For a time Sainte-Beuve was a member of the cénacle or circle around Victor Hugo, whom he revered as a poet. Despite Hugo’s encouragement (his poem “To my Friend S.-B.” may have backfired), Sainte-Beuve gave up his own poetry and turned to criticism; he was to become the most eminent critic of his day. He took an interest in Wordsworth, and enlisted the sonnet “Scorn not the sonnet” (p. x) in his own campaign to revive it in France.