The _Portraits Littéraires_, with its satellite or tow-boat the _Portraits de Femmes_, appears to have been a sort of favourite with Sainte-Beuve. He rearranged it early from the original _Critiques et Portraits Littéraires_;[574] he sifted out the _Portraits de Femmes_, as if to concentrate special attention on them; he added from time to time appetising and really important bonuses and _primes_ of appendices, _Pensées_, personal confidences, and the like. A good deal of his best-known work is in the four volumes (including the _Femmes_) as they are now[575] current: and probably the collection meets the taste, of the general reader at least, as well as any other of his numerous collections, if not better. This, I venture to think,—using a phrase of an author who would probably not have agreed with me in this particular instance,—is because the general reader “does not want criticism,” or does not want it first of all. Sainte-Beuve, who knew everything, and cared not to conceal it, knew, as the general reader does not know, that the _causerie_, whether in volume- or essay-form, of mingled biography and criticism, was of English, not French invention: and he confesses that he longed to imitate it. He did so, and carried it even beyond Johnson: but he was frequently tempted to let the biography and the personality rather swamp the criticism, and I think he has done so here. In the _Portraits de Femmes_ especially, be it gallantry, gossip-loving, or God knows what, though there may be much interest, there is uncommonly little criticism, even on La Rochefoucauld, who presents himself in the middle of the galaxy with a singular and sultanesque intrusion. On some of the subjects, such as Mme. de Longueville, there could be none: even on Mme. de Sévigné and Mme. de Staël, where the opportunities were infinite, there is little; and where there is most, as in the case of Pauline de Meulan (Mme. Guizot), it is where we care least about it. Of history and life plenty, and therefore of amusement much; of criticism very little.