Why more? Indeed, save to observe the proportion and method of the book (which are of the first importance), and to pay proper respect to a prince in the critical Israel (which is hardly of less), why so much? Except for the vast bulk of his work, and for the fact that it is not collected into definite “Works,” but exists under a large number of separate headings, some of which may be overlooked, Sainte-Beuve’s criticism offers itself with almost every advantage and facility to the reader. It has to the full those superficial attractions of “readableness” which have given to French criticism its popular position; and it lacks those superficialities in the other sense, which detract from the value of French criticism so often. The immense variety not merely provides something specially interesting for almost everybody who has any literary, historical, or, one might almost say, intellectual interests at all, but prevents tedium or satiety in those whose interests are wider. The style, though neither coruscating, nor treacly, nor enigmatic, is—in its perfection and when it has outgrown some early defects—“the model of the middle style” in criticism, suitable for the purpose and the writer’s temperament. It can say anything that the author wishes to say, and does not try to say what he cannot. But we must examine the results which he gives a little more closely before concluding, and, according to the good old plan, take the deficiencies, or the want of supremacies, first. As has been put, with examples, above, Sainte-Beuve is not entirely to be trusted with the out-of-the-way, the eccentric, even the abnormally great. The very _ethos_ of the critic exposes him to this, and the opposite fault—the _engouement_ for everything that _is_ out of the way, that _is_ eccentric, that _is_ abnormal, whether great or not—is not merely an excess of a critical virtue, but a serious, an almost disqualifying critical defect. Still, to be able to admire and recognise the “earth-born and absolute fire”[608] is, if not a critical _sine qua non_—for without it the critic may do good work—yet his rarest and noblest gift. Sainte-Beuve had it not quite.