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Fundamental, creative criticism like Sainte-Beuve's, Matthew Arnold's, Walter Pater's, like Dryden's, Brunetiere's, De Gourmont's, or Croce's will presumably come. The conditions, both of publication and of audience, are ripe for it now in the United States. But there is a good deal of spade work in the study of literature to be done first, and still more education of the reading American mind.
Probably a Frenchman will be inclined to apply Sainte-Beuve's remarks on Amiel's elder countryman, Rodolphe Toepffer, to Amiel himself: "C'est ainsi qu'on ecrit dans les litteratures qui n'ont point de capitale, de quartier general classique, ou d'Academie; c'est ainsi qu'un Allemand, qu'un Americain, ou meme un Anglais, use a son gre de sa langue.
Since the proof of this gift or loan was found in Beyle's papers, at his death, Sainte-Beuve's explanation seems well grounded; and yet, for Balzac's credit, one could have wished his praise more spontaneous." The cessation of the Revue Parisienne forced its founder again to enter the ranks of paid contributors to the daily press, and to comply with its exigencies. Yet not entirely.
It finds its support in positivist philosophy; Herbart in Germany, Bentham and Mill in England, Comte and Littre in France. In criticism, Sainte-Beuve's third manner. On the stage, the younger Dumas. In novels, the brothers Goncourt, and Flaubert. In Art, a certain brutality in the choice of subject, Gerome and Regnault.
I know not: at this elevation one always gets into the clouds. M. Sainte-Beuve's irony, keen and delicate, is a sprightly medium of truth: witness this passage on a new volume of M. Michelet: "Narrative, properly so called, which never was his forte, is almost entirely sacrificed.
It was this development of the personal novel at the commencement of the nineteenth century, exhibited in Chateaubriand's Rene, Madame de Stael's Corinne, Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, George Sand's Indiana, and Sainte-Beuve's Volupte, which contributed so much to create and establish the Romantic School of fiction with its egoistic lyricism.
His analytical and sympathetic mind is reflected in the quiet wit and easy charm of his writing. Undoubtedly the lover of French literature will find in Sainte-Beuve's Lundis at once the most useful and the most agreeable review of the subject in all its branches; and the more his knowledge increases, the more eagerly will he return for further guidance and illumination to those delightful books.
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