The Racine passage is the best worth dwelling on of these, because what Frenchmen say on Racine is always interesting. We know, of course, beforehand that Sainte-Beuve will be, to a certain extent, _juste-milieu_,—that he will neither be of those who denounce with rage, nor deplore with pity or contempt, the poor foreigners who cannot hear the celestial music of the great _doucereux_, nor of those who approach more or less nearly to the view of the poor foreigners themselves. But the piece is specially interesting because it is perhaps the most distinct general retractation of the critic’s ultra-Romantic creed, and because it expresses much the same views as those (very probably derived from it) of Mr Arnold. You must not, says Sainte-Beuve, attempt to judge Racine by _passages_; there Hugo, Lamartine, even much lesser moderns will beat him. You must judge the whole, and take into consideration the support which each part gives to, and in turn derives from, the others. Nay, more, Racine is “moins imprévu, moins éclatant, moins héroïque, moins transportant” than Corneille, but more “equal,” &c. “L’unité, l’ensemble chez Racine se subordonne tout.” Sainte-Beuve even thinks that he could have done the many poetic things that he did not do as well as those which he did, and that in them (here we may all agree) “on aurait le même Racine.” But did he not lose something under the desperate hook of Boileau? Perhaps. “Il n’avait pas un démon déterminé.” You can understand him at once as you cannot Shakespeare or Molière. He presents the perfection of poetic style, _même pour ceux qui n’aiment pas essentiellement la poésie_. And the critic, with what some, I suppose, would call a touch of his “perfidy,” adds, “Là, c’est le point faible, s’il en est un.” Let us rather say that, while all reasonable praise of Racine may be read in the lines of this criticism, all reasonable dispraise of him may be read between those lines. [Sidenote: Chateaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire.]