'never angry, never above measure elated or depressed.' (Memoir, p. 49.) In what we have ourselves been saying on this point we have spoken only that which we had the happiness of seeing; and we know our testimony is true. His mild and benevolent form is often before us. God forbid that we should forfeit the privilege of calling up into our chambers of imagery that so benignant presence! Yet, undoubtedly, we should feel that all honourable recollection of his friendship was inconsistent with the consciousness of having trespassed in his praise a syllable beyond-what he valued above all things--the modest and simple truth. Taking him all in all, he was the best man and truest philosopher we ever were acquainted with. It is some consolation on the loss of him, that we did not wait for his death to canonize his virtues. Looking back upon them, we can only repeat for ourselves what Bishop Burnet says of himself and of his free and frequent conversation with Archbishop Leighton. For 'that pattern which I saw in him, and for that conversation which I had with him, I know how much I have to answer to God.'

ART. X-Essai sur la Littérature Anglaise, et Considérations sur le Génie des Temps, des Hommes, et des Revolutions. Par M. le Vicomte de CHATEAUBRIAND. 2 Tom. 8vo. Paris: 1836. 2. Sketches of English Literature, &c. Translated from the French of M. de Chateaubriand. 2 Vols. London: 1836.

H

OWEVER ungracious the office of the critic may appear, it is undoubtedly true that the science of criticism is founded upon compliment. The very act of a formal examination of an author's works is a silent proof that we consider him worthy of serious and minute attention. M. De Chateaubriand is one who has long filled a wide space in the public eye; and we think it must be conceded that a man cannot make and retain a prominent and commanding station in the splendid literature of France without powers either eminent in themselves, or capable of a felicitous adaptation to the prevalent taste or habits of thought in the time in which he lives. Among popular authors, even in periods the most prodigal of intellect, we shall always find some who have mainly owed their celebrity to their coincidence with a sentiment peculiar to their age. The public love to see feelings, often the more keen for being artificial and temporary, reflected back upon in ideal forms. It was to this cause that Sir Philip Sidney

owed much of his extraordinary reputation in his own day. This it was that gave the importance of fashion to Cowley's tortured conceits, and to the bombast of Dryden's heroic plays. This augmented to a fever the personal interest which Lord Byron created, and made his defects a portion of his fame. In each of these authors, in addition to whatever excellences they possessed calculated to charm and delight all time, there was a close sympathy with the epidemic of an era. The pedantic and florid chivalry of Elizabeth had its mirror in Sidney; the Court of Charles II, which, like all imitators, pushed the vices of contemporaneous literature in France to a fantastic excess, was delighted to find its affectations of language embodied in the genius of Cowley-its mock heroism, that so curiously contrasted its coarseness of taste, made stately and imposing by the power of Dryden; while, in our own age, the excited sentiment that could not but be called forth throughout the whole of Europe by the astonishing career of Napoleon, combined with the mental satiety that is common to a luxurious and highly civilized epoch, became blended and exalted by the fervid energy and exquisite style of Byron.

To a similar cause M. De Chateaubriand is, no doubt, indebted for much of his influence over the mind of his countrymen; for in France, during his earlier career, there were certain intellectual wants, which the fortunate constitution of his passions and talents enabled him to represent. The spirit of Rousseau (who, with all his faults, was the most eloquent and philosophical of all sentimental writers) still breathed throughout the nation; and France was eagerly waiting some successor to his mantle, when Chateaubriand and De Staël arose. But the terrors of the French Revolution,-the melancholy and disastrous extravagances which accompanied the sudden emancipation from a priesthood at once grinding and frivolous, and produced that worst of fanaticisms-the Bigotry of Unbelief-had led to a strong reaction in the more refined and imaginative circles of France. Another Rousseau, who should have preached infidelity, would have revolted the new spirit of society. Never, perhaps, was there a time in which the consolations of a future state were so universally desired as in the generation following the Reign of Terror. Few indeed were they who had not some to mourn for-some with whom the hope of future and permanent re-union presented a greater blessing than any which earth could offer. The victims of the guillotine were indeed less numerous than has been commonly supposed. But how many of the best, the bravest, the wisest, and the most virtuous,-those whose influence spread far beyond the narrow circle of hearth and home, reaching a scarcely definite limit of admirers, followers, disciples,--made the

moral amount of slaughter mighty and irremediable! The wars, the conscriptions, the desolation that followed, complete the picture; and in that most proud and romantic epoch of her history, when France struggled, first for liberty, and afterwards for empire, against the arms of a whole world, glory and lamentation went side by side. At such a moment, when faith in a future state, when the truth of Christian Revelation was so pre-eminently inestimable a boon, while Deism, weakened, indeed, with the multitude, yet kept its stronghold amongst the men of letters, who still saw no models but in the philosophers of the last century,―an author whose talents no critic could deride, whose eloquence all men could understand,who appealed not to the reason of sages, but to the feelings of a sensitive population, who did not argue and prove, but who rushed at once to hearts open to receive him, in a glowing tide of poetry and passion, could not but be hailed with grateful aud contagious enthusiasm. Such an author the French nation found in Chateaubriand. The Génie du Christianisme was the crowning work of a series of writings, in which the religious spirit of Christian Revelation is nearly always prominent and pervading. In reading this work we must, in justice to the author, transplant ourselves in thought to the time and place of its appearance. A philosopher, however great his natural power of argument and logic, who had seriously formed the grand design of bringing back religion to the hearts of his countrymen, would scarcely have had recourse to the weapons of the schools. There are periods when great and popular impressions upon the understanding can only be made by appeals to the feelings-when eloquence is more philosophical than logic-when, although' (to borrow Bacon's comment on a passage in Aristotle) the reason has ordinarily over the imagination that control which a magistrate has over a freeman—the latter may come to rule in its turn.' If in a calmer period—if in his tranquil closet, a student, of what faith soever, should open the Génie du Christianisme with the expectation of finding new and convincing arguments for the truth of Christianity, he will be disappointed. The book was written for the mass, not for individuals, and was popular and effective precisely for the same reason, as the oration that sways a crowd may often be read without emotion. The old story of Tyrtæus is at least true as an allegory;-when the many desire a leader, the Divine voice sometimes directs them to a poet. Je n'ai point cédé, says Chateaubriand, in his preface to the Génie du Christianisme, when he relates the cause that had induced himself to become a Christian-Je n'ai point cédé à de grandes lumières surnaturelles; ma conviction est sortie du cœur-j'ai pleuré, et j'ai cru. This egotism was the echo of a popular

sentiment. The multitude also had wept, and were therefore willing to believe!

Madame De Staël, who has many qualities in common with Chateaubriand,-who equals him in richness and glow of diction, who excels him in vigour of thought, whose reasoning faculties were more acute, whose imaginative powers were far more fertile,—had also a strong and poetical religious sentiment. But religion in her works does not take the active and imposing character that it does in Chateaubriand. She does not hold out the same positive assurances-she implies, she hopes--Chateaubriand asserts and promises. It was by advancing the one step farther than De Staël that Chateaubriand at once reached the heart of the French public. His rank -his position in active life-his reverses-and withal his egotism, a quality often railed at, often ridiculed, but never ineffective in an eloquent writer, have all contributed to throw a splendour about the man; and his genius has unquestionably been inaccurately and far too partially gauged by those who measure the height of the author by the shadow of his celebrity. We do not mean, however, too sharply or too censoriously to examine the grounds upon which his admirers have built their eulogies and panegyrics. We have sufficient respect for the man ;- -we think that he has rendered to his countrymen sufficient service to induce us to speak of him with the general forbearance due to those who have gone through the weary struggle for fame, and at length repose beneath the laurel they have reared. We shall only attempt to point out some of those characteristics in the intellectual temperament of M. De Chateaubriand which appear to us to have produced, and still to exercise, an injurious effect upon French literature, and upon the proper and masculine objects with which the human mind should set out in quest of knowledge.

If Chateaubriand be sincere in his belief when he says 'it is only by style that an author lives, that single sentiment may be the source of many of his most dangerous errors. He could not have chanced upon an aphorism more untrue. We scarcely know a single great writer of whom it can be said that he lives by his style. Style is the least durable of all an author's peculiarities. In poetry, neither Spenser, nor Shakspeare, nor Milton, nor even Pope; in prose, neither Bacon, nor Raleigh, nor Addison, nor Johnson, nor Gibbon owe their immortality to their

* 'Si Richardson n'a pas de style, il ne vivra pas, parce qu'on ne vit que 'par le style.'-Essai sur la Littérature Anglaise, chap, sur les Romans,