man, in English-speaking lands, is set down simply as a cad, and
is excluded from people's houses; but in some other countries the
thing is regarded with a certain amount of toleration. We see it
in the two books written respectively by Alfred de Musset and
George Sand. We have seen it still later in our own times, in that
strange and half-repulsive story in which the Italian novelist and
poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a very thin disguise, revealed
his relations with the famous actress, Eleanora Duse. Anglo-Saxons
thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust for the man who
could so betray a sacred confidence and perhaps exaggerate a
simple indiscretion into actual guilt. But it is not so in France
and Italy. And this is precisely what Sainte-Beuve attempted.

Dr. George McLean Harper, in his lately published study of Sainte-
Beuve, has summed the matter up admirably, in speaking of The Book
of Love:

He had the vein of emotional self-disclosure, the vein of romantic
or sentimental confession. This last was not a rich lode, and so
he was at pains to charge it secretly with ore which he exhumed
gloatingly, but which was really base metal. The impulse that led
him along this false route was partly ambition, partly sensuality.
Many a worse man would have been restrained by self-respect and
good taste. And no man with a sense of honor would have permitted
The Book of Love to see the light--a small collection of verses
recording his passion for Mme. Hugo, and designed to implicate
her.

He left two hundred and five printed copies of this book to be
distributed after his death. A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was