The reader leaps from
steeple to steeple. M. Michelet seems to have proposed to himself an
impossible wager, which, however, he has won,--to write history with a
series of flashes." Could there be a more subtle, covert way of saying
of a man that he is hardened by self-esteem than the following on M.
Guizot: "The consciousness that he has of himself, and a natural
principle of pride, place him easily above the little susceptibilities
of self-love." M. Sainte-Beuve is not an admirer of Louis Philippe,
and among other sly hits gives him the following: "Louis
Philippe was too much like a _bourgeois_ himself to be long respected
by the _bourgeoisie_. Just as in former times the King of France was
only the first gentleman of the kingdom, he was nothing but the first
_bourgeois_ of the country." What witty satire on Lamartine he
introduces, with a recognition of popularity that, with one who takes
so much joy in applause as Lamartine does, is enough to take the
poison out of the sting: "Those who knew his verses by heart (and the
number who do is large among the men of our age) meet, not without
regret, with whole strips of them spread out, drowned, as it were, in
his prose.
Pages:
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173