SAINT-VICTOR, Paul de (1827-1883), one of the chief masters of a very ornate style in recent French literature, was born at Paris in 1827 and died there in 1883. He was of noble birth and inherited the title of count, but rarely used it, his political principles being democratic. Saint-Victor began as a dramatic critic on the Pays in 1851 and subsequently wrote in many journals. In 1870, during the last days of the second empire, he was made inspector-general of fine arts. Almost all Saint-Victor’s work consists of reprinted articles, the best known, and on the whole the best, being the collection entitled Hommes et Dieux (1867). His death interrupted the publication of an elaborate work, partly reprinted, partly developed from formerly printed papers, entitled Les Deux Masques, in which the author intended to survey the whole dramatic literature of ancient and modern times. Saint-Victor’s actual critical faculty was considerable, though rather onesided; but his position in French literature is likely to be, in an inferior degree, something like that of Mr Ruskin in English. He owed a good deal to Théophile Gautier, but he carried ornateness to a pitch far beyond Gautier’s, —a pitch which may sometimes deserve the epithet “barbaric.”