Identifier: portraitsofseven01sain (find matches)
Title: Portraits of the seventeenth century, historic and literary
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin, 1804-1869 Wormeley, Katharine Prescott
Subjects: French literature -- 17th century History and criticism Authors, French France -- Biography
Publisher: New York, London : G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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and poetical confessions, maybe very certain that they will not lack after deathfor demonstrators, analysts, and biographers. It wasnot always thus; so that when we come to inquireinto the life, especially the childhood and the first be-ginnings of our great writers and poets of the seven-teenth century, it is with difficulty that we discover afew traditions, little authentic, a few doubtful anec-dotes dispersed among the Ana. The literature andthe poesy of those times were not personal; authorsdid not entertain the public with their own senti-ments or their own affliirs; biographers imagined,1 know not why, that the history of a writer waswholly in his writings, and their superficial criticismnever went to the man below the poet. Moreover,as in those days reputations were very slow in mak-ing, it was not until much later, in the old age ofthe great man, that some ardent admirer of hisgenius—a Brossette, a Monchesnay—bethought himof making his biography. Or perhaps this biographer
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CORNEILLE.From an engraving of the painting by Lebrun. ipterre clorneille. 33 was a pious and devoted relative, too young to haveknown the youth of his author—like Fonteneiie withCorneille, and Louis Racine with his father. Hence,in the nephews history of Corneille, and the sonshistory of Racine, much ignorance, many inaccuraciescatch the eye at once; and, in particular, we find arapid hurrying over of the first literary years, whichare, nevertheless, the most decisive. When we begin by knowing a great man in the fullforce of his genius only, we imagine that he has neverbeen without it; and this seems to us so natural thatoften we never trouble ourselves to explain to our ownminds how it came about; just as, on the other hand,when we know such a man from the first, and beforehis fame, we usually do not suspect what he willsome day become; we live beside him without think-ing to watch him; we neglect to take account in himof that which it was most important we should know.Great men t

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