No More Learning

That night its throat he severed with a knife;
When thus complained the lamb's departing life:-
"Thou from the wolf didst save me then; but now,
Too plainly I perceive the wolf art thou. "
Translation of E. B. Eastwick.
HOW THE STUDENT SAVED TIME
From the Rose-Garden>
--
A
DISCIPLE said to his spiritual master, "What shall I do? for
I am in great straits because of the numbers of people
who come to visit me; and my occupations are disturbed
by their coming to and fro. " He replied, "Lend something to
those who are poor, and ask something of those who are rich,
in order that they may not come about thee again. "
If a mendicant were the leader of Islam's hosts,
The infidels would fly to China [itself] through fear of his soliciting
something.
Translation of J. T. Platts.


## p. 12649 (#63) ###########################################

SA'DI
12649
A POWERFUL VOICE
From the Rose-Garden'
NCE on a time, in traveling through Arabia Petræa, a com-
ON pany of devout youths shared my aspirations and my
journey. They used often to chant and repeat mystic
verses; and there was a devotee en route with us, who thought
unfavorably of the character of darweshes, and was ignorant of
their distress. When we arrived at the palm grove of the child-
ren of Hallal, a dark youth came out of one of the Arab fami-
lies, and raised a voice which might have drawn down the birds
from the air. I saw the camel of the devotee begin to caper,
and it threw its rider, and ran off into the desert. I said, "O
Shekh! it has moved a brute: does it not create any emotion in
thee? "
VERSE
Knowest thou what said the bird of morn, the nightingale, to me?
"What meanest thou that art unskilled in love's sweet mystery?
The camels, at the Arab's song, ecstatic are and gay:
Feel'st thou no pleasure, then thou art more brutish far than they! "
COUPLET
When e'en the camels join in mirth and glee,
If men feel naught, then must they asses be.
COUPLET
Before the blast the balsams bend in the Arab's garden lone;
Those tender shrubs their boughs incline: naught yields the hard firm
stone.
DISTICHS
All things thou seest still declare His praise;
The attentive heart can hear their secret lays.
Hymns to the rose the nightingale his name;
Each thorn's a tongue his marvels to proclaim.
Translation of E. B. Eastwick.


## p. 12650 (#64) ###########################################

12650
SA'DI
A VALUABLE VOICE
From the Rose-Garden'
PERSON
A
was performing gratis the office of summoner to
prayer in the mosque of Sanjāriyah, in a voice which dis-
gusted those who heard him. The patron of the mosque
was a prince who was just and amiable. He did not wish to
pain the crier, and said, "O sir! there are Muazzins attached to
this mosque to whom the office has descended from of old, each
of whom has an allowance of five dinārs, and I will give thee
ten to go to another place. " This was agreed upon, and he
departed. After some time he returned to the prince and said,
"O my lord! thou didst me injustice in sending me from this
place for ten dinārs. In the place whence I have come they
offered me twenty dīnārs to go somewhere else, and I will not
accept it. "
The prince laughed and said, "Take care not to
accept it, for they will consent to give thee even fifty dīnārs. ”
COUPLET
No mattock can the clay remove from off the granite stone
So well as thy discordant voice can make the spirit moan.
Translation of E. B. Eastwick.
FOR GOD'S SAKE! READ NOT
From the Rose-Garden>
A
MAN with a harsh voice was reading the Kur'an in a loud
tone. A sage passed by and asked, "What is thy monthly
stipend ? » He replied, "Nothing. " "Wherefore, then,"
asked the sage, "dost thou give thyself this trouble? " He
replied, "I read for the sake of God. " "Then," said the sage.
"for God's sake! read not. "
COUPLET
If in this fashion the Kur'ān you read,
You'll mar the loveliness of Islam's creed.
Translation of E. B. Eastwick.


## p. 12651 (#65) ###########################################

SA'DI
12651
THE GRASS AND THE ROSE
From the Rose-Garden'
I
SAW Some handfuls of the rose in bloom,
With bands of grass suspended from a dome.
I said, "What means this worthless grass, that it
Should in the roses' fairy circle sit? "
Then wept the grass, and said, "Be still! and know,
The kind their old associates ne'er forego.
Mine is no beauty, hue, or fragrance,―true;
But in the garden of the Lord I grew. "
His ancient servant I,
Reared by his bounty from the dust:
Whate'er my quality,
I'll in his favoring mercy trust.
No stock of worth is mine,
Nor fund of worship, yet he will
A means of help divine;
When aid is past, he'll save me still.
Those who have power to free,
Let their old slaves in freedom live,
Thou Glorious Majesty!
Me, too, thy ancient slave, forgive.
Sa'di! move thou to resignation's shrine,
O man of God! the path of God be thine.
Hapless is he who from this haven turns;
All doors shall spurn him who this portal spurns.
Translation of E. B. Eastwick.
A WITTY PHILOSOPHER REWARDED
From the Rose-Garden'
A panegyric upon him.
POET went to the chief of a band of robbers and recited a
He commanded them to strip off his
clothes and turn him out of the village. The dogs, too,
attacked him in the rear. He wanted to take up a stone, but
the ground was frozen. Unable to do anything, he said, "What
a villainous set are these, who have untied their dogs and tied
up the stones. " The chieftain heard this from a window, and


## p. 12652 (#66) ###########################################

SA'DI
12652
said with a laugh, "Philosopher! ask a boon of me. " He replied,
"If thou wilt condescend to make me a present, bestow on me
my own coat. "
COUPLET
From some a man might favors hope: from thee
We hope for nothing but immunity.
HEMISTICH
We feel thy kindness that thou lett'st us go.
The robber chief had compassion on him. He gave him back
his coat, and bestowed on him a fur cloak in addition; and fur-
ther, presented him with some dirhams.
Translation of E. B. Eastwick.
THE PENALTY OF STUPIDITY
From the Rose-Garden'
Α
MAN got sore eyes.
He went to a horse-doctor, and said,
"Treat me. " The veterinary surgeon applied to his eyes a
little of what he was in the habit of putting into the eyes
of quadrupeds, [and] he became blind. They carried the case
before the judge. He said, "No damages are [to be recovered]
from him: if this fellow were not an ass, he would not have gone
to a farrier. " The object of this story is, that thou mayst know
that he who intrusts an important matter to an inexperienced
person will suffer regret, and the wise will impute weakness of
intellect to him.
The clear-seeing man of intelligence commits not
Momentous affairs to the mean.
Although the mat-weaver is a weaver,
People will not take him to a silk factory.
Translation of J. T. Platts.


## p. 12653 (#67) ###########################################

SA'DI
12653
THE DEATH OF THE POOR IS REPOSE
From the 'Rose-Garden'
I
NOTICED the son of a rich man, sitting on the grave of his
father, and quarreling with a Dervish-boy, saying:-"The sar-
cophagus of my father's tomb is of marble, tessellated with
turquoise-like bricks! But what resembles thy father's grave?
It consists of two contiguous bricks, with two handfuls of mud
thrown over it. " The Dervish-boy listened to all this, and then
observed: "By the time thy father is able to shake off those
heavy stones which cover him, mine will have reached Paradise. "
An ass with a light burden
No doubt walks easily.
A Dervish who carries only the load of poverty
Will also arrive lightly burdened at the gate of death;
Whilst he who lived in happiness, wealth, and ease,
Will undoubtedly on all these accounts die hard;
At all events, a prisoner who escapes from all his bonds
Is to be considered more happy than an Amir taken prisoner.
Translation of the Kama Shastra Society.
THY WORST ENEMY
From the Rose-Garden'
I
ASKED an eminent personage the meaning of this traditionary
saying, "The most malignant of thy enemies is the lust which
abides within thee. " He replied, "It is because every enemy
on whom thou conferrest favors becomes a friend, save lust;
whose hostility increases the more thou dost gratify it. "
STANZA
By abstinence, n n might an angel be;
By surfeiting, his nature brutifies:
Whom thou obli st will succumb to thee —
Save lusts, which, sated, still rebellious rise.
Translation of E. B. Eastwick.


## p. 12654 (#68) ###########################################

12654
SA'DI
MAXIMS
From the Rose-Garden>
SAW with my eyes in the desert,
I
That a slow man overtook a fast one.
A galloping horse, fleet like the wind, fell back
Whilst the camel-man continued slowly his progress.
Nothing is better for an ignorant man than silence; and if he
were to consider it to be suitable, he would not be ignorant.
If thou possess not the perfection of excellence,
It is best to keep thy tongue within thy mouth.
Disgrace is brought on a man by his tongue.
A walnut having no kernel will be light.
A fool was trying to teach a donkey,
Spending all his time and efforts in the task;
A sage observed: "O ignorant man, what sayest thou?
Fear blame from the censorious in this vain attempt.
A brute cannot learn speech from thee,
Learn thou silence from a brute. "
He who acquires knowledge and does not practice it, is like
him who drives the plow and sows no seed.
Translations of the Kama Shastra Society and J. T. Platts.
SHABLI AND THE ANT
From the Garden of Perfume
LIST
ISTEN to one of the qualities of good men, if thou art thyself
a good man, and benevolently inclined!
Shabli, returning from the shop of a corn dealer, carried
back to his village on his shoulder a sack of wheat.
He looked and beheld in that heap of grain an ant which kept
running bewildered from corner to corner.
Filled with pity thereat, and unable to sleep at night, he car-
ried it back to its own dwelling, saying:-
"It were no benevolence to wound and distract this poor ant
by severing it from its own place! "
Soothe to rest the hearts of the distracted, wouldst thou be at
rest thyself from the blows of Fortune.


## p. 12655 (#69) ###########################################

SA'DI
12655
How sweet are the words of the noble Firdausi, upon whose
grave be the mercy of the Benignant One! -
«<
Crush not yonder emmet as it draggeth along its grain; for
it too liveth, and its life is sweet to it. "
A shadow must there be, and a stone upon that heart, that
could wish to sorrow the heart even of an emmet!
Strike not with the hand of violence the head of the feeble;
for one day, like the ant, thou mayest fall under the foot thyself!
Pity the poor moth in the flame of the taper; see how it is
scorched in the face of the assembly!
Let me remind thee that if there be many who are weaker
than thou art, there may come at last one who is stronger than
thou.
Graf's Text. Translation of S. Robinson.
SA'DI'S INTERVIEW WITH SULTAN ĀBĀQĀ- ĀN
From The Risalahs'
[Sa'di, after describing the circumstances of his introduction to the Sultan,
adds: -]
"W
HEN I was about to take my leave, his Majesty desiring me
to give him some counsel for his guidance, I answered:
"In the end you will be able to carry nothing from
this world but blessings or curses: now farewell. '»
The Sultan directed him to compose the purport of this in
verse, on which he immediately repeated the following stanzas:-
"Sacred be the revenue of the king who protects his subjects
from injury; for it is the earned hire of the shepherd.
"But poison be the portion of the prince who is not the
guardian of his people; for whosoever he devours is a capita-
tion tax exacted from the followers of Mohammed. "
Abaqā-ān wept, and several times said: "Am I the guardian
of my subjects or not? " To which the Shaikh as often replied:
"If you are, the first stanza is in favor of you; but if not, the
second is applicable. "
On taking his final leave, Sa'di repeated the following verses:
"A king is the shadow of the Deity; and the shadow must be
attached to the substance on which it depends.
"His people are incapable of doing good except under his all-
governing influence.
―


## p. 12656 (#70) ###########################################

12656
SA'DI
"Every good action performed on earth is affected by the
justice of its rulers.
"His kingdom cannot abound in rectitude, whose counsel is
erroneous. "
Abaqā-ān highly applauded the above and the preceding
verses; [and the Persian biographer adds a remark, that] "in these
times none of the learned men or Shaikhs of the age would
venture to offer such even to a shopkeeper or butcher; which
accounts indeed for the present state of society! "
Translation of J. H. Harington.
SUPPLICATION
From The Garden of Perfume
M
Y BODY still trembleth when I call to memory the prayers of
one absorbed in ecstasy in the Holy Place,
Who kept exclaiming to God, with many lamentations:
Cast me not off, for no one else will take me by the hand!
Call me to thy mercy, or drive me from thy door; on thy
threshold alone will I rest my head.
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


## p. 12658 (#72) ###########################################

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
-


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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


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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


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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


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CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
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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


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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.