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STE ANNE DE BEAUPRE
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STE See also:ANNE DE BEAUPRE , a See also:post-See also:village of See also:Montmorency See also:county, See also:Quebec, See also:Canada, at the junction of the Ste Anne See also:river with the St See also:Lawrence, and on the Quebec, Montmorency & See also:Charlevoix railway, 22 M. below the See also:city of Quebec. It stands in a See also:rolling agricultural See also:country, with hills in the background; and near by, on the Ste Anne river, are beautiful falls and excellent fishing. For over two centuries Ste Anne has been known as a See also:Roman See also:Catholic See also:place of See also:pilgrimage, and many miracles are still said to be performed through the intercession of the See also:saint, the See also:mother of the Virgin. In the See also:basilica, an over-ornate See also:building, are ever-increasing piles of crutches and other See also:aids, See also:cast aside by the cured. The See also:resident See also:population is about 1500, chiefly composed of hotel-keepers and members of religious orders, but throughout the See also:year many pilgrimages are made, and on such days as the feast See also:day of Ste Anne (26th of See also:July) 30,000 See also:people are often See also:present. The See also:total number of pilgrims in 1905 was 170,000. In addition to the basilica the village contains numerous religious edifices, the See also:chief being the Scala See also:Santa, built in See also:imitation of the See also:Holy Stairs at See also:Rome.
SAINTE-BEUVE, See also: The little Charles Augustin was brought up by his mother, who never remarried, and an aunt, his father's See also:sister, who lived with her. They were poor, but the boy, having learnt all he could at his first school at Boulogne, persuaded his mother to send him, when he was near the age of fourteen, to finish his See also:education at See also:Paris. He boarded with a M. Landry, and had for a See also:fellow-boarder and intimate friend Charles Neate, afterwards fellow of See also:Oriel See also:College and member of See also:parliament for the city of See also:Oxford. From Landry's boarding-See also:house he attended the classes, first of the College See also:Charlemagne, and•then of the College See also:Bourbon, winning the See also:head See also:prize for See also:history at the first, and for Latin See also:verse at the second. In 1823 he began to study See also:medicine, attending lectures on See also:anatomy and See also:physiology and walking the hospitals. But mean-while a Liberal newspaper, the Globe, was founded in 1827 by See also:Paul See also:Francois See also:Dubois, one of Sainte-Beuve's old teachers at the College Charlemagne. Dubois called to his aid his former See also:pupil, who, now quitting the study of medicine, contributed See also:historical and literary articles to the Globe, among them two, which attracted the See also:notice of See also:Goethe, on See also:Victor See also:Hugo's Odes et ballades. These articles led to a friendship with Victor Hugo and to Sainte-Beuve's connexion with the romantic school of poets, a school never entirely suited to his nature. In the Globe appeared also his interesting articles on the French See also:poetry of the 16th See also:century, which in 1828 were collected and published,' and followed by a second See also:volume containing selections from See also:Ronsard. In 1829 he made his first venture as a poet with the See also:Vie, poesies, et pensees de See also:Joseph See also:Delorme. His own name did not appear; but Joseph Delorme, that " Werther in the shape of Jacobin and medical student," as See also:Guizot called him, was the Sainte-Beuve of those days himself. About the same See also:time was founded the Revue de Paris, and Sainte-Beuve contributed the opening See also:article, with Boileau for its subject. In 1830 came his second volume of poems, the Consolations, a See also:work on which Sainte-Beuve looked back in later See also:life with a See also:special See also:affection. To himself it marked and expressed, he said, that See also:epoch of his ' Tableau historique et critique de la poesie francaise au X VI= siecle (2nd ed., 1842).life to which he could with most See also:pleasure return, and at which he could like best that others should see him. But the critic in him See also:grew to prevail more and more and pushed out the poet? In 1831 the Revue See also:des deux mondes was founded in rivalry with the Revue de Paris, and from the first Sainte-Beuve was one of the most active and important contributors. He brought out his novel of Volupte in 1834, his third and last volume of poetry, the Pensees d'aoilt, in 1837. He himself thought that the activity which he had in the meanwhile exercised as a critic, and the offence which in some quarters his See also:criticism had given, were the cause of the less favourable reception which this volume received. He had See also:long meditated a See also:book on See also:Port-Royal. At the end of 1837 he quitted See also:France, accepting an invitation from the See also:academy of See also:Lausanne, where in a See also:series of lectures his work on Port-Royal came into its first See also:form of being. In the summer of the next year he returned to Paris to revise and give the final shape to his work, which, however, was not completed for twenty years .3 In 1840 Victor See also:Cousin, then See also:minister of public instruction, appointed him one of the keepers of the See also:Mazarin Library, an See also:appointment which gave him rooms at the library, and, with the See also:money earned by his See also:pen, made him for the first time in his life easy in his circumstances, so that, as he afterwards used to say, he had to buy rare books in See also:order to spend his income. A more important consequence of his easier circumstances was that he could study freely and largely. He returned to See also:Greek, of which a French schoolboy brings from his lycee no See also:great See also:store. With a Greek teacher, M. Pantasides, he read and re-read the poets in the See also:original, and thus acquired, not, perhaps, a philological See also:scholar's knowledge of them, but a genuine and invaluable acquaintance with them as literature. His activity in the Revue des deux mondes continued, and articles on See also:Homer, See also:Theocritus, See also:Apollonius of See also:Rhodes, and See also:Meleager were fruits of his new Greek studies. He wrote also a very See also:good article in 1844 on the See also:Italian poet See also:Leopardi; but in See also:general his subjects were taken from the great literature which he knew best, that of his own country—its literature both in the past and in the contemporary present. Seven volumes of Portraits, contributed to the Revue de Paris and the Revue des deux mondes, exhibit his work in the years from 1832 to 1848, a work constantly increasing in range and value' In 1844 he was elected to the French Academy as successor to Casimir See also:Delavigne, and was received there at the beginning of 1845 by Victor Hugo.
From this settled and prosperous See also:condition the revolution of See also:February 1848 dislodged him. In See also: He became the See also:lover of Madame Hugo, and a definite separation between the former friends ensued in 1834. [ED.]
3 Port-Royal (1840-1848, 5 vols.; 3rd and revised ed., 1866; 5th ed. with See also:index, 1888-1891).
'' He was a friend of Madame See also:Recamier, at whose house he met Chateaubriand. He became an especially See also:close friend of See also: In 1857 his Monday articles began to be published in volumes, and by 1862 formed a collection in fifteen volumes; they afterwards were resumed under the See also:title of Nouveaux lundis, which now make a collection of thirteen volumes more. In 1854 he was nominated to the chair of Latin poetry at the college of France. His first lecture there (in 1855) was received with interruptions and marks of disapprobation by many of the students, displeased at his adherence to the empire; at a second lecture the interruption was renewed. Sainte-Beuve had no See also:taste for public speaking and lecturing; his frontis mollifies, he said, unfitted him for it. He was not going to carry on a See also:war with a party of turbulent students; he proposed to resign, and when the minister would not accept his resignation of his professorship he resigned its emoluments. The Etude sur Virgile, a volume published in 1857, contains what he had meant to be his first course of lectures. He was still a titular See also:official of public instruction; and in 1858 his services were called for by Gustave Rouland, then minister of public instruction, as a lecturer (maitre de conferences) on French literature at the Ecole Normale Superieure. This work he discharged with assiduity and success for four years. In 1859 he was made See also:commander of the See also:Legion of See also:Honour, having twice previously to 1848 refused the See also:cross. During the years of his official engagement his Monday contributions to the Moniteur had no longer been continuous; but in 1862 an arrangement was proposed by which he was to return to the Constitutionnel and again supply an article there every Monday. He consented, at the age of fifty-seven, to try this last pull, as he called it, this " dernier coup de See also:collier "; he resigned his See also:office at the Ecole Normale and began the series of his Nouveaux lundis. They show no falling off in vigour and resource from the Causeries. But the See also:strain upon him of his weekly labour was great. " I am not a See also:monsieur nor a See also:gentle-man," he writes in 1864, " but a workman by the piece and by the See also:hour." " I look upon myself as a player forced to go on acting at an age when he ought to retire, and who can see no See also:term to his engagement." He had See also:reason to. See also:hope for See also:relief. Except himself, the foremost literary men in France had stood aloof from the empire and treated it with a hostility more or less See also:bitter. He had not been hostile to it: he had accepted it with See also:satisfaction, and had bestowed on its official See also:journal, the Moniteur, the lustre of his literature. The See also:prince Napoleon and the princess Mathilde were his warm friends..A senatorship was mentioned; its income of £1600 a year would give him opulence and freedom. But its coming was delayed, and when at last in See also:April 1865 he was made senator, his See also:health was seriously compromised. The disease of which he died, but of which the doctors did not ascertain the presence until his See also:body was opened after his See also:death—the See also: We have seen his See also:tender feeling for his poetry, and he always maintained that, when the " integrating See also:molecule," the See also:foundation of him as a man of letters, was reached, it would be found to have a poetic See also:character. And yet he declares, too, that it is never without a sort of surprise and confusion that he See also:sees his verses detached from their context and quoted in public and in open day. They do not seem made for it, he says. This admirable critic knew, indeed, the See also:radical inadequacy of French poetry. It is to English poetry that he resorts in order to find his term of comparison, and to See also:award the praise which to French poetry he refuses. " Since you are fond of the poets," he writes to a friend, " I should like to see you read and look for poets in another See also:language, in English for instance. There you will find the most See also:rich, the most dulcet and the most new poetical literature. Our French poets are too soon read; they are too slight, too mixed, too corrupted for the most part, too poor in ideas even when they have the See also:talent for See also:strophe and See also:line; to hold and occupy for long a serious mind"
But, even as French poetry, Sainte-Beuve's poetry had faults of its own. Critics who found much in it to praise yet pronounced it a poetry " narrow, puny and stifled," and its See also:style " slowly dragging and laborious " Here we See also:touch on a want which must no doubt be recognized in him, which he recognized in himself, and whereby he is separated from the See also:spirits who succeed in uttering their most highly inspired See also:note and in giving their full measure—some want of See also:flame, of breath, of pinion. Perhaps we may look for the cause in a See also:confession of his own: " I have my weaknesses; they are those which gave to See also: So far as it exhibits the endeavour of the romantic school in France to enlarge the vocabulary of poetry and to give greater freedom and variety to the alexandrine, it has See also:interest chiefly for readers of his own nation. But it exhibits more than this. It exhibits already the genuine Sainte-Beuve, the author who, as M. Duvergier de Hauranne said in the Globe at the time, " sent a sa maniere, emit comme it sent," the man who, even in the forms of an artificial poetry, remains always " un penseur et un homme d'esprit." That his Joseph Delorme was not the Werther of See also:romance, but a Werther in the shape of Jacobin and medical student, the only Werther whom Sainte-Beuve by his own See also:practical experience really knew, was a novelty in French poetical literature, but was entirely characteristic of Sainte-Beuve. All his poetry has this See also:stamp of See also:direct dealing with See also:common things, of See also:plain unpretending reality and sincerity; and this stamp at that time made it, as See also:Beranger said, " a See also:kind of poetry absolutely new in France." It has been the See also:fashion to disparage the criticism of the Critiques et portraits litteraires, the criticism anterior to 1848, and to See also:sacrifice it, in fact, to the criticism posterior to that date. Sainte.Beuve has himself indicated what considerations ought to be present with us in See also:reading the Critiques et portraits, with what reserves we should read them. They are to be considered, he says, " rather as a dependency of the elegiac and romanesque part of my work than as See also:express criticisms." They have the copiousness and See also:enthusiasm of youth; they have also its exuberance. He judged in later life Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo more coolly, judged them differently. But the Critiques et portraits contain a number of articles on personages, other than contemporary French poets and romance-writers, which have much of the soundness of his later work, and, in addition, an abundance and fervour of their own which are not without their attraction. Many of these are delightful reading. The articles on the Greek poets and on Leopardi have been already mentioned. Those on Boileau, See also:Moliere, See also:Pierre See also:Daunou and Charles See also:Claude See also:Fauriel, on Madame de la Fayette and Mademoiselle Aisse may be taken as samples of a whole See also:group which will be found to support perfectly the test of reading, even after we have accustomed ourselves to the later work of the See also:master. See also:Nay, his soberness and tact show themselves even in this earlier stage of his criticism, and even in treating the See also:objects of his too fervid youthful enthusiasm. A special See also:object of this was Victor Hugo, and in the first article on him in the Portraits contemporains we have certainly plenty of enthusiasm, plenty of exuberance. We have the epithets " adorable," " See also:sublime,' " supreme," given to Victor Hugo's poetry; we are told of " the See also:majesty of its high and sombre See also:philosophy." But the article next ' This course of See also:action definitely separated him from the See also:Bona' partists and led to a See also:quarrel with Princess Mathilde.—[En,] following this, and written only four years later, in 1835, is the article of a critic, and takes the points of objection, seizes the weak See also:side of Victor Hugo's poetry, how much it has of what is creux," " sonore," " artificiel," " voulu," " the3tral," " violent," as distinctly as the author of the Causeries could seize it. " The See also:Frank, energetic and subtle, who has mastered to perfection the technical and rhetorical resources of the Latin literature of the decadence," is a description never to be forgotten of Victor Hugo as a poet, and Sainte-Beuve launches it in this article, written when he was but See also:thirty years old, and still a painter of " portraits de jeunesse " only. He had thus been steadily working and growing; nevertheless, 1848 is an epoch which divides two critics in him of very unequal value. When, after that year of revolution and his stage of seclusion and labour at Liege, he came back to Paris in the autumn of 1849 and commenced in the Constitutionnel the Causeries du lundi, he was astonishingly matured. Something of fervour, enthusiasm, poetry, he may have lost, but he had become a perfect critic—a critic of measure, not exuberant ; of the centre, not provincial ; of keen See also:industry and curiosity, with " Truth " (the word engraved in English on his See also:seal) for his See also:motto; moreover, with See also:gay and amiable See also:temper, his manner as good as his matter—the " critique souriant," as, in Charles Monselet's See also:dedication to him, he is called. The See also:root of everything in his criticism is his single-hearted devotion to truth. What he called " See also:fictions " in literature, in politics, in See also:religion, were not allowed to See also:influence him. Some one had talked on his being tenacious of a certain set of literary opinions. " I hold very little," he answers, " to literary opinions; literary opinions occupy very little place in my life and in my thoughts. What does occupy me seriously is life itself and the object of it." " I am accustomed incessantly to See also:call my judgments in question anew, and to re-cast my opinions the moment I suspect them to be without validity." " What I have wished " (in Port-Royal) " is to say not a word more than I thought, to stop even a little short of what I believed in certain cases, in order that my words might acquire more See also:weight as historical testimony." To all exaggeration and untruth, from whatever side it proceeded, he had an antipathy. " I turn my back upon the Michelets and Quinets, but I cannot hold out my hand to the Veuillots." But Sainte-Beuve could not have been the great critic he was had he not had, at the service of this his love of truth and measure, the conscientious industry of a See also:Benedictine. " I never have a See also:holiday. On Monday towards See also:noon I lift up my head, and breathe for about an hour; after that the wicket shuts again and I am in my See also:prison See also:cell for seven days." The Causeries were at this See also:price. They came once a See also:week, and to write one of them as he wrote it was indeed a week's work. The " irresponsible indolent reviewer " should read his notes to his friend and provider with books, M. Paul Cheron of the See also:National Library. Here is a note dated the and of See also:January 1853: Good-day and a happy New Year. To-day I set to work on See also:Grimm. A little dry; but after St Francois de Sales " (his Monday article just finished) " one requires a little relief from See also:roses. I have of Grimm the edition of his See also:Correspondence by M. Taschereau. I have also the See also:Memoirs of Madame d'See also:Epinay, where there are many letters of his. But it is possible that there may be notices of him mentioned in the See also:bibliographical book of that See also:German whose name I have forgotten. I should like, too, to have the first See also:editions of his Correspondance; they came out in successive parts." Thus he prepared himself, not for a See also:grand See also:review article once a See also:quarter, but for a newspaper review once a week. His See also:adhesion to the empire caused him to be represented by the See also:Orleanists and Republicans as without character and patriotism, and to be charged with baseness and corruption. The Orleanists had, in a great degree, possession of the higher press in France and of English See also:opinion—of' Liberal English opinion more especially. And with English Liberals his indifference to See also:parliamentary government was indeed a grievous See also:fault in him; " you Whigs," as See also:Croker happily says, " are like See also:quack doctors, who have but one specific for all constitutions." To him either the See also:doctrine of English Liberals, or the doctrine of Republicanism, applied absolutely, was what he called a " fiction," one of those fictions which " always end by obscuring the truth." Not even on M. de See also:Tocqueville's authority would he consent to receive " See also:les hypotheses dites les plus honor-ables "—" the suppositions which See also:ass for the most respectable. All suppositions he demanded to sift, to see them at work, to know the place and time and men to which they were to be applied. For the France before his eyes in 1849 he thought that something " solid and See also:stable "—un mur, " a See also:wall," as he said—was requisite, and that the government of Louis Napoleon supplied this wall. But no one judged the empire more independently than he did, no one saw and enounced its faults more clearly; he described himself as being, in his own single See also:person, " the gauche of the empire," and the description was just. To these merits of See also:mental See also:independence, industry, measure, lucidity, his criticism adds the merit of happy temper and disposition. Goethe long ago noticed that, whereas Germans reviewed one another as enemies whom they hated, the critics of the Globe reviewed one another as gentlemen. This arose from the higher social development of France and from the closer relations of literature with life there But Sainte-Beuve has more, as a critic, than the See also:external politeness which once at any See also:rate distinguished his countrymen he has a See also:personal See also:charm of manner' due to a sweet and humane temper. He complained of un peu de durete, " a certain dose of hardness," in the new See also:generation of writers. The See also:personality of an author had a See also:peculiar importance for him; the poetical side of his subjects, however latent it might be, always attracted him. and he always sought to extricate it. This was because he had the moderate, gracious, amiably human instincts of the true poetic nature. " Let me beg of you," he says in thanking a reviewer who praised him, " to alter one or two expressions at any rate. I cannot See also:bear to have it said that I am the first in anything whatever, as a writer least of all; it is not a thing which can be admitted, and these ways of classing people give offence." Literary man and loyal to the French Academy as he was, he can yet write to an old friend after his See also:election: " All these See also:academies, between you and me, are pieces of childishness; at any rate the French Academy is. See also:Oat least quarter of an hour of solitary See also:reverie or of serious talk, yours and mine, in our youth, was better employed; but, as one gets old, one falls back into the See also:power of these nothings; only it is well to know that nothings they are." Perhaps the best way to get a sense of the value and extent of the work done in the last twenty years of his life by the critic thus excellently endowed is to take a single volume of the causeries du lundi, to look through its See also:list of subjects, and to remember that with the qualities above mentioned all these subjects are treated. Any volume will serve; let us take the See also:fourth. This volume consists of articles on twenty-four subjects. Twenty of these are the following: See also:Mirabeau and Sophie, See also:Montaigne, Mirabeau and Comte de la See also:Merck, Mademoiselle de See also:Scudery, See also:Andre See also:Chenier as politician, Saint-Evremond and Ninon, Joseph de See also:Maistre, Madame de See also:Lambert, Madame See also:Necker, the See also:Abbe See also:Maury, the Duc de See also:Lauzun of Louis XVL's reign, See also:Marie Antoinette, See also:Buffon, Madame de See also:Main-tenon, De See also:Bonald See also:Amyot, See also:Mallet du See also:Pan, See also:Marmontel, See also:Chamfort, See also:Rulhiere. Almost every personage is French, it is true; Sainte-Beuve had a See also:maxim that the critic should prefer subjects which he possesses familiarly. The great place of France in the See also:world is very much due to her eminent See also:gift for social life and development; and this gift French literature has accompanied, fashioned, perfected, and continues to reflect. And nowhere shall we find such interest more completely and charmingly brought out than in Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du lundi and the Nouveaux lundis. As a See also:guide to bring us to a knowledge of the French See also:genius and literature he is unrivalled. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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