t dreads the
chimeras of imagination; it is eminently rational; it embodies ideas
in just and measured form. Such literature Nisard found in the great
age of Louis XIV. Certain gains there may have been in the eighteenth
century, but these gains were more than counterbalanced by losses.
To disprove the saying that there is no disputing about tastes, to
establish an order and a hierarchy in letters, to regulate
intellectual pleasures, was Nisard's aim; but in attempting to
constitute an exact science founded upon general principles, he too
often derived those principles from the attractions and repulsions
of his individual taste. Criticism retrograded in his hands; yet,
in retrograding, it took up a strong position: the influence of such
a teacher was not untimely when facile sympathies required the
guidance or the check of a director.

The admirable critic of the romantic school, CHARLES-AUGUSTIN
SAINTE-BEUVE (1804-69), developed, as time went on, into the great
critic of the naturalistic method. In his _Tableau de la Poesie
Francaise au XVIe Siecle_ he found ancestors for the romantic poets
as much older than the ancestors of classical art in France as Ronsard
is older than Malherbe. Wandering endlessly from author to author
in his _Portraits Litteraires_ and _Portraits Contemporains_, he
studied in all its details what we may term the physiology of each.
The long research of spirits connected with his most sustained work,
_Port-Royal_, led him to recognise certain types or families under
which the various minds of men can be grouped and classified. During
a quarter of a century he investigated, distinguished, defined in
the vast collection of little monographs which form the _Causeries
du Lundt_ and the _Nouveaux Lundis_. They formed, as it were, a natural
history of intellects and temperaments; they established a new method,
and illustrated that method by a multitude of examples.

Never was there a more mobile spirit; but he was as exact and
sure-footed as he was mobile. When we have allowed for certain
personal jealousies or hostilities, and for an excessive attraction
towards what may be called the morbid anatomy of minds, we may give
our confidence with scarcely a limit to the psychologist critic
Sainte-Beuve. Poet, novelist, student of medicine, sceptic, believer,
socialist, imperialist--he traversed every region of ideas; as soon
as he understood each position he was free to leave it behind. He
did not preten