literature: but philosophy and politics constantly drew him away from the Muses proper, though whether he talks of Abelard or of Anselm, of Bacon or of Channing, he is never negligible. Vitet became a politician and an antiquary chiefly, but has left at least one remarkable literary document in his well-known essay on the _Chanson de Roland_.[566] As for J. J. Ampère, he supplemented and furthered the study of foreign literatures, which Villemain had made almost obligatory, by an unusual frequentation of foreign countries; and besides some excellent work on the literary history (especially in mediæval times) of his own language, wrote many books of literary travel. On the whole, however (for Sainte-Beuve grew out of and far above his _Globe_ stage), the _general_ interest of the reviewing in this paper is superior to that of its component parts as criticisms and its individual authors as critics. Those who now read Goethe’s remarks on it to Eckermann[567] may, if they neglect the historic estimate, be a little puzzled at the great German’s enthusiasm. He was right, however, as, in a general way, he usually was. These young men took literature with a wider knowledge and purview of it than the old critics had brought to bear, and with very much less subservience to particular theory as to what the book _ought to be_, and a more obliging though quite independent attention to what it _was_. Their “eclecticism” (which was philosophically the tone or ticket of their paper) adapted itself especially well to these literary exercitations: indeed Eclecticism is never so well justified of any of her necessarily mixed family as in literature. But their greatest is their greatest by so far, that we may well turn to him. [Sidenote: _Sainte-Beuve: his topography._]