now singly. His admiration of his friends knows no bounds. Some of the poems at the time of their appearance were ridiculed for their affectation ("Les rayons jaunes" undoubtedly verges on the ridiculous) others were considered vulgar. Guizot characterised Joseph Delorme as "un Werther jacobin et carabin" (Werther as the Jacobin and "medical"). On the whole, however, the book may be said to have had the decided success which it deserved. Sainte-Beuve's next collection of poems, _Les Consolations_ (published in March 1830), his novel _Volupté_ (published in 1834), and the first two volumes of _Port-Royal_, mark the emotional and somewhat pious period in the life of their author. _Les Consolations_ is dedicated to Victor Hugo in terms of hysterical admiration coupled with expressions of Christian contrition, and Hugo's name occurs frequently in the book; but it was in reality quite as much an offering to Madame Hugo, who was the love of Sainte-Beuve's youth, and to whom the first poem and several others are addressed. Of his relations with her he wrote too openly in _Le Livre d'Amour_, a collection of poems which obviously treat of realities, and which, though printed, was never published.[2] And in the novel _Volupté_, too, we have no difficulty in recognising its author's relations with Victor Hugo and his household in Amaury's relations with the eminent politician, Monsieur de Couaën, and his wife. Sainte-Beuve himself and many of his biographers have hinted that the works which he wrote during the period of his enthusiasm for Madame Hugo, all of which have a faint Catholic tinge or varnish, were directly inspired by that lady, who was a devout Catholic in her youth, though an ardent freethinker in later life, in the days when she wrote her husband's life to his dictation. It has been asserted that Sainte-Beuve, in his lover's ardour, went the length of accustoming himself to speak in her language and even to share her feelings. This explanation, however, I refuse to accept, as I feel convinced that Sainte-Beuve in his old age deceived both himself and others by speaking as he did of his youthful works. In a letter dated July 1863, he writes to Hortense Allart de Méritens, the authoress (Madame Saman): "I tried a little Christian mythology in my youth; but it has evaporated. It was for me the swan of Leda, a means of obtaining access to the fair and producing tenderness in them. Youth has time and employs every means." I object to this, to say the least of it, frivolous manner of explaining away a phenomenon which is plainly attributable to the natural attraction possessed by Catholicism for a youthfully pliant and dependent character, an attraction in this case strengthened by the general tendency of the period, which, as usually happens, was becoming a fashionable tendency before disappearing altogether. The period was the period of the revival of philosophic spiritualism. In 1828 Sainte-Beuve attended the lectures