the part of this man, he adds: "Si j'ai pu dire de M. de Saint-Cyran qu'il était parfois un buisson et un buisson sans jamais de rieurs, il faut ajouter qu'il est souvent aussi un buisson ardent." Observe how the pliant style lends itself to irony and satire. Sainte-Beuve is criticising the style of a literary rival, Nisard; amongst much bitter-sweet praise he insinuates the little remark: "Un académicien lui a trouvé du nerf; les savants lui trouvent de la grâce." Of Cousin he says: "He is a hare with the eye of an eagle." For an example of the power of characterisation latent in the style, take the following sentence from a criticism of De Musset: "Ce n'était pas des couleurs combinées, surajoutées par un procédé successif, mais bien le réel se dorant ça et là comme un atôme à un rayon du matin, et s'envolant tout d'un coup au regard dans une transfiguration divinisée." And for an example of its capacity, equable as it is, to express indignation, take the following passage, which also throws light on the character of the man. He is writing on the subject of a work to which the Academy in full conclave had refused to give the prize adjudged it by a committee of experts, because the "atheistical" principles on which the work was based were at variance with the eclectic philosophy then officially recognised. "There really does exist a small class of sober, unassuming philosophers, who live upon very little, do not intrigue, and are entirely occupied in conscientiously seeking after truth and cultivating their intellects. They refrain from the indulgence of every other passion, and fix their whole attention upon the laws which govern the universe, listening and investigating wherever in the realm of nature the world-soul, the world-thought reveals itself to them. These are men who at heart are stoics, who try to do good and to think as accurately and rightly as they can, even without the hope of any personal reward in the future, content to feel at harmony with themselves and in accord with the harmony of the universe. Is it fitting, I ask, to stamp these men with an odious name on this account, to ostracise them, or at best only to tolerate them with such tolerance as we show to the erring and guilty? Have they not even yet won for themselves in our country a place on which the sunlight falls? Have they not, O ye noble Eclectics, with whom it gives me pleasure to compare them, ye whose invariable and absolute disinterestedness and whose unalterable high-mindedness are known to God and man, have they not the right to be placed at least on an equal footing with you, in virtue of the purity of their doctrine, the uprightness of their motives, and the innocence of their lives? This last great progressive step, worthy of the nineteenth century, I would fain see taken before I die." Sainte-Beuve made various reforms in the art of criticism. In the first place, he put solid ground beneath its feet, gave it the firm foothold of history and science.