Selections from Sainte-Beuve. Edited by Arthur Tilley. (Cam- bridge University
Press. fis. net.)—Mr. Tilley has done a service to those who like Sainte-Bentye, but are discouraged from reading him by the formidable aspect of the collected Causeries du Lundi in twenty-eight volumes. Mr. Tilley has selected nine typical essays, or parts of essays, beginning with the superb " Moliere," and ending with the caustic appreciation of Taine's critical method, and he has prefixed an admirable essay on Sainte•Beuve. He goes straight to the point when he says that, despite Brunetiere's complaint of Sainte-Beuve's lack of system, "it is just this absence of fixed ideas and general principles that is the secret of Sainte-Beuve's unique power." No literary critic is more stimulating, more accurate, or more amusing than he. He abounds in ideas. Let us instance his remark, in the paper on his own method, that "it is very useful, first of all, to begin at the beginning and, when you can, to study the great or distinguished writer in his birthplace and his family." That is a fruitful idea, as many of his disciples have shown.
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