university career; his life as a man of letters was now to begin.
No sooner had he deposited his dissertations at the Sorbonne than he began to write an essay on Livy for one of the competitions set by the Academy. Here again the moral tendency of his work excited lively opposition, and after much discussion the competition was postponed till 1855; Taine toned down some of the censured passages, and the work was crowned by the Academy in 1855. The essay on Livy was published in 1856 with the addition of a preface setting forth determinist doctrines, much to the disgust of the Academy. In the beginning of 1854 Taine, after six years of uninterrupted efforts, broke down and was obliged to rest: but he found a way of utilizing his enforced leisure; he let himself be read to, and for the first time his attention was attracted to the French Revolution; he acquired also a knowledge of physiology in following a course of medicine. In 1854 he was ordered for his health to the Pyrenees, and Hachette, the publisher, asked him to write a guide-book of the Pyrenees. Taine’s book was a collection of vivid descriptions of nature, historical anecdotes, graphic sketches, satirical notes on the society which frequents watering-places, and underlying the whole book was a vein of stern philosophy; it was published in 1855.
The year 1854 was an important one in the life of Taine. His enforced leisure, the necessity of mixing with his fellowmen, and of travelling, tore him from his cloistered existence and brought him into more direct contact with reality. His method of expounding philosophy underwent a change. Instead of employing the method of deduction, of starting with the most abstract idea and following it step by step to its concrete realization, henceforward he starts from the concrete reality and proceeds through a succession of facts until he arrives at the central idea. His style also became vivid and full of colour; he shows that he is acutely sensible to the outward manifestations of things and depicts them in all their relief. Simultaneously with this change in his works his life became less self-centred and solitary. He lived with his mother in the Isle Saint-Louis, and now he once more associated with his old friends, Planat, Prévost-Paradol and About. He made the acquaintance of Renan, and through Renan that of Sainte-Beuve, and he renewed friendly relations with M. Havet, who for three months had been his teacher at the École Normale. These years (1855–56) were Taine’s periods of greatest activity and happiness in production. On 1st February 1855 he published an article on La Bruyère in the Revue de l’Instruction Publique. In the same year he published seventeen articles in this review and twenty in 1856 on the most diverse subjects, ranging from Menander to Macaulay. On 1st August 1855 he published a short article in the Revue des Deux Mondes on Jean Reynaud. On 3rd July 1856 appeared his first article in the Débats on Saint-Simon, and from 1857 onwards he was a constant contributor to that journal. But he was seeking a larger field. On 17th January 1856 his history of English literature was announced, and from 14th January 1855 to 9th October 1856 he published In the Revue de l’Instruction Publique a series of articles on the French philosophers of the 19th century, which appeared in a volume at the beginning of 1857. In this volume he energetically attacked the principles which underlie the philosophy of Victor Cousin and his school with an irony which amounts at times to irreverence. The book closes with the sketch of a system in which the methods of the exact sciences are applied to psychological and metaphysical research. The work itself met with instantaneous success, and Taine became famous. Up till that moment the only important articles on his work were an article by About on the Voyage aux Pyrénees,[1] and two articles by Guizot on his Livy[2] After the publication of Les Philosophes Français, the articles of Sainte-Beuve in the Moniteur (9th and 16th March 1856), of Sherer[3] in the Bibliothèque Universelle (1858), and of Planche in the Revue des Deux Mondes (1st April 1857) show that from this moment he had taken a place in the front rank of the new generation of men of letters. Caro published an attack on Taine and Renan, called “L’Idée de Dieu dans une Jeune École,” in the Revue Contemporaine of 15th June 1857. Taine answered all attacks by publishing new books. In 1858 appeared a volume of Essais de Critique el d’Histoire; in 1860 La Fontaine et ses Fables, and a second edition of his Philosophes Français. During all this time he was persevering at his history of English literature up to the time of Byron. It was from that moment that Taine’s influence began to be felt; he was in constant intercourse with Renan, Sainte-Beuve, Sherer, Gautier, Flaubert, Saint-Victor and the Goncourts, and gave up a little of his time to his friends and to the calls of society. In 1862 Taine came forward as a candidate for the chair of literature at the Polytechnic School, but M. de Loménie was elected in his place.
The following year, however, in March, Marshal Randon, Minister of War, appointed him examiner in history and German to the military academy of Saint Cyr, and on 26th October 1864 he succeeded Viollet-le-Duc as professor of the history of art and aesthetics at the École des Beaux Arts. Renan’s appointment at the College de France and Taine’s candidature for the Polytechnic School had alarmed Mgr. Dupanloup, who in 1863 issued an Avertissement a la Jeunesse et aux Peres de Famille, which consisted of a violent attack upon Taine, Renan and Littré: Renan was suspended, and Taine’s appointment to Saint Cyr would have been cancelled but for the intervention of the Princess Mathilde. In December 1863 his Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise was published, prefaced by an introduction in which Taine’s determinist views were developed in the most uncompromising fashion. In 1864 Taine sent this work to the Academy to compete for the Prix Bordin. M. de Falloux and Mgr. Dupanloup attacked Taine with violence; he was warmly defended by Guizot: finally, after three days o! discussion, it was decided that as the prize could not be awarded to Taine, it should not be awarded at all. This was the last time Taine sought the suffrages of the Academy save as a candidate, in which quality he appeared once in 1874 and failed to be elected, Mezieres, Caro and Dumas being the rival candidates; and twice in 1878, when, after having failed in May, H. Martin being chosen, he was at last elected in November in place of M. Loménie. In 1866 he received the Legion of Honour, and on the conclusion of his lectures in Oxford on Corneille and Racine, the University conferred upon him (1871) its degree of D.C.L.
The period from 1864 to 1870 was perhaps the happiest of Taine’s life. He derived pleasure from his employment at the Beaux Arts and Saint Cyr, which left ample leisure for travel and research. In 1864 he spent February to May in Italy, which furnished him with several articles for the Revue des Deux Mondes from December 1864 to May 1866. In 1865 appeared La Philosophie de l’Art, in 1867 L’Idéal dans l’Art, followed by essays on the philosophy of art in the Netherlands (1868), in Greece (1869), all of which short works were republished later (in 1880) as a work on the philosophy of art. In 1865 he published his Nouveaux Essais de Critique et d’Histoire; from 1863 to 1865 appeared in La Vie Parisienne the notes he had taken for the past two years on Paris and on French society under the sub-title of “Vie et Opinions de Thomas Frederic Graindorge,” published in a volume in 1867, the most personal of his books, and an epitome of his ideas. In 1867 appeared a supplementary volume to his history of English literature, and in January 1870 his Théorie de l’Intelligence. In 1868 he married Mademoiselle Denuelle, the daughter of a distinguished architect.
He had made a long stay in England in 1858, and had brought back copious notes, which, after a second journey in 1871, he published in 1872 under the title of Notes sur l’Angleterre. On 28th June 1870 he started to visit Germany, but his journey was abruptly interrupted by the outbreak of the war; his project had to be abandoned, and Taine, deeply shaken by the events of 1870, felt that it was the duty of every Frenchman to work solely in the interests of France. On 9th October 1870 he
