CAUSERIES DU LUNDI, or MONDAY CHATS, was the title given by Sainte-Beuve to the articles which he contributed every Mon day for nearly 20 years, beginning with 1849, to the daily newspapers Le Constitutionnel and (after 1852) Le Moniteur. Their 15 vol umes, together with the three volumes of the 'Premiers Lundis) and the 13 volumes of the 'Nouveaux Lundis,) which are not to be sepa rated from them, form an unmatched series of critical studies, of which literature is the central but by no means exclusive interest, and present a gallery of portraits in which poets and philosophers, statesmen and savants, artists and actresses, great wits and charming and beautiful women, are painted with a wonder fully animating and revealing touch. The • range and variety of the subject matter are surprising. Few figures of significance in French life and letters of the last three cen turies fail to find a place in the collection. Nor was Sainte-Beuve's view confined to his own country. He was widely read in foreign litera tures, particularly English. His curiosity was insatiable and his mind singularly mobile and insinuating. For such a mind criticism had to be something quite different from what it had traditionally been,— a classifying and judg ing of literary compositions according to some definite, accepted canon of taste. Its task was primarily to understand a work and a person in the light of their intention rather than to measure them by some conventional standard. Literary works were viewed but as a partial expression of individualities, to be fully com prehended only when illumined by the light thrown upon them by complete knowledge of their author's life, times, family, friends, sur roundings, circumstances and character. The
preliminary reading that went to the making of each of these articles was prodigious. The critic could neglect nothing that could add to his knowledge of the man or woman whose work he was assessing. Sainte-Beuve did not, how ever, abandon standards of judgment and give himself up, like Taine, to explaining literature in terms of race, environment and moment. He maintained, with increasing insistence as he grew older, the tradition of a cultivated and disciplined taste. He furthermore added to his rare qualities of intelligence and discrimina tion the command of an entirely adequate style, of great delicacy, brilliancy and charm, so that the 'Causeries' delight us no less than they instruct. Taken all in all they constitute, with the companion series of 'Portraits,' as impos ing a body of criticism as any literature can show, and justify the almost unanimous en dorsement of Matthew Arnold's estimate of their author as ((the finest critical spirit of our time' Of English translations of some of the Causeries, that by W. B. Matthews, 'Sainte Beuve's Monday-Chats' (Chicago 1877), offers especially essays dealing with great French writers, while that of A. T. Butler, 'Select Essays of Sainte-Beuve' (London), confines itself to those of interest to students of Eng lish letters.