CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CONCERNING SISSY.

PERCIVAL had announced the fact of the Lisles' presence in Bellevue Street to Sissy, in a carefully careless sentence.

Sissy read it, and shivered sadly. Then she answered in a peculiarly bright and cheerful letter. "I'm not fit for him," she thought, as she wrote it. "I don't understand him, and I'm always afraid. Even when he loved me best, I felt as if he loved some dream girl, and took me for her in his dream, and would be angry with me when he woke. Miss Lisle would not be afraid. It is the least I can do for Percival, not to stand in the way of his happiness-the least I can do-and oh, how much the hardest!" So she gave Thorne to understand that she was getting on remarkably well. It was not altogether false. She had fallen from a dizzy height, but she had found something of rest and security in the valley below. And as prisoners, cut off from all the larger interests of their lives, pet the plants and creatures which chance to lighten their captivity, so did Sissy begin to take pleasure in little gaieties, for which she had not cared in old days. She could sleep now at night without apprehension, and she woke refreshed. There was a great blank in her existence, where the thunderbolt fell, but the cloud, which hung so blackly overhead, was gone. The lonely life was sad, but it held nothing quite so dreadful as the fear that a day might come when Percival and his wife would know that they stood on different levels, that she could not see with his eyes, nor understand his thoughts, when he would look at her with sorrowful patience, and she would die slowly of his terrible kindness. The lonely life was sad, but, after all, Sissy Langton would not be twenty-one till April.

Percival read her letter, and asked Godfrey Hammond how she really was. "Tell me the truth," he said; "you know all is over between us. She writes cheerfully. Is she better than she was last year?”

Hammond replied that Sissy was certainly better. "She has begun to go out again, and Fordborough gossip says that there is something between her and young Hardwicke. He is a good fellow, and I fancy the old man will leave him very well off. But she might do better, and there are two people, at any rate, who do not think anything will come of it-myself, and young Hardwicke."

Percival hoped not indeed.

A month later Hammond wrote that there was no need for Percival to excite himself about Henry Hardwicke. Mrs. Falconer had taken Sissy and Laura to a dance at Latimer's Court, and Sissy's conquests were innumerable. Young Walter Latimer and a Captain Fothergill were the most conspicuous victims. "I believe Latimer rides into Fordborough every day, and the Captain, being stationed there, is on the

spot. Our St. Cecilia looks more charming than ever, but what she thinks of all this, no one knows. Of course Latimer would be the better match, as far as money goes; he is decidedly better looking, and, I should say, better tempered; but Fothergill has an air about him which makes his rival look countrified, so I suppose they are tolerably even. Neither is overweighted with brains. What do you think? Young Garnett cannot say a civil word to either of them, and wants to give Sissy a dog. He is not heart-whole either, I take it."

Hammond was trying to probe his correspondent's heart. He flattered himself that he should learn something from Percival, let him answer how he would. But Percival did not answer at all. The fact was, he did not know what to say. It seemed to him that he would give anything to hear that Sissy was happy, and yet

Nor did Sissy understand herself very well. Her grace and sweetness attracted Latimer and Fothergill, and a certain gentle indifference piqued them. She was not sad, lest sadness should be a reproach to Percival. In truth she hardly knew what she wished. One day she came into the room, and overheard the fag-end of a conversation between Mrs. Middleton and a maiden aunt of Godfrey Hammond's, who had come to spend the day. "You know," said the visitor, "I never could

like Mr. Percival Thorne as much as

Sissy paused on the threshold, and Miss Hammond stopped short. The colour mounted to her wintry cheek, and she contrived to find an opportunity to apologise, a little later. "I beg your pardon, my dear, for my thoughtless remark just as you came in. I know so little that my opinion was worthless. I really beg your pardon."

"What for?" said Sissy. "For what you said about Percival Thorne? My dear Miss Hammond, people can't be expected to remember that. Why, we agreed that it should be all over, and done with, at least a hundred years ago!" She spoke with hurried bravery.

The old lady looked at her, and held out her hands. "My dear, is the time always so long since you parted?"

Sissy put the proffered hands airily aside, and scoffed at the idea. They had a crowd of callers that afternoon, but the girl lingered more than once by Miss Hammond's side, and paid her delicate little attentions. This perplexed young Garnett very much, when he had ascertained, from one of the company, that the old woman had nothing but an annuity of three hundred a year. He hoped that Sissy Langton wasn't a little queer, but, upon his word, it looked like it.

24

Sainte-Beuve's Critical Method.

MEN have frequently imagined themselves wrecked on a desert island, for the purpose of inquiring how they would, under such circumstances, beguile the tedium of existence. They have further assumed that the works of only one writer could be saved from the wreck, and that their insular library would consist of the productions of one mind. Persons of a religious turn have, it goes without saying, pronounced a verdict in favour of the Bible, apparently forgetting that it is the production of various intellects, or perhaps considering that, as it is alli nspired, the authorship may fairly be regarded as single. Others, again, have selected Shakspeare as their one literary companion; and I suppose some people would declare for the collected speeches of the politician they happen to agree with.

I confess my choice would be the works of Sainte-Beuve; and I should be satisfied to be restricted to the Causeries du Lundi, bargaining, of course, that I might have the "new series" as well as the first one. I could dispense with the Poésies Complètes, though, were the great critic still alive, I would not say so for worlds, for fear of touching the one sore place in his existence that never healed. He shared the first infirmity of noble minds. He began life by wanting to be a poet. But it is easier for the most ill-navigated bark to enter Corinth, than for the best directed talents to secure an original place in the Hall of the Muses, unless they be to the manner born. Sainte-Beuve, Frederick the Great, Richelieu, Earl Russell, Lord Beaconsfield, Bulwer Lytton-the list might be almost indefinitely lengthened-suffered from the same unsatisfied craving. It is a touching circumstance. To be rejected in love is

esteemed a hard fate; but to be unhappy in one's first, which is said to be likewise one's last love, is inexpressibly pathetic. The great Lessing, who was also deeply infected with this generous passion, had the manliness to avow that he had been an unsuccessful suitor. "I am not a poet," he bravely said, "though I wish I were. My thoughts are canalised; they do not come bubbling from a native source, and gurgling where they will." The moral elevation of that modest confession would alone entitle Lessing to the loftiest of pedestals, and the homage of mankind. Sainte-Beuve frequently alludes, but with hesitation and almost in a coquettish tone, to his efforts in verse. He must have known, fine critic that he was, that he had many gifts, but not the mens divinior; but he nowhere deliberately surrenders the bays. "I have made my collection of poems," he says, in noticing M. Crépet's chefs-d'œuvre of French poetry; "and you see I have returned to what was long while my love. For all

of us bearers of burdens, is it not natural that a weight, even though in reality fully as heavy, should seem lighter, if what we carry be roses?"

As a fact, however, Sainte-Beuve passed under the "door of humility," and became a prose writer and a critic pure and simple. In that capacity, he did, it seems to me, work that of its kind is unequalled in interest and merit. He is the best companion I know; and oral conversation should indeed be good to wean us from his Causeries. He is an unrivalled talker with his pen. You will say it is monologue, which, as Byron observed speaking of his father-in-law, "old gentlemen mistake for conversation!" But Sainte-Beuve has nothing of the old gentleman about him, in Byron's sense. He is the perfect gentleman of later middle-life, when judgment and manner are at their best, and when experience comes to the aid of good breeding, and weds abundant matter to a courtly air. Neither are Sainte-Beuve's "talks" like the talk of Macaulay or Lord Brougham. He never dogmatises. It is you who are listening, rather than he who is talking; and a man must be amazingly fond of hearing his own voice or expounding his own opinions, who wants to put in his oar when Sainte-Beuve is evenly and equably skimming along, making no ripple, leaving no trail. If I am asked to describe his style, I cannot. He is almost the only good writer I know who has not got one. Good conversation has no style; and neither has Sainte-Beuve. He is, what he describes himself, a talker. For this specially is to be noted in him, that he never-or at any rate very rarely -soliloquises. You are always before him, and he talks to you, but never at you. He is no rhetorician; no good talker ever is. He never argues; no good talker ever does. I was not thinking of justifying my choice of Sainte-Beuve, as the author I would decide to have on a desert island. I was only trying to describe him as he is. But I perceive I have arrived at an account of him which at any rate explains my preferOn a desert island the most unsociable person would infallibly crave for a companion, and for a companion that would talk. an author who does nothing but talk. There are some writers-writers, Here is no doubt, far greater than Sainte-Beuve can profess to be--who transport you out of this world and above this world, and, as it were, apotheosize the loneliness of your spirit, by taking you into the pure ether of thought and sentiment. Reading Sainte-Beuve one can never feel alone. More than that. It is not only that he talks to you, the individual reader of the moment; he addresses all intelligent and well-bred people, on subjects that interest intelligent and well-bred people, and in a manner that satisfies intelligent and well-bred people. Reading him on a desert island would be the nearest possible equivalent to moving in the best society.

ence.

Such is his manner, his style, if you will, though I just now said that he has none. His matter, I submit, equally justifies my imaginary decision. Quite apart from its supernatural advantages, the Bible is a work of stupendous interest. But though it deals with the very beginVOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 223.

ning of things, it suddenly breaks off eighteen hundred years ago; and a good deal has happened during the last eighteen hundred years which must be pronounced to be exceedingly interesting to the modern mind. One has a great esteem, and a profound reverence for one's grandfather; but one would hardly elect to live with him exclusively and always. Living with the Bible only, would be living with ancestors remoter even than one's grandsires. Shakspeare, no doubt, is for all time. But Shakspeare makes a considerable demand upon his reader. He takes us up to empyrean heights, where we dwell with rapture for awhile, and then confess that we want to descend. He has "taken it out of us;" and the carnal mind needs repose. He confers pleasure such as it is given only to the master-spirits to confer. But master-spirits cannot be our constant companions. Shakspeare himself would have found "always Shakspeare," could there have been a second, a great bore. SainteBeuve is neither ancient history, nor finely-touched. He is essentially modern, and, using the word in not too literal a sense, homely. He talks about things and people that everybody cares about, in a manner everybody can appreciate. In fact, his manner would escape them, in their attention to what it is he says. Like Wordsworth's perfect woman, he is not too good for daily food, on a desert island or off it. He never gets away into the air, like Ariel, and bids us follow him, if we would hear him singing. He is an honest pedestrian, though not in the current sense of going ever so many miles an hour. On the contrary, he is essentially a lounger and saunters up and down the gravel paths of thought and observation at a leisurely pace, his arms crossed behind his back, not swinging at his sides.

I have said he is essentially a modern. But when does modern life begin? No doubt that is rather like the question, Where is the North? which Pope answers so capitally in the Essay on Man, or like SainteBeuve's own question, on which he has written a charming "Lundi," "Qu'est-ce qu'un Classique?" Still though no one would now-a-days dream of writing down a date-though poor old Rollin would have done so-and saying all this side of it is modern, and all that side ancient. history, every one feels there are ancient writers and modern writers, conquerors of old and captains of to-day. Marlborough is a modern, and so is Montaigne. So that we get tolerably far back, even under our nomenclature of modern. Sainte-Beuve has a Causerie upon almost every Frenchman or Frenchwoman of eminence in any department of litera ture or action, since France was properly France, say since the days of Louis XI. What a host of subjects, what a multitude of people are thus given him to discourse about, kings, ministers, poets, soldiers, orators, beauties, great men scarcely yet appreciated, little men who have not even yet found their level, saints, heroes, brilliant impostors, devotees, dramatists, lyrists, satirists, writers of memoirs, memoirs of writers; and there they all are, Monday after Monday, fifty-two of them in every year, for year after year. If you were thrown on a desert