of the novel. It ought at one moment to be ready to disentangle the idea from the clutter of accompanying circumstance and hold it up to contemplation as something universal and inalterable; and it ought again to be able to fuse idea and circumstance into a perfect, if momentary, illusion of reality. And in as far as it is powerless to fulfil either of these requirements, it falls short, to just that extent, of its proper perfection and the complete realisation of its own ideal.

But, after all, such considerations, though they may be true as far as they go, are in a larger sense more or less irrelevant. It is not on method that Sainte-Beuve's case finally rests, as Taine's does, but on his sense for life, no matter ▾ what lacuna may occur in his knowledge, no matter what presentation or expression he may elect to give it. Of method, indeed, that sense is the direct contradiction. In Pascal's Pensées there is an interesting passage where, seeking apparently to find his own way into literature, he attempts to distinguish this sense for life, "the spirit of finesse,” as he calls it, from the sense for method, as represented by "the spirit of geometry":

With respect to the spirit of finesse, he says, the principles are in common use and under every one's eyes. And he continues after a little: But they are hardly to be seen; they are felt rather than seen. And it is infinitely difficult to show them to him who does not

feel them for himself. They are so fine and so numerous that it requires a very clear and delicate perception to appreciate them at all and to judge justly and accurately in accordance with this sentiment, since they can not be demonstrated systematically as in geometry. . . . The point must be caught instantaneously, at a single glance, not by a process of reasoning. Not that the mind does not reason at all in such cases, but it does so tacitly, naturally, and artlessly, for the expression of the matter is too much for most men and the feel of it belongs only to a few.

There could be no better characterisation; -such is the spirit of Sainte-Beuve's criticism. He had his procédés, no doubt. He was much concerned to convert his subjects into articles for his journal; and I have mentioned certain distortions which resulted from the process. But it is necessary to grant him his vehicle and its inconveniences-no one has ever escaped them, not even Pascal himself. But for what is contained therein-for observation and reflection, for example and object-lesson, for maxim and aphorism, above all for sound moral ideas -these articles, leçons, or what not, occasional, journalistic, and otherwise, offer to the student of human nature one of the richest of intellectual treasures. For this sense of life, this "spirit of finesse," which animates Sainte-Beuve's work and which gives it a permanent and universal significance and constitutes it literature-what is this spirit after all but wisdom?

EMERSON AND THE MODERN REPORTS

OY general consent Emerson's fundamental

BY

weakness as an author resides in his form. There are few writers of his eminence whose

instrument is of so small a compass. He is a poet, a critic, and a moralist; but his style is incapable of passion, suite, and humour. When he is amusing, he is so unconsciously and by reason of his lack of humour, rather than of his possession of it.

A great man is coming to eat at my house. 1 do not wish to please him. I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true.

In the mouth of the lean, high-cheeked, provincial Yankee, who ate his pie for breakfast, such a remark may seem funny enough. But Emerson never intended it to be funny. Indeed, his seriousness, his preternatural unruffled gravity, is one of his most marked characteristics, as it is that of the little group of illuminati to which he belonged; while as for wit, if he seem not entirely deficient in that good gift also, the exception is due in part to the paradoxical and antithetical turn of his mind,

which gives an unexpected and striking twist to the most ordinary sentiments.

That he felt keenly, I suppose we can hardly doubt. And yet even in his best poetry he is seldom or never fired with the passionate intensity of the great poets, The verse of his that I remember best-indeed, it is almost the only verse of his that I remember at all-is this:

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When duty whispers, Lo, thou must,
The youth replies, I can.

This is not bad, whatever the modern criticaster may say of it. But it lacks the afflatus. It has feeling, but no passion, either of the heart or the imagination. For among other things passion implies a fluency of expression, a willingness or ability to let oneself go under the accumulated pressure of emotion, which is thoroughly inconsistent with Emerson's rigidity both in prose and verse. For a great writer his phrase is always singularly cramped and scanty, and particularly lacking in that free discursive development which makes one of the characteristic excellences of prose, just as it is in the fervent concentration characteristic of poetry. While Newman has an amplitude of expression, a flow of explanation and illustration which seems inexhaustible, Emerson can hardly turn

more than two or three sentences without a complete change of topic. It seems as though truth flashed upon him, like a clear star upon a world without an atmosphere, in a single point of great brilliancy but without dimension. There is no diffusion about his thought; it refuses to flow or dilate. It congeals into crystalline particles like tiny icicles. His best things are mostly sentences or phrases dropped by the way like seeds, which may take root and flower in the new soil but which always find their growth outside the author's mind.

Society is everywhere in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.

In this way his essays have become, as it were, a collection of centres of force or influence, so that it would be a mistake to expect of one of them the continuous evolution of a single theme, or to look below the surface for a thoroughly definite plan or structure. Properly they are not compositions at all-rather accumulations of pensées or maxims which he has believed to be worth saving, thrown together around some common motive-an aggregation, not an organ