e, one of
a group, compromising such critics as Villemain, Cousin, Vinet, Planche,
Taine, and Scherer; but his name is more intimately associated than any
of these with the progress and fluctuations of opinion and of taste. His
notices of his contemporaries have been by far the most copious and
assiduous. His literary life, extending over forty years, embraces the
rise and the decline of what is known as the Romantic School; and during
all this period his course, whether we regard it as that of a leader or
of a follower, has harmonized singularily with the tendencies of the
age.

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was born at Boulogne--a town not fruitful
in distinguished names--on the 23d of December, 1804. His father, who
had held an employment under the government, died two days before the
birth of the son. His mother was the daughter of an Englishwoman,--a
circumstance which has been thought to account for the appreciation he
has shown of English poetry. The notion would be more plausible if there
were any poetry which he has failed to appreciate. But when it is added
that she was a woman of remarkable intelligence and sensibility, we
recognize a fact of which the influence can neither be doubted nor
defined.

After several years of prepatory instruction at a boarding-school in his
native place, he was sent to Paris, when thirteen years old, and entered
successively in several of the educational establishments which had
succeeded to the ancient University. His studies, everywhere crowned
with honors, were completed by a second course of rhetoric at the
College Bourbon, in 1822. He afterwards, however, attended the lectures
of Guizot, Villemain, and other distinguished professors at the
Sorbonne. A hostile critic, though seven years his junior, professes to
retain a distinct recollection of him at this period: "Among the most
assiduous and most attentive auditors was a young man whose face,
irregular in outline but marvellously intelligent, reflected every
thought and image of the speaker, almost as rivers reflect the landscape
that unrolls itself along their banks. When I add that the volatile
waves incessantly efface what they have just before reflected, the
comparison will appear only the more exact." To an impartial inquirer it
might appear singularly inexact; but having picked up the shaft, we
shall not at present stop to examine whether it be poisoned.

On quitting college, M. Sainte-Beuve made choice of medicine