The French literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), who developed a very personal technique of literary criticism, remains the most important literary arbiter of his century.

Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve went to Paris in 1824 to study medicine. But by 1826 he was contributing actively to the Globe, where an article favorable to Victor Hugo won him the young poet's confidence and a place in his Cénacle, or coterie, among the most innovative literary talents of the time. Saint-Beuve's Tableau historique et critique de la poésie française et du théâtre français au XVI siècle (1828) not only rehabilitated the neglected Pléiade poets (Pierre Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay) but laid a claim to respectability for his contemporaries, "romantic" descendants of those forgotten giants of lyricism.

Saint-Beuve's own elegiac efforts in Vie, poésies et...