CHARLES AUGUSTIN (1804 1869), French critic, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer on Dec. 23, 1804. He was a posthumous child. His father, a native of Picardy, and controller of town-dues at Boulogne, was a man of literary tastes ; his mother was half English, her father, a mariner of Boulogne, having married an Englishwoman. Charles Augustin was sent to a boarding school in Paris to attend the classes of the College Charlemagne, and then of the College Bourbon. He then studied medicine, but after four years abandoned it to join the staff of the new Liberal newspaper, The Globe, in which he published the excellent articles on the French poetry of the 16th century afterwards separately published as Tableau historique et critique de la poesie francaise au siècle (2nd ed., 1842). In 1829 he made his first venture as a poet with the Vie, poesies, et pensees de Joseph Delorme. His own name did not appear; but Joseph Delorme, that "Werther in the shape of Jacobin and medical student," as Guizot called him, was the Sainte-Beuve of those days himself. In 283o came his second volume of poems, the Consolations. But the critic in him grew to prevail more and more and pushed out the poet. Sainte-Beuve was at this time a devoted Catholic and a little later for a very short period a disciple of Lamennais. But he gradually separated from his Catholic friends, and at the same time a coldness grew up between him and Victor Hugo, whose warm friendship he had won by an early article on Odes et Ballades. He became the lover of Madame Hugo, and a definite separation between the former friends ensued in 1834. In 1831 the Revue des deux mondes was founded, and from the first Sainte-Beuve was one of the most active and i impor tant contributors. He brought out his novel of Vo/upte n 1834, his third and last volume of poetry, the Pensees d'amit, in 2837. He had long meditated work on Port-Royal, which took shape in a series of lectures delivered at Lausanne in 1838. The book occupied him at intervals until 2848—Port Royal (5 vols. 1840 48; 5th ed., 1888-91).
In 184o Victor Cousin then minister of public instruction, appointed him one of the keepers of the Mazarin library, an appointment which gave him rooms at the library, and a com petence, and leisure for study. With a Greek teacher, M. Pantasides, he read and re-read the Greek poets. Articles on Homer, Theocritus, Apollonius of Rhodes, and Meleager in the Revue des deux mondes were fruits of his new Greek studies. But in general his subjects were taken from the great litera ture of his own country. Seven volumes of Portraits, contrib uted to the Revue de Paris and the Revue des deux mondes, exhibit his work in the years from 1832 to 1848, a work con stantly increasing in range and value. In 1844 he was elected to the French Academy as successor to Casimir Delavigne, and was received there at the beginning of 1845 by Victor Hugo.
In March 1848 was published an account of secret-service money distributed in the late reign, and Sainte-Beuve was put down as having received the sum of one hundred francs. The sum appears to have been in reality paid for alterations to a smoky chimney in the library, but Sainte-Beuve was annoyed at the imputation and resigned his chair. He lectured for a time at Liege, but returned to Paris within a year. Dr. Veron, the editor of the Constitutionnel, proposed to him that he should supply that newspaper with a literary article for every Monday ; and thus the famous Causeries du lundi were started. Sainte-Beuve now lived in the small house in the Rue Montparnasse (No. which he occupied for the remainder of his life, and where in 185o his mother, from whom he seems to have inherited his good sense, tact and finesse, died at the age of eighty-six. For three years he continued writing every Monday for the Constitutionnel; then he passed, with a similar engagement, to the Moniteur. In 1857 his Monday articles began to be published in volumes, and by 1862 formed a collection in 15 volumes ; they afterwards were resumed under the title of Nouveaux lundis, which now make a collection of 13 volumes more.