INTRODUCTION IX

part that he had played in the lower house, as a silent but influential member.

To sum up Scherer's political opinions, we may say that, though in France he was a convinced Republican, had he lived in England he would hâve ranged himself with the Whigs, not with the extrême Radicals. For English institutions he had, as has been said, a profound admiration. To Scherer as to Tennyson, England is ' a land where girt by friends orfoes a man may speak the thing he will '. Say what you vvil 1 against its Philistinism and Chauvinism (he writes), ' c'est là du moins qu'un homme qui aime la liberté peut respirer à pleine poitrine.' On the other hand, he was a sworn foe to socialism, and he voted against the bill of amnesty for readmitting the Communists then in exile. He was far from holding that democracy is a cure for ail ills, and declined to believe in the perfectibility of the human race. To doctrinaires who proclaimed that ail men were equal, and that class distinctions must cease, he applied a practical test. ' Je croirai à l'humanité quand tous les humains consentiront à se prendre et à se donner en mariage. C'est peut-être mal à moi, mais je suis ainsi fait : humanité ne me dit rien ; le genre humain m'amuse, il m'intéresse, mais il ne m'inspire dans sa totalité ni respect ni tendresse, je décline la solidarité.' He believed in an aristocracy, not of rank but of talent, and his bitterest complaint against the France of his later days was, ' Nous nous américanisons.'

His old âge was serene and happy. He had set at rest ail the religious doubts that perplexed his youth and manhood, and found contentment in a tolérant and open-minded agnosticism, taking as his motto>

' Magna immo maxima pars sapientiae est quaedam aequo animo nescire velle.' He bore with Stoical, we might even say with Christian, résignation the loss of his wife, and was tended by a devoted daughter, with whom, and afterwards with his grandchildren, he strolled each day through the gardens and alleys of his beloved Trianon. He died at Versailles on March 15, 1889.

It only remains to estimate Scherer's characteristics and rank as a critic. The task is easy, for both his qualities and his limitations are so apparent that there is little différence of opinion among the contemporary and succeeding critics and historians of literature, both French and foreign, who hâve passed judgement on him.

Matthew Arnold, in the essay on Milton to which we hâve already referred, sums up his merits in a few discriminative and carefully weighed epithets. Scherer is ' well informed, intelligent, disinterested, openminded, sympathetic' At the same time he qualifies this high commendation by pointing out in what respects Scherer falls short of Sainte-Beuve, the master of them both. ' What he has not as a critic is Sainte- Beuve's elasticity and cheerfulness. He has not that gaiety, that radiancy as of a man discharging with delight the very office to which he was born, which in the Causeries make Sainte-Beuve's touch so felicitous, his sentences so crisp, his effect so charming.'

In the Premiers Portraits Sainte-Beuve was compared to a painter in pastel who obtains a likeness by adding touch to touch of his crayon, heightening hère, softening there, ever modifying and harmonizing his conception of the sitter as he works at the portrait.