Though _Port-Royal_ is supposed to be his chief work, Sainte-Beuve reaches a far higher level in the long series of volumes known as _Causeries du Lundi_ and _Nouveaux Lundis_, which contain the shorter articles written during his most perfect period. It will be long before these articles are forgotten. At the time of their author's death, Ulbach wrote: "I cannot tell how much of the literature of which we are now so proud will be preserved by time. Some of Lamartine's and Victor Hugo's verses? some of Balzac's novels? One thing, however, is certain--that it will be impossible to write history without having recourse to Sainte-Beuve and reading him from beginning to end." Sainte-Beuve has two styles, the youthful and the mature. At the time of his study of sixteenth century literature (from the vocabulary of which he, like the other young Romanticists, adopted various expressions) he got into the habit of picking and choosing his words and polishing and refining his periods to such an extent that he drew down upon himself some justifiably severe criticism--though he hardly deserved the violent reproaches showered on him by Balzac, whom he had annoyed by some sarcastic articles. But when he took to journalism this ultra-refinement of style disappeared. As Littré remarked, "After he had bound himself to send in a _feuilleton_ every week, he had no time to spoil his articles." A style like Sainte-Beuve's second--keen and flexible as a sword-blade--is not easy to characterise. In the first place, it is by no means a striking style. The reader who is not particularly well versed in French literature will not be aware of anything that can be called style. The periods succeed one another unrhythmically; they are not grouped, but proceed carelessly, as Zouaves march; we never come upon a pompous and seldom on a passionate one; occasionally there is an interjection--"Ô poet!" or the like. The language flows like gently rippling water. But the observant reader is charmed by its noble Atticism. The tone is not assertive, but calmly and quietly sceptic. I give a few examples, taken from different works. "Is there stability or instability at the basis of his character? You think instability. But under that instability is there not something more stable? You believe that there is. But under this again is there not something less stable than ever?" How often in their study of character must psychologists query thus, but how few of them could put the question with such delicate precision! What has been called the eccentricity of Sainte-Beuve's style is often only something surprising in his imagery; yet the metaphor itself is always surprisingly correct. In describing a great, austere sixteenth-century preacher of repentance, he tells that this ecclesiastic's contemporaries compared him, because of his dry severity, to a thorn-bush. Later, after giving an account of a vigorous outburst of noble indignation on