What is A classic?

BY

CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE

TRANSLATED BY

E. LEE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the foremost French critic of the nineteenth century, and, in the view of many, the greatest literary critic of the world, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 23, 1804.  He studied medicine, but soon abandoned it for literature; and before he gave himself up to criticism he made some mediocre attempts in poetry and fiction.  He became professor at the College de France and the Ecole Normale and was appointed Senator in 1865.  A course of lectures given at Lausanne in 1837 resulted in his great “Histoire de Port-Royal” and another given at Liege in his “Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire.”  But his most famous productions were his critical essays published periodically in the “Constitutionnel” the “Moniteur” and the “Temps” later collected in sets under the names of “Critiques et Portraits Litteraires” “Portraits Contemporains” “Causeries du Lundi” and “Nouveaux Lundis.”  At the height of his vogue, these Monday essays were events of European importance.  He died in 1869.

Sainte-Beuve’s work was much more than literary criticism as that type of writing had been generally conceived before his time.  In place of the mere classification of books and the passing of a judgment upon them as good or bad, he sought to illuminate and explain by throwing light on a literary work from a study of the life, circumstances, and aim of the writer, and by a comparison with the literature of other times and countries.  Thus his work was historical, psychological, and ethical, as well as esthetic, and demanded vast learning and a literary outlook of unparalleled breadth.  In addition to this equipment he had fine taste and an admirable style; and by his universality, penetration, and balance he raised to a new level the profession of critic.

MONTAIGNE

While the good ship France is taking a somewhat haphazard course, getting into unknown seas, and preparing to double what the pilots (if there is a pilot) call the Stormy Cape, while the look-out at the mast-head thinks he sees the spectre of the giant Adamastor rising on the horizon, many honourable and peaceable men continue their work and studies all the same, and follow out to the end, or as far as they can, their favourite hobbies.  I know, at the present time, a learned man who is collating more carefully than has ever yet been done the different early editions of Rabelais—­editions, mark you, of which only one copy remains, of which a second is not to be found:  from the careful collation of the texts some literary and maybe philosophical result will be derived with regard to the genius of the French