leaders of the 'five or six young men who loved reading, who passed their days in libraries and dissecting rooms, and amused their evenings with argument,' of whom we read in the Philosophes Classiques.' The result of his diligence was that Livy was finished at the end of the year, but at the expense of much weariness. 'I curse the time I have put into it, the day I conceived it, the day I shall be delivered of it,' he wrote half seriously, half jestingly. He had a severe attack of laryngitis, from the effects of which he suffered for the next two years. To recruit from it he visited some of the watering-places in southern France. The result was one of his most charming books, the Voyage aux Eaux des Pyrénées,' his first without an academical origin.

But the earlier part of 1854 was melancholy indeed. In January he had presented his study on Livy to the Academy, which, after long discussion, decided to put the prize off till the next year. He was reproached with lack of respect for Livy and great men in general, with heaviness of style, with too great an inclination to modern historical ideas. He wrote to Guillaume Guizot, the historian's son, who had been unlucky enough to congratulate him prematurely:

'You recognise the fortune of Carthage. As a matter of fact, when you announced my success to me, I was quite astonished, being unaccustomed to such events. I thought that Fortune had made a mistake in my favour. You see that she has quickly corrected her clumsiness.' ("Vie,' ii, 59.)

His friends urged him to rewrite his essay. For a short time he hesitated. He knew, he said, that his offspring was lame, but, if he had rightly understood the Academy's criticisms, he would have to break its sound leg also. On reading it over he found it dull. He turned its pages with an effort of will, not from interest. The execution was of that respectable mediocrity which he disliked in others but detested in himself. But with final courage he made up his mind to recast it, and by a supreme effort to change the fortune of Carthage. It must have needed great resolution in his state of health. His doctor forbade him all sorts of work; and he was thrown back on Voltaire and Beyle, two writers of whom he never tired. About the middle of July he set out on

his trip to the Pyrénées. He went to Saint-Sauveur and then to Eaux-bonnes. There he spent his time between reading 'Faust' and climbing rocks, 'leading the life' (he said) of a Pythagorean goat.' He went back to Paris, but slightly better, however, and spent the rest of the year in making descriptions, dialogues, and fantastic Pyrenean diabolical legends for his Voyage,' which was published by Hachette in April 1855.

From this time

It was at this period that his literary career really began. His connexion with Hachette opened to him the Revue de l'Instruction Publique'; and soon afterwards he began to contribute to the Revue des Deux Mondes' and the Journal des Débats.' onwards there appeared his remarkable series of essays, some of which were republished in the 'Essais de Critique et d'Histoire.' In May the Academy crowned his Livy. Thenceforward he received no serious check from anything but ill-health. In July he was at Eaux-bonnes again on account of his throat and frequent neuralgia. Natural objects always delighted him, and he looked on them with no undiscerning eye.

'To-day, after having watched the mountain behind which the sun was setting, I discovered that it was the energy of its black colour which gave to the long, broken line the life which pleased me so. The rocky mass existed only because this blackness was extreme, and increased as it arose against the pure, soft blue of the West. It emerged from the common ordinary state. It assumed a threatening appearance; it seemed invincible, immovable; it drew my eyes to it, and crushed all that surrounded it. . . . Colour, then, is the passion of inanimate objects. . . . The opposition of tints makes, not bouquets, but tragedies.' ("Vie,' ii, 104.)

...

When he came back to Paris he began to write his articles on the official philosophy, published as the Philosophes Classiques.'

My third misfortune is M. Cousin,' he wrote, apologising for a long silence. 'I have buried myself in that man; and I have written five enormous articles, which will come out in the "Revue de l'Instruction." I was given complete liberty, and I have made use of it.' (Ib. ii, 111.)

Cousin must have reflected bitterly on Taine's 'lack of veneration for great men' when he found himself dis

sected as a beetle is by an entomologist. If it was bad when Livy was explained as an 'orator who made an historian of himself,' what was it when he, the great Cousin, was explained as an orator who made himself a philosopher!' These articles attracted much attention; and their appearance in book-form led to wide discussion of the merits of the doctrines which they expressed. At last Taine was definitely placed out of the crowd'; Sainte-Beuve honoured him with a couple of articles; he had no more to fear from recalcitrant editors.

In the meantime the idea of his 'History of English Literature' had been gradually springing up. At first he had intended to do no more than a study of Shakespeare's psychology, which he had proposed to Hachette so early as 1854; but his researches had led him further than he had expected. In January 1856 he wrote: 'I think I have been unwise to undertake this history of English literature. It is too long a road by which to arrive at philosophy. It is like going to Versailles by way of Strassburg.' It was, indeed, a long road; he devoted seven years of his life to his English studies; but philosophy was to be found, not only at the end of his journey, but all the way along his path. The 'History of English Literature' is a great experiment in philosophy, in the sense of the disengagement of the broad general principles underlying human life.

The first half of this period was unhappily marked by such ill-health as effectually forbade all connected work and thought, except at rare intervals. He writes to his friend Suckau, for instance :—

'I am very far from being well, as you guessed; I work from two to three hours in the morning, with great precautions; the rest of the time I rub myself with cold water, I sleep, I sit long over my meals, I pay a few visits, and I give one or two rare lessons; I go to bed at nine, and I only go into society in cases of extreme necessity.' ('Vie,' ii, 162.)

or was to have;

It was the severest trial he had had and the patience with which he bore it is sufficient evidence of the sweetness of his true strength.

'I am a steam-engine without a boiler,' he wrote, pathetically enough; and I am rusting or rotting out. I live oyster-wise; I give no more lessons; I avoid thought and

conversation; I can only shake your hand. My condition and outlook at first made me very sad; but I moralised for a while, and now have recovered my balance.' ('Vie,' ii, 181.)

⚫Happily the crisis passed, and by the beginning of 1860 he was at work once more rewriting 'La Fontaine' and advancing with his 'Littérature Anglaise.' However he realised how inadequate mere book knowledge was. Three years before he had written to Suckau, who was about to visit England: 'I envy you your journey; you will see with your bodily eyes what I have been compelled to guess at.' In June 1860 he paid us his first visit. His early impressions are not uninteresting.

This great London tires and saddens me; I am actively fulfilling my duties as anatomist, but that is all. Everything is too big, too dark, too crowded together; everywhere you see the results of overmuch work and effort. The very contrasts wound me.' (Ib. ii, 200.)

A little later he wrote to M. Guillaume Guizot:

'All I will say is that I am beginning to value literature and the information which it can give. I think that the judgments which it suggested to me at Paris were not false. Actual experience has not falsified the expectations of the study; it has confirmed them, made them more precise, developed them; but the general formulas remain, in my opinion, quite true, I conclude that the opinions which we may form on ancient Greece and Rome, on Italy, Spain, and England, of the Renascence, are exact, and that an historian possesses in books a very powerful instrument, a sort of faithful photography almost always capable of replacing the physical sight of objects.' (Ib. ii, 204.)

In the same letter he endeavours to remove a popular misconception.

There is a point on which I must try to refute you; your article in the "Débats" spoke of English stiffness. You seem to think that each man is surrounded by a sort of hedge which cuts him off from his neighbours. Well, for my part I have found them as affable and communicative as the French. I am not speaking only of those to whom you have given me introductions. They may have been agreeable for your sake or out of good breeding. But everywhere, on the boat and in the omnibus, in town and country, people seem to me polite

and friendly. I have asked my way hundreds of times in the streets, and they have always told me, and even put themselves to some trouble over it. . . . I do not find them more melancholy than the French; they are certainly as civil. On the whole, I think they have stronger nerves than we have; they are less emotional, fonder of coarse pleasures, noise, and physical enjoyment.'

This was only the first of a series of visits which he paid us, returning with note-books full of varied observations, selections from which his friends persuaded him to publish as the Notes sur l'Angleterre.' In connexion with the select contents of these note-books, it is curious to compare England, as seen by Taine in the nineteenth century, with that seen by Voltaire, whom Taine admired so much, in the eighteenth. To each we offered a political ideal with which each endeavoured to indoctrinate his countrymen; but by a strange irony the two ideals were very far apart. To Voltaire England seemed the paradise of Liberalism. While he was still smarting from the stripes of the Chevalier de Rohan's servants, he saw a society where men of letters were not cudgelled but caressed, not put in the Bastille but given offices of state. He saw the royal barge on the Thames followed by a crowd of wherries, and 'not one of the watermen but showed, in face, garb, and figure, that he was free and living amid plenty.' In the political world he especially notices that noblemen have no legal authority in the places from which they take their titles, and that, because a man is a noble or a priest, he is not therefore exempt from paying taxes; all the taxes are regulated by the House of Commons, which, although the second in rank, is the first in importance.'

To Taine, on the other hand, just arrived from the 'pays de l'égalité' of the nineteenth century, England seemed the paradise of Conservatism. He finds the people accepting the decisions of authority without question. He never wearies of describing the great country-houses and their magnificent surroundings, the care of the owners for their dependents, and the respect of the villagers for their hereditary leaders. The upper classes' (he writes) have performed their duties well; and, in local as in national life, their ascendency is deserved and uncontested' ('Notes,' p. 215). For him the