How did Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve make French literary criticism more independent?

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve is credited with making French literary criticism fully independent by liberating it from personal prejudice and partisan passions.1

He achieved this transformation through several key practices:

• Historical Context: He moved away from rigid, traditional standards of taste, instead adopting a flexible, historical approach that sought to sympathetically reconstruct the values of the authors he studied.1
• Institutional Support: His ability to revolutionize critical methods was bolstered by the rise of newspapers and critical reviews, which provided his work with prestige, wide circulation, and institutional independence.1
• Uncompromising Integrity: Sainte-Beuve was known for introducing specific, honest reservations even into his most enthusiastic eulogies. This commitment to critical independence often earned him a reputation for being an unreliable or "perfidious" critic among his own friends.1
• Documentary Precision: He maintained a fanatical respect for historical accuracy and meticulous documentation, ensuring his portraits were grounded in extensive data regarding an author's life, character, and background.1