than Taine's "Art in Greece," a translation of which, by Mr. John
Durand, is published by Messrs. Holt & Williams. The French are
a nation of critics, and Taine is the critic of the French.
This could not have been said with truth during the lifetime of
Sainte-Beuve, but since his death it is true. There is nothing,
apparently, which Taine is not competent to criticise, so subtle
is his intellect, and so wide the range of his studies, but what
he is most competent to criticise is Art. We have heard great
things of a History of English Literature by him, but as it has
not yet appeared in an English dress (although Messrs. Holt &
Williams have a translation of it in press) we shall reserve our
decision until it appears. Art, it seems to us, is the specialty
to which Taine has devoted himself, with the enthusiasm peculiar
to his countrymen, and a thoroughness peculiar to himself.
Others may have accumulated greater stores of art-knowledge--the
knowledge indispensable to the historian of Art, and the
biographer of artists--but none has so saturated himself with the
spirit of Art as Taine. We may not always agree with him, but he
is always worth listening to, and what he says is worthy of
our serious consideration. We think he is _too_ philosophical
sometimes, but then the fault may be in us. It may be that we are
so accustomed to the materialism of the English critics that
we fail, at first, to apprehend the spirituality of this most
refined and refining of Frenchmen. No English critic could have
written his "Art in Greece," because no English critic could put
himself in his place. We know what the English think of Greek
Art, or may, with a little reading: what Taine thinks of it
is--that it is what it is, simply because the Greeks were what
they were. Before he tells us what Greek Art is, he tells us what
the Greeks were. Nor does he stop here, but goes on to tell us,