So many false and misleading statements concerning the historic literary feud between Balzac and Sainte-Beuve have found acceptance that it seems important to reopen the question in an attempt to arrive at the real facts.

There are three well-known documents in the quarrel: first, Sainte-Beuve's criticism of Balzac in the Revue des Deux Mondes of November 15, 1834; second, Balzac's review of the first volume of Port-Royal, appearing in his Revue parisienne of August 25, 1840, and, lastly, Sainte-Beuve's tempered eulogy of Balzac in the Constitutionnel, September 2, 1850, shortly after the novelist's death. But these represent only a few aspects of a drama which, it must be admitted, at times bordered on the burlesque, and which is complicated by a number of apparently extraneous factors.

The poem Vingtième Siècle (Pleine Mer—Plein Ciel) forms the climax of the Légende des Siècles, and presents in mythical form a picture of man's ascent through science, out of a state of ignorance, slavery and hatred, into one of enlightenment, freedom and brotherly love. Hugo typifies the idyllic future by an air-ship, (Plein Ciel), the sombre past and present by the colossal steamship “Léviathan,” (Pleine Mer). The same idea, of the deliverance of man through science, had found expression in Le Satyre; but there locomotive, steamer, and airship were equally honored as factors and symbols of man's emancipation, one leading up to and merging into the other. The invention of the steamship was specifically celebrated in the lines:

Qui sait si quelque jour, grandissant d'âge en âge,
Il ne jettera pas son dragon à la nage,
Et ne franchira pas les mers, la flamme au front! (ll. 611–613)

Although suggestions have been made in regard to the possible means by which the Tannhäuser legend may have reached Swinburne's receptive mind, no one has offered a satisfactory explanation. It is my purpose to offer such an explanation, for the sake of the light it throws upon Laus Veneris as well as upon the development of the legend in English.

A preliminary consideration of possibilities is essential. First, there is Ludwig Tieck's Der getreue Eckart und der Tannenhäuser, which Carlyle translated as “The Trusty Eckart” in German Romance, published in 1827. Since Swinburne in his youth was an admirer of Carlyle, he may have known this translation. With some of its melodramatic absurdities omitted, the relevant portion of Tieck's story, part II, is briefly as follows: After a mysterious disappearance the noble Tannenhäuser returns to tell his friend Friedrich of his experiences. He believes that he has fallen in love with Emma and murdered a rival, causing both Emma and his own parents to die of grief. In darkest night he goes to a lofty hill, where he calls upon the Enemy of God; the latter teaches him a song, which in some strange way leads him to the Mountain of Venus. Passing the trusty Eckart, a superhuman figure who guards the entrance, he resigns himself to sensual pleasures in the company of Lady Venus and her train. From this “pomp of sin” he has now returned. Friedrich, who has been listening patiently to this recital of an apparent madman, assures him that Emma, recently married to Friedrich, is still alive. The Tannenhäuser does not believe this statement, supposing it a deception of Satan, and sets out to Rome to perform penance. Some months later he comes back, tattered and barefoot. Entering Friedrich's chamber, he kisses him, announces thatthe Holy Father cannot forgive, and departs. Friedrich discovers that Emma is murdered, apparently by the Tannenhäuser, and that the kiss draws him towards the mysterious mountain. The absence of any reference to the pope's staff and to the sending of messengers may be noted.

In the Revue Politique et Littéraire, M. G. Pailhès uncovers an early model for Fromentin's Dominique in the Edouard of Mme de Duras, published in 1825. His evidence for a relationship between these two novels seems rather conclusive, despite the futile efforts of M. Pierre Blanchon to refute it. His results, however, are not wholly conclusive because in his search for original sources he stops midway. The original source, common to both Edouard and Dominique, is to be found, I believe, in Mme de Krüdener's Valérie, published in 1803. Though Fromentin, undoubtedly, remembered Edouard in writing Dominique, he must have thought of Valérie even more, for his novel is in all respects more like the latter than like the former.

It is well known that from 1900 to 1906 (and even before) Proust made a thorough study of Ruskin and translated The Bible of Amiens (1904) and Sesame and Lilies (1906). Yet it is rather startling to hear him mentioned by André Maurois as “Ruskin's great disciple,” for there does not seem to be much of an affinity between the man whose writings on the architecture of Venice have been termed: “A sermon on stones” and the passionate pilgrim of the human heart who was never hampered in his minute psychological explorations by any of the reformer's ethical theories or creeds.

John Masefield, William Butler Yeats, A.E., and others, continually using the word, have made of ‘beauty’ and ‘Beauty’ a phenomenon at which Thackeray, again alive, would laugh as he once laughed at Beauty-with-a-big-B. Masefield, particularly, trying to create a moral consciousness in the people, takes it for granted that the word ‘beauty’ is at once concrete, specific, and, therefore, self-explaining; and that the things, beauty and Beauty, are to be understood at once as vital, moving forces. He is consequently disconcerting, for he himself has various understandings of the word and the things.

The imitative tones of a French boy saying, “y-e-e-e-s-o-o-y-e-e-e-s” have greeted more than one American from a distance as his nationality has been recognized, and the boy has called the words with a slow, drawling intonation. Any discussion of the cause of the quality the boy has heard as distinctive does not come under the head of “vowels and consonants” treated as individual sounds, nor under “stress,” nor even under “intonation,” “which may be defined as the variations in the pitch of the voice, i.e. variations in the pitch of the musical note produced by vibrations of the vocal cords.” Though this English acoustic quality is perfectly obvious, the underlying physiological differences of rate, direction, and continuity in the shifting of position of the vocal organs seem as yet untouched by phonetic study.