarkable men of the day. She receives
a homage and consideration not merely due to the noble quali-
ties of her mind, but to the excellency of her character. This
woman, who was once such a frolicsome imp, is now known as
one of the most unselfish and true-hearted of her sex.
-
However, it was she herself who in 1835, two years after
Goethe's death, published the correspondence that enables us to
glean an accurate knowledge of her character; allowing us-in
fact, compelling us to speak so unconstrainedly in relation to
her. This book-translated into French by a woman of merit,
-


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CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
12671
who has concealed her identity under the nom de plume of “St.
Sebastien Albin "—is a most curious work, enabling us to realize
the difference that distinguishes the German genius from our
own. The preface, as written by the authoress, is thus worded:
"This book is intended for good, not bad people. " This is simi-
lar to saying, "Honi soit qui mal y pense. " It was quite sud-
denly that Bettina fell in love with the great poet Goethe; but
her romantic feeling was of a purely ideal nature, for as yet she
had never seen him. While musing alone one summer morn in
the redolent and silent garden, Goethe's image presented itself
to her mind. She only knew him through his renown and his
works, in fact, through the very evil she heard spoken in rela-
tion to his cold and indifferent character. But the idea instantly
captivated her imagination; she had discovered an object for her
worship. Goethe was then fifty-eight years of age. In his youth
he had conceived a slight affection for Bettina's mother. For
many years he had lived at Weimar, at the small court of Charles
Augustus; in favor or rather intimate friendship with the prince.
There he calmly pursued his vast studies, forever creating with
prolific ease; he was then at the height of contentment, genius,
and glory.
Goethe's mother lived at Frankfort. She and Bettina became
great friends; and the young girl began to love, study, and under-
stand the son in the person of this remarkable mother, so worthy
of him to whom she had given birth. Goethe's aged parent,-
"Goethe's Lady Counselor," as she was called,- with her noble
(I was about to say august) character, and her mind so replete
with great sayings and memorable conversations, liked nothing
better than to converse about her son. In speaking of him "her
eyes would dilate like those of a child," and beam with content-
ment. Bettina became the old lady's favorite; and on entering
her room would take a stool at her feet, rush at random into
conversation, disturb the order of everything around her, and
being certain of forgiveness, would allow herself every freedom.
The worthy Frau Goethe, being gifted with great discernment
and common-sense, perceived from the very first that Bettina's
love for her son would lead to no serious consequences, and that
this flame would injure no one. She would laugh at the child's
fancy, and in so doing would profit by it. Not a day passed
without this happy mother thinking of her son; "and these
thoughts," she would say, "are gold to me. " If not to Bettina,
―――――――


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12672
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
to whom could she express them, before whom could she count
her gold-this treasure not intended for the ears of the profane?
So, when the frolicsome young creature was absent, running
along the banks of the Rhine, and playing the truant in every old
tower and rock, she would be greatly missed by her dear "Lady
Counselor. " The old lady would write to her in the following
manner:
"Hasten homeward. I do not feel so well this year as last.
At times I long, with a certain foreboding, for your presence,
and for hours together I sit thinking of Wolfgang" (Goethe's
Christian name); "of the days when he was a child playing at
my feet, or relating fairy tales to his little brother James. It is
absolutely necessary that I should have some one with whom I
can converse in relation to all this, and nobody listens to me as
well as yourself. I truly wish you were here. "
On returning to the mother of the man she adored, Bettina
would hold long conversations with the venerable lady about
Goethe's childhood, his early promise, the circumstances attend-
ant on his birth; about the pear-tree his grandfather planted to
celebrate its anniversary, and which afterwards flourished so well;
about the green arm-chair where his mother would sit, relating
to him tales that made him marvel. Then they would speak
about the first signs of his awakening genius. Never was the
childhood of a god studied and watched in its minutest details
with more pious curiosity. One day, while he was crossing the
road with several other children, his mother and a friend, who
were at the window, remarked that he walked with "great maj-
esty," and afterwards told him his upright bearing distinguished
him from the other boys of his age. "That is how I wish to
begin," he replied: "later on I shall distinguish myself in many
different ways. " "And this has been realized," his mother would
add on relating the incident.
Bettina knew everything about Goethe's early life better than
he did himself, and later on he had recourse to her knowledge
when wishing to write his memoirs. She was right in saying,
"As to me, what is my life but a profound mirror of your
own? "
In his boyhood Goethe was considered one of the finest fel-
lows of his age. He was fond of skating, and one fine afternoon
he persuaded his mother to come and watch him sporting on the
ice. Goethe's mother, liking sumptuous apparel, arrayed herself


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CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
12673
in "a pelisse, trimmed with crimson velvet, that had a long train
and gold clasps," and she drove off in a carriage with friends.
"On arriving at the river Mein, we found my son energet-
ically skating. He flew like an arrow through the throng of
skaters; his cheeks were rosy from the fresh air, and his auburn
locks were denuded of their powder. On perceiving my crimson
pelisse, he immediately came up to the carriage, and looked at
me with a gracious smile. 'Well, what do you require? ' I said
to him. 'Mother, you are not cold in the carriage, so give me
your velvet mantle. ' 'But you do not wish to array yourself in
my cloak, do you? '-'Yes, certainly. '-There was I, taking off
my warm pelisse, which he donned; and throwing the train over
his arm, he sprang on the ice like a very son of the gods. Ah,
Bettina! if you had only seen him! Nothing could have been
finer. I clapped my hands with joy. All my life I shall see
him as he was then, proceeding from one archway and entering
through the other, the wind the while raising the train of the
pelisse, that had fallen from his arm. "
And she added that Bettina's mother was on the bank, and it
was her whom her son wished to please that day.
Have you not perceived in this simple tale told by the mother,
all the pride of a Latona? "He is a son of the gods! " These
were the words of a Roman senator's wife, of a Roman empress,
or Cornelia, rather than the utterance of a Frankfort citizen's
spouse! The feeling that then inspired this mother in regard to
her son, ultimately permeated the heart of the German nation.
Goethe is "the German fatherland. " In reading Bettina's letters,
we find ourselves, like her, studying Goethe through his mother;
and in so doing we discover his simple and more natural grand-
eur. Before the influence of court etiquette had distorted some
of his better qualities, we see in him the true sincerity of his
race. We wish his genius had been rather more influenced by
this saying of his mother, "There is nothing grander than when
the man is to be felt in the man. "
―
-
It is said that Goethe had but little affection for his mother;
that he was indifferent towards her, - not visiting her for years,
though he was only a distance of about forty miles from where
she lived. And on this point he has been accused of coldness
and egotism. But here, I think, there has been exaggeration.
Before denying any quality to Goethe it is necessary to think
twice. At first sight we imagine him to be cold; but this very
XXII-793


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CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
coldness often conceals some underlying quality. A mother does
not continue to love and revere her son when he has been
guilty of a really serious wrong towards her. Goethe's mother
did not see anything wrongful in her son's conduct, and it does
not beseem us to be severer than she. This son loved his
mother in his own way; and though his conduct could not per-
haps be exactly regarded as the model of filial behavior, it cannot
be said that he was in any wise ungrateful. "Keep my mother's
heart warm," he would say in writing to Bettina.
"I
should like to be able to reward you for the care you take of
my mother. A chilling draught seemed to emanate from her sur-
roundings. Now that I know you are near her I feel comforted
— I feel warm. " The idea of a draught makes us smile. Fonte-
nelle could not have expressed himself better. I have sometimes
thought Goethe might be defined as a Fontenelle invested with
poetry.
At the time of his mother's death, Bettina wrote to him, allud-
ing to the cold disposition that was supposed to characterize him
- a disposition inimical to all grief: "It is said that you turn
away from all that is sad and irreparable: do not turn away from
the image of your dying mother; remember how loving and wise
she was up to the last moment, and how the poetic element pre-
dominated in her. " By this last touch, Bettina evinced her knowl-
edge of how to affect the great poet. Goethe responded in words.
replete with gratitude for the care she had shown his mother in
her old age. But from that day their relationship suffered by the
loss of the being who had forged the link between them. How-
ever, as I have already mentioned, Bettina was in love with
Goethe. We might ask what were the signs of this feeling. It
was not an ordinary affection; it was not even a passionate love,
which, like that of Dido, Juliet, or Virginia, burns and consumes
until the desire is satisfied. It was an ideal sentiment; better
than a love purely from the imagination, and yet dissimilar to
one entirely from the heart. I scarcely know how to explain
the feeling, and even Bettina herself could hardly define what
she felt. The fact is that, gifted with a vivid imagination,
exquisite poetical feeling, and a passionate love of nature, she
personified all her tastes and youthful inspirations in Goethe's
image, loving him with rapture as the incarnation of all her
dreams. Her love did not sadden her, but on the contrary,
rendered her happier. "I know a secret," she would say: "the
·
-


## p. 12675 (#89) ###########################################

CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
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greatest happiness is when two beings are united, and the Divine
genius is with them. "
It generally sufficed her to be thus united in spirit. Goethe,
whose insight into life and human nature was as profound as his
knowledge of the ideal, had from the first understood the quality
of this love, and did not shun it, though at the same time he
avoided too close a contact. The privilege of the gods is, as we
all know, the possession of eternal youth: even at fifty-eight years
of age, Goethe would not have been able to endure every day with
impunity the innocent familiarities and enticements of Bettina.
But the girl lived far away. She wrote him letters, full of life,
brilliant with sensibility, coloring, sound, and manifold fancies.
These epistles interested him, and seemed to rejuvenate his mind.
A new being, full of grace, was revealing herself to the observa-
tion of his poetical and withal scientific mind. She opened for
his inspection "an unlooked-for book, full of delightful images
and charming depictions. " It seemed to him as much worth his
while reading this book as any other; especially as his own name
was to be found on every page, encircled with a halo of glory.
He called Bettina's letters "the gospel of nature. "
"Continue,"
he would say, "preaching your gospel of nature. " He felt that
he was the god-made man of that evangel. She recalled to his
mind (and his artistic talent needed it) the impressions and the
freshness of the past, all of which he had lost in his somewhat
artificial life. "All you tell me brings me back remembrances
of youth; it produces the effect of events gone by, which all of a
sudden we distinctly remember, though for a long time we may
have forgotten them. "
Goethe never lavished his attention on Bettina, although he
never once repulsed her. He would reply to her letters in a
sufficiently encouraging way for her to continue writing. There
was a strange scene the very first time Bettina met Goethe; and
from the way she describes the meeting, we perceive that she
does not write for the benefit of the cynical scoffer. Towards
the end of April, in 1807, she accompanied her sister and her
brother-in-law to Berlin, and they promised to return by the way
of Weimar. They were obliged to pass through the regiments
that were then occupying the land. On this journey Bettina was
arrayed in male attire, and sat on the box of the coach in order
to see farther; while at every halting-place she assisted in har-
nessing and unharnessing the horses. In the morning she would


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CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
.
"
shoot off a pistol in the forests, and clamber up the trees like
a squirrel, for she was peculiarly agile (Goethe called her the
Little Mouse). One day, when in an uncommonly frolicsome
mood she had ascended into one of the Gothic sculptures of the
Cologne Cathedral, she commenced a letter in the following way
to Goethe's mother:-
-:
"Lady Counselor, how alarmed you would be to see me now,
seated in a Gothic rose. "
Somewhere else she says: "I prefer dancing to walking, and
I prefer flying to dancing. "
Bettina arrived at Weimar after passing several sleepless nights
on the box of the coach. She immediately called on Wieland,
who knew her family; and obtained from him a letter, intro-
ducing her to Goethe. On arriving at the house of the great
poet, she waited a few minutes before seeing him. Suddenly the
door opened, and Goethe appeared.
"He surveyed me solemnly and fixedly. I believe I stretched
out my hands towards him - I felt my strength failing me!
Goethe folded me to his heart, murmuring the while, 'Poor child!