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Updated: June 3, 2025
Sainte-Beuve calls her the Fontenelle of women, but it was Fontenelle tempered with a heart. This "foster-mother of philosophers" evidently wished to make sure of her own safety, however matters might turn out in the next world. She had a devotional vein, went to mass privately, had a seat at the Church of the Capucins, and an apartment for retreat in a convent.
From that time she was the constant companion of Mme. de Maintenon, until the king's death, when she returned to Paris; at that place her salon became an intellectual centre, and there the traditions of the seventeenth century were perpetuated. Sainte-Beuve said that Mme. de Caylus perfectly exemplified what was called urbanity—"politeness in speech and accent as well as in esprit."
As to news, there is a quiet once more since the Kerveguen incident has died its beautiful death. Was it not a farce? and silly? Sainte-Beuve is preparing a lecture on the press law. He is better, decidedly. I dined Tuesday with Renan. He was marvellously witty and eloquent, and artistic! as I have never seen him. Have you read his new book? His preface causes talk. My poor Theo worries me.
Longfellow has given us a great and noble work not likely soon to be equalled. Leopardi somewhere, in speaking of the early Italian translators of the classics and their well-earned popularity, says, who knows but Caro will live in men's remembrance as long as Virgil? "La belie destinee," adds Sainte-Beuve, "de ne pouvoir plus mourir, sinon avec un immortel!" Apart from Mr.
His opinion, which he imparted to Madame Hanska, he apparently took no trouble to conceal, for Sainte-Beuve was evidently aware of it when he treated Balzac very sharply in an article of this same year of 1834.
To a passage relating to the French translation of Eckerman, M. Sainte-Beuve has the following note, which we, on this side the Atlantic, may cherish as a high tribute to our distinguished countrywoman: "The English translation is by Miss Fuller, afterwards Marchioness Ossoli, who perished so unhappily by shipwreck.
She dislocates the rhythm of her verse, while at the same time she has a sensitive ear for rhyme. She is always wavering between Valmore and Baudelaire, between Leconte de Lisle and Sainte-Beuve that is to say, her taste is a bringing together of extremes.
One of his friends, in a memoir of Parkman, recalls an observation of Sainte-Beuve, in his paper on Taine's "English Literature," that has found its best illustration in what Parkman accomplished in spite of lameness, blindness, and mental distress: "All things considered, every allowance being made for general or particular elements and for circumstances, there still remain place and space enough around men of talent, wherein they can move and turn themselves with entire freedom.
Brunetière wrote that the four literary men of France in the nineteenth century who had exercised the most profound influence were Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Auguste Comte. I have already recommended Balzac, who portrays the life of the nineteenth century; and Sainte-Beuve, in developing the thought of the same period, gives us a history of French literature and society.
Rochefort bores me, between ourselves. It takes courage to venture to say even hesitatingly, that possibly he is not the first writer of the century. O Velches! But a propos of the said Rochefort, have they been somewhat imbecilic? What poor people! And Sainte-Beuve? Do you see him? As for me, I am working furiously.
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