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lose the year 1848 without giving to the public the confessions of his youth and crowning his political career with idyls, shall criticism hesitate to follow him and to say what it thinks of his book? shall it exhibit a discretion and a shamefacedness for which no one, the author least of all, would care?" And what follows? An outpouring of ridicule, of severity, such as the same book received from so many quarters? Nothing of the sort; nothing more than a thoroughly candid and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic or the poet at fault? And so it has been in all the subsequent articles of M. Sainte-Beuve. It matters not who or what is the subject,--let it be a long-established reputation, like that of M. Guizot; a youthful aspirant, such as M. Hyppolite Rigault and many others; a brother critic, like M. Prevost-Paradol; a fanatical controversialist, like M. Veuillot; a personal friend, like M. Flaubert; or a bitter and unscrupulous assailant, like M. de Pontmartin,--the treatment is ever the same, sincere, impartial, unaffected. "To say nothing of writers, even of those who are the most opposed to us, but what their judicious friends already think and would be forced to admit,--this is the height of my ambition." Such was his proclamation, such has been his practice. No one has ever been bold enough to gainsay it. An equity so great, so unvarying, has almost staggered his brethren of the craft. "It is grand, it is royal," says M. Scherer,--who has himself approached near enough to the same summit to appreciate its height,--"only in him it cannot be called a virtue: it belongs to the intellect, which in him is blended with the character." "But he professes neutrality! He has no doctrines, no belief, no emotions! He discusses everything, not with any regard to the eternal considerations of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, but solely in the view of literature and art!" So cry certain voices, loudest among them that of M. de Pontmartin. It is certainly somewhat surprising that a man without opinions, without emotions, should be made the object of violent attacks, t
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