The French critic and historian Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893) was one of the most prominent intellectual figures of his period in France. His emphasis on scientific methods in criticism formed the basis of contemporary critical techniques.

Hippolyte Taine was born in Vouziers in the Ardennes on April 21, 1828, into a family of civil servants. His childhood was spent in an enlightened cultural atmosphere in which earnest intellectual pursuits mingled with an early exposure to the arts and to nature. By the age of 14, when he moved to Paris with his widowed mother, he had developed an intense intellectuality matched only by his profound love of nature.

Taine's passion for knowledge and especially for philosophy made him highly receptive to the multitude of intellectual and scientific trends of his time. By the time he had completed his university studies at the École Normale Supérieure, he had investigated...