de l'Employe_ dates from 1841 and the _Monographie de la Presse
Parisienne_ from 1843.

It is well known that from the time almost of his success as a
novelist he was given, like too many successful novelists (_not_ like
Scott), to rather undignified and foolish attacks on critics. The
explanation may or may not be found in the fact that we have abundant
critical work of his, and that it is nearly all bad. Now and then we
have an acute remark in his own special sphere; but as a rule he
cannot be complimented on these performances, and when he was half-way
through his career this critical tendency of his culminated in the
unlucky _Revue Parisienne_, which he wrote almost entirely himself,
with slight assistance from his friends, MM. de Belloy and de
Grammont. It covers a wide range, but the literary part of it is
considerable, and this part contains that memorable and disastrous
attack on Sainte-Beuve, for which the critic afterwards took a
magnanimous revenge in his obituary _causerie_. Although the thing is
not quite unexampled it is not easily to be surpassed in the blind
fury of its abuse. Sainte-Beuve was by no means invulnerable, and an
anti-critic who kept his head might have found, as M. de Pontmartin
and others did find, the joints in his armor. But when, _a propos_ of
the _Port Royal_ more especially, and of the other works in general,
Balzac informs us that Sainte-Beuve's great characteristic as a writer
is _l'ennui, l'ennui boueux jusqu'a mi-jambe_, that his style is
intolerable, that his historical handling is like that of Gibbon,
Hume, and other dull people; when he jeers at him for exhuming "La
mere Angelique," and scolds him for presuming to obscure the glory of
the _Roi Soleil_, the thing is partly ludicrous, partly melancholy.
One remembers that agreeable Bohemian, who at a symposium once
interrupted his host by crying, "Man o' the hoose, gie us less o' yer