Sensation farouche et gaie, Je vais donc vivre sans lien! Ah! que mon me est fatigue D'avoir tant travaill pour rien!

Vains devoirs d'un monde frivole, Plaisirs factices de deux jours, Coupable abus de la parole, Efforts mesquins, tristes amours,

Tout de ce qui fut moi s'efface A l'horizon mystrieux, Et le libre, l'immense espace, S'ouvre mon coeur comme mes yeux.

NUIT D'ETE

O nuit, douce nuit d't, qui viens nous Parmi les foins coups et sous la lune rose, Tu dis aux amoureux de se mettre genoux, Et sur leur front brlant un souffle frais se pose!

O nuit, douce nuit d't, qui fais fleurir Les fleurs dans les gazons et les fleurs sur les branches, Tu dis aux tendres coeurs des femmes de s'ouvrir, Et sous les blonds tilleuls errent des formes blanches!

O nuit, douce nuit d't, qui sur les mers Alanguis le sanglot des houles convulses, Tu dis aux isols de n'tre pas amers, Et la paix de ton ciel descend dans leurs penses.

O nuit, douce nuit d't, qui parles bas, Tes pieds se font lgers et ta voix endormante, Pour que les pauvres morts ne se rveillent pas, Eux qui ne peuvent plus aimer, nuit aimante!

PILOGUE

Le Fantme est venu de la trentime anne. Ses doigts vont s'entr'ouvrir pour me prendre la main, La fleur de ma jeunesse est demi fane, Et l'ombre du tombeau grandit sur mon chemin.

Le Fantme me dit avec ses lvres blanches: "Qu'as-tu fait de tes jours passs, homme mortel? Ils ne reviendront plus t'offrir leurs vertes branches. Qu'as-tu cueilli sur eux dans la fracheur du ciel?"

—"Fantme, j'ai vcu comme vivent les hommes: J'ai fait un peu de bien, j'ai fait beaucoup de mal. Il est dur aux songeurs, le sicle dont nous sommes, Pourtant j'ai prserv mon intime Idal!...."

Le Fantme me dit: "O donc est ton ouvrage?" Et je lui montre alors mon rve intrieur, Trsor que j'ai sauv de plus d'un noir naufrage, —Et ces vers de jeune homme o j'ai mis tout mon coeur.

Oui! tout entier: espoirs heureux, lgers caprices, Coupables passions, spleentique rancoeur, J'ai tout dit ces vers, tendres et srs complices. Qu'ils tmoignent pour moi, Fantme, et pour ce coeur!

Que leur sincrit, Juge d'en haut, te touche, Et, comme aux temps lointains des rves nimbs d'or, Pardonne, en coutant s'chapper de leur bouche, Ce cri d'un coeur rest chrtien: Confiteor!



ABEL HERMANT

L'TOILE

Je suis le Chalden par l'toile conduit Vers un but inconnu que moi-mme j'ignore. Quelle main alluma cet astre dans ma nuit? Quel spectacle mes yeux rvlera l'Aurore?

N'importe.—Dans la nuit je vais. La nudit Du jour blessait mes yeux. L'ombre chaste est un voile. Ce flambeau, qu'il m'gare ou me guide, est clart: L'Astre, mme trompeur, est toujours une toile.

Trouverai-je en sa crche, ainsi que dans un nid, Un enfant? Me mettrai-je genoux? Que m'importe! J'ai recueilli la myrrhe et le baume bnit: Je respire en marchant les parfums que je porte.



NOTES.

The full-face figures refer to the pages; the ordinary figures to the lines.

N.B. For the poets before MALHERBE the spelling has not been modernized. Some uniformity however has been sought, and accents are used when they affect final vowels.

CHARLES D'ORLANS.

1391-1465.

Father of Louis XII, was taken prisoner in the battle of Agincourt (1415) and passed the next twenty-five years of his life in captivity in England. In this long leisure he developed his talent for poetry, and on his return to France he made his residence at Blois a gathering-point for men of letters. His poetical work marks the utmost attainment in outward grace of expression in the treatment of conventional subjects in the traditional fixed forms. Now and then there is a more personal strain which suggests the more distinctly modern lyric of Villon; but he is not to be compared with Villon in originality of view, sincerity of feeling, or directness and intensity of utterance.

His works were not published till the eighteenth century. The best edition is that of Ch. d'Hricault, 2 vols., 1874 (Nouvelle collection Jannet-Picard). Charles d'Orlans also wrote some of his poems in English; these were published by G. W. Taylor in 1827 for the Roxburghe Club.

For reference : Constant Beaufils, tude sur la vie et les posies de Charles d'Orlans, 1861; Robert Louis Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books, London, 1882.

1. BALLADE. For the form of the ballade see the remarks on versification, p. xxi. 2. ESTOYE, tais; for initial e from escf. esveillera, l. 14, Est, 3, 8. 3. AVOIENT, avaient; in the imperfect and conditional oi, from an earlier ei, continued to be written till late in the eighteenth century, long after in pronunciation it had come to have the value of ai. 4. HAYENT, hassent, y is found frequently in the older spelling for i, especially when final. 5. DESCONFORT= dcouragement. 8. SI FAIS = ainsi je fais; the omission of the pronoun is common at this time; cf. 8, 24, direz. 10. NE ... NE = ni ... ni. GREVANCE = dommage, malheur. 14. ACCORT,accord. 16. SOYENT, soient; here of two syllables, in modern verse of one. 17. VEOIR, voir; here of two syllables. 22. SORT, evil spell. 24. LOING, loin.

2. I. VUEIL, veux, HOIR = hritier. 5. NUL NE PORTE= que nul ne porte. 6. VENT, vend. MARCHI, march. 7. TIENGNE = tienne. POUR TOUT VOIR = vraiment; let every one consider it a certain fact. RONDEL. For the form of the rondel see the remarks on versification, p. xxi. II. AVECQUES, avec. 12. COMBIEN QUE = bien que. 17. RAPAISE = s'apaise. 19. TANTOST = bientt; s before l, m, n, and t has regularly disappeared; cf. vestu, 24, beste, 26, bruslerent, 4, 26, mesme, 5, 22, maistre, 6,1. RONDEL. "Le Temps a laissi son manteau." 22. LAISSI, laiss. 24. BROUDERYE, broderie. 25. LUYANT, luisant, CLER, clair.

3. 4. LIVRE could be used now in the body of the line only before a word beginning with a vowel. 6. ABILLE, _habille_. RONDEL. _"Les Fourriers d'Est sont venus._" 13. VERT, feminine ; in adjectives of two endings of the Latin third declension, like _grandis, fortis, viridis_, the feminine ending _e_is due to the influence of adjectives of three endings, and does not appear in Old French. 16. PIEA = nagure._ 18. PRENEZ PAS, _take to the country_, i.e. depart. 19. YVER, _hiver_.

4. RONDEL. "Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder." 2. SAY, sais; c was introduced into the forms of savoir under the mistaken notion that it was connected with scire. 4. UNG, un.

FRANOIS VILLON.

1431-146-?.

Poet and vagabond, he led a most irregular life, twice narrowly escaped hanging, and composed many of his poems in prison. He was a poet of great originality, for he broke away from the conventional subjects and the allegorizing habit of the Middle Ages and gave to the lyric a personal note and a depth and poignancy of feeling that made it almost a new creation, though he still adhered mainly to the traditional forms and showed a special preference for the ballade. Most of his ballades are introduced into his main works, the Petit Testament and the Grand Testament, which are entirely personal in contents.

His works were first published in 1489; Marot prepared an edition in the following century, Paris, 1533; they were not reprinted in the seventeenth century; convenient recent editions are those of P. L. Jacob (Paul Lacroix), 1854; P. Jannet (Nouvelle collection Jannet-Picard) and A. Longnon, 1892.

For reference: A. Longnon, tude biographique sur Franois Villon, 1877; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xiv; Th. Gautier, les Grotesques; J. Lematre, Impressions de thtre, troisime srie, 1889 ; Robert Louis Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books, London, 1882.

4. BALLADE DES DAMES DU TEMPS JADIS. Dante Gabriel Rossetti has translated this ballade, which is perhaps the most famous one in the language. 6. DICTES, dites, n'en = ni en ; in Old French ne could be used for the simple alternative 'or.' 7. FLORA; a late tradition made of the Roman goddess of flowers and spring a wealthy and beautiful woman. 8. ARCHIPIDIA, perhaps Hipparchia is meant; THAIS, an Athenian beauty of the fourth century B.C. 10. ECHO, the nymph of classical mythology. MAINE, mne. 11. ESTAN, tang. 13. ANTAN, last year (from Latin ante annum); Rossetti translates "yesteryear". 14. HELOS, Heloise, or Eloise. 16. ESBAILLART, Abelard (1079-1142), a French scholar and philosopher, whose love for the beautiful and accomplished Heloise, one of his pupils, has passed into legend, which has quite transformed the fact. SAINCT-DENYS, Saint-Denis, only four and one half miles from Paris, celebrated for the cathedral of Saint-Denis in which are the tombs of the kings of France. Abelard resided for a time in the abbey of Saint-Denis. 17. ESSOYNE = peine. 18. ROYNE, reine; Marguerite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis le Hutin, is meant, the heroine of the legend of the Tour de Nesle, according to which she had her numerous lovers killed and thrown into the Seine. Buridan was more fortunate and escaped; he was afterwards a learned professor of the University of Paris. She herself was strangled in prison in 1314. 21. LA ROYNE BLANCHE, Blanche de Castille, mother of Saint Louis. 22. SEREINE, sirne. 23. BERTHE AU GRAND PIED, celebrated in the chansons de geste, was the mother of Charlemagne. BIETRIS, Beatrix de Provence, married in 1245 to Charles, son of Louis VIII. ALLYS, Alix de Champagne, married in 1160 to Louis le Jeune. 24. HAREMBOURGES, Eremburge, daughter of Elie de la Flche, count of Maine, who died in 1110. 25. JEHANNE, Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake at Rouen in 1431.

5. 1. N'ENQUEREZ, do not seek to know. SEPMAINE,semaine. 3. QUE ... NE, lest. REMAINE = reste. LAY ou PLUSTOST RONDEAU. 8. SE, si. 12. DEVIE = meure. 13. VOIRE = vraiment. JE CONNAIS TOUT FORS QUE MOI-MEME. 15. LAICT. lait. 21. BESONGNE = travaille. CHOMME, chme. 24. GONNE, gown, a monk's garment.

6. 3. PIPEUR, one who whistles in imitation of birds ; je congnois pipeur qui jargonne, I know the tricks of the bird-catcher. 4. FOLZ NOURRIZ DE CRESME, refers perhaps to the pampered court jesters. 7. MULLET, mulet. 10. GECT, a counter for counting and adding (qui nombre et somme). 12. BOESMES, Bohemians; la faults des Boesmes is the heresy of the followers of John Huss (1369- 1415) and Jerome of Prague (1375-1416). 16. COULEREZ ET BLESMES = teints colors et blmes

CLEMENT MAROT.

1497-1544.

He abandoned the law to live at court and write verses. After his first successes, he became page in the household of Marguerite of Navarre, and continued to enjoy her protection and that of her brother, Francis I., though this could not save him, when accused of heresy because of the welcome that he gave to the ideas of the Reformation, from the necessity of twice fleeing to Italy for safety. In spite of some deeper notes and in spite of his translation of the first fifty Psalms, which is used in French Protestant churches, he was by no means a religious reformer. He was essentially a court poet, putting into graceful verse, ballades, rondeaux, epistles, epigrams, etc., the trifles, jests, sallies, and elegant badinage that delighted courtly society.

Works: l'Adolescence Clmentine, 1532; Oeuvres de Clment Marot, Lyon, 1538; Trente Psaumes de David, 1541; Cinquante Psaumes de David, 1543 ; les Oeuvres de Clment Marot, Lyon, 1544; Oeuvres compltes de Clment Marot, par M. Guiffrey, 1876-81 (only part has appeared); Oeuvres compltes, par P. Jannet, 4 vols., 1868-72; Oeuvres choisies, par E. Voizard, 1890.

For reference: E. Scherer, tudes littraires sur la littrature contemporaine, vol. viii; Emile Faguet, le Seizime sicle, 1893; H. Morley, C. Marot and other studies, London, 1871.

RONDEAU. For the form see the remarks on versification.

20. SE DEMENOIT, expressed itself. 21. C'ESTOIT DONN TOUTE LA TERRE RONDE, i.e. it was as if one had given. 23. "They loved each other for the heart alone."

24. SI A JOUIR ON VENOIT, if one's love was returned. 25. s'entretenoit, kept faith.

7 2. FEINCTS, feints. OYT, from our. 3. Qui = si quelqu'un. ME FONDE, rely.

PIERRE DE RONSARD.

1524-1585.

The greatest French poet of the Renaissance, he entered the household of the Duke of Orleans at the age of ten, spent three years as page of James V. of Scotland, and traveled much about Europe on various embassies. At eighteen, attacked by deafness, he withdrew to the college of Coqueret and was won to poetry by study of the ancients. It was then that a common love for the classical literatures and a common zeal for imitating their beauties in French bound him to the other young men who with him called themselves the Pleiad and set themselves to the task of renewing French literature in the image of the literatures of antiquity. In 1550, the year after the appearance of the manifesto of the young school, the Dfense et Illustration de la langue franaise of du Bellay, he published a volume of odes. His fame was instant and immense; he returned in glory to court, and for forty years the authority of his example was hardly questioned. His talent was exercised in almost all kinds of verse, chansons, sonnets, elegies, eclogues, hymns, epistles, and even in the epic, where, however, his experiment, la Franciade, was a complete failure, abandoned when but four of the proposed twelve cantos were finished. But his genius was essentially lyric. The ode was his special contribution to French verse; in it he followed the classical form with its divisions into strophe, antistrophe, and epode, sometimes in direct imitation of Pindar, Anacreon, Theocritus, or Horace. His best work is that in which he freed himself most fully from the influence of a model. His deepest and truest note's are those that celebrate the pleasures of this life, the delights of nature, and the inevitable "cold obstruction" of death.

Works: Odes and Bocage, 1550; Amours, Odes, book v, 1552, 1553; Hymnes, 1555, book ii, 1556; Meslanges, 1555, book ii, 1559; Oeuvres (Amours, Odes, Pomes, Hymnes), 4 vols., 1560; Oeuvres, i vol., 1584; recent editions are Oeuvres compltes, par P. Blanchemain, 8 vols., 1857-67 (Bibliothque elzvirienne); par Marty-Laveaux, 6 vols., 1887 ff.; Oeuvres choisies, avec notice de Sainte-Beuve, I vol.

For reference: Excellent biographical study by Marty-Laveaux in his edition of the works; mile Faguet, le Seizime sicle, 1893 ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xii.

7. A CASSANDRE. 8. DESCLOSE, opened. 10. A POINT PERDU; ne was not, and still is not always, required in the question; cf. 164, 22. VESPREE = soir; cf. vpre. 13. LAS, hlas. 20. FLEURONNE= fleurit.

8. CHANSON. 27. AMOUR, Cupid. 1. CHENEVIERE = chanvre. 3. MY-NUD, half naked. 19. FOL LE PELICAN; cf. for another use of this popular notion about the pelican the famous picture in the Nuit de mai of Alfred de Musset, 150, 12 ff. A HLNE. 26. OYANT, from our. 27. DESJA, dj. 29. BENISSANT VOSTRE NOM, etc., i.e. congratulating you on being immortalized by the poet's praise.

9. 2. OMBRES MYRTEUX, shadows of the myrtles. LGIE. 8. VENDEMOIS, one of the old divisions of France, on the Loire. It was the birth-place of Ronsard. 10. REMORS; has here rather the sense of regret. 13. AGEZ, ags the spelling -ez for -s was usual. 22. CHEF = tte. 23. DE RECHEF = de nouveau. 24. PERRUQUE = chevelure. 26. VERDS, strong, supple.

10. DIEU VOUS GARD. 7. GARD, the form of the present subjunctive regularly descended from the Latin subjunctive in verbs of the first conjugation. The ending e, added later, is due to analogy. 8. VISTES ARONDELLES, vites (rapides) hirondelles. 10. TOURTRES = tourterelles. 12. VERDELETS, verts; such diminutives were quite in favor in the language of the time; cf. rossignolet, nouvelet, fleurettes. 15. BOUTONS JADIS COGNUS, etc., i.e. the hyacinth and the narcissus. 29. AU PRIX DE, in comparison with.

11. A UN AUBESPIN. 6. LAMBRUNCHE, a wild vine. 10. PERTUIS, holes. 12. AVETTES = abeilles. 30. RUER = jeter.

12. LGIE CONTRE LES BCHERONS DE LA FORT DE GASTINE. Cf. the poem by Laprade, p. 192. Gastine is in Haut-Poitou, in the present department of Deux-Svres. 14. PERS, perc. 15. MASTIN, mtin. 21. PANS, used by Ronsard in the plural as if he thought them a kind of being, like Satyrs. 22. FANS, now written faons, but still pronounced as if spelled fans. 24. PREMIER, used adverbially. 26. ESTONNER in the older language expressed a physical shock; to stun. 28. NEUVAINE, composed of nine. TROPE, troupe; the nine muses. Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, and Euterpe the muse of music and lyric poetry.

13. 3. ALTEREZ, BRUSLEZ, ETHEREZ, see note on agez, 9, 13. 8. DORDONEENS, referring to the forest of Dordona, in Epirus, where oracles were rendered from oak trees. According to Greek traditions the first men lived on acorns and raw flesh. 16. ET QU'EN CHANGEANT DE FORME, etc., and that it will change its form and put on a new one.

JOACHIM DU BELLAY.

1525-1560.

After Ronsard the foremost poet of the Pleiad. He was of an illustrious family, but, cut off from a brilliant public career by ill health and deafness, he sought consolation in letters. He even preceded Ronsard in inaugurating the literary reform, issuing the manifesto of the new movement, his Dfense et Illustration de la langue franaise, his collection of sonnets called Olive, and a Recueil de posies, all in 1549. Shortly afterwards he accompanied his cousin, Cardinal du Bellay, to Rome; the admiration which the historic associations of the city excited in him and his disgust at the intrigues of the court and the corruptions of Italian life, mingled with homesickness for the pleasant sights and quiet air of his native Anjou, inspired the two collections of sonnets which are his best, the Antiquits romaines, translated by Spenser in 1591, and the Regrets.

Works: Olive, Recueil de posies, 1549; Premier livre des antiquits de Rome, 1558; Jeux rustiques, 1558; les Regrets, 1559 ; Oeuvres, 1569. Recent editions are : Oeuvres compltes, par Marty-Laveaux, 2 vols., 1866-67; Oeuvres choisies, par Becq de Fouquires, 1876.

For reference: Lon Sch, Joachim du Bellay, 1880; E. Faguet, le Seizime sicle, 1893 ; Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, vol. xiii; Walter Pater, The Renaissance, London, 1873.

13. L'IDAL. This is from the first collection of sonnets, Olive. The influence of Petrarch is evident. Compare also the lines of the sestet with the final stanzas of Lamartine's Isolement, p. 65. 22. En 1'eternel = dans l'ternit.

14. L'AMOUR DU CLOCHER. From the Regrets. 8. cestuy, old form of demonstrative, celui. The reference is of course to Jason. 9. USAGE, experience. 11. QUAND REVERRAY-JE, etc., cf. Homer's Odyssey, I, 58. 18. LOYRE, the name of the river is now feminine. 19. LIR, a little village in Anjou, was the birth-place of du Bellay. D'UN VANNEUR DE BL AUX VENTS. From the collection entitled Jeux rustiques.

15. 8. CESTE, cette. 10. J'AHANNE = je me fatigue.

AGRIPPA D'AUBIGN.

1550-1630.

Soldier as well as poet, he was a leader of the Huguenots in the wars that ended with the accession of Henry IV. After the assassination of Henry IV., his safety became more and more threatened in France, and he withdrew finally to Geneva. His main work is a long descriptive and narrative poem, but in many parts essentially lyrical, les Tragiques, a fierce picture of France in the civil wars. In his lyrics, which comprise stances, odes, and lgies, he is a follower of the tradition of Ronsard.

Works: Les Tragiques, 1616; a recent edition is by L. Lalanne, 1857; also in the Oeuvres compltes, par MM. Reaume et de Caussade, 4 vols., 1873-77.

For reference: Pergameni, la Satire au seizime sicle et les Tragiques d'Agrippa d'Aubign, 1881; E. Faguet, le Seizime sicle, 1893.

15. L'HYVER. 14. IRONDELLES, hirondelles. 19. N'ESLOIGNE, ne s'loigne de.

16. 2. COMME IL FIT, i.e. comme il alluma des flammes. 10. SEREINES, sirnes. 14. USAGE, fruition.

JEAN BERTAUT.

1552-1611.

A man by no means of the poetic stature of Ronsard, du Bellay, and D'Aubign; he found great favor in his day, but his lyric note was not powerful enough to endure long. He is most successful in the graceful expression of a natural melancholy, as in the example here given. He was a follower, in moderation, of the Pleiad.

Works : Recueil des oeuvres potiques de J. Bertaut, l601; appeared again enlarged in 1605 ; Recueil de quelques vers amoureux, 1602 : both collections are included in Oeuvres potiques, 1620; a recent edition is edited by A. Chenevire, 1891 (Bibliothque elzvirienne). CHANSON. 27. DEMEURE, delay.

17. 4. FAY, fais.

23. VOY, vois.

25. VY, vis.

MATHURIN REGNIER.

1573-1613.

Though bred to the church and early settled in a good living, he led a life that was hardly edifying. He possessed brilliant talents, but failed to make the most of them. He was indolent and fond of good living, and was restive under discipline, as is evident in his work and in his irritation at Malherbe. He had a gift of keen observation, and his satires excelled in interest what he composed in the more lyrical forms of ode and elegy.

Works : Oeuvres, 1608, 1612 ; recent editions are those of Viollet le Duc, 1853 (Bibliothque elzvirienne), and E. Courbet, 1875.

For reference : J. Vianey, Mathurin Rgnier, 1896.

FRANOIS DE MALHERBE.

1555-1628.

He marks an epoch in the history of French letters. Boileau's famous phrase, "enfin Malherbe vint," dates from him the beginning of worthy French poetry. What did begin with him was that tradition of refinement, elegance, polish and perfect propriety of phrase that continued to rule French literature for two centuries. He lent the influence of a very positive voice to the growing demand for a standard of authority in grammar and versification and for recognized canons of criticism. The lyrical impulse in him was small, but some of his lines live in virtue of the finished propriety and harmony of expression.

Works: Oeuvres, 1628; the best edition is that of L. Lalanne, 5 vols., 1862-69 {Collection des Grands crivains).

For reference: G. Allais, Malherbe, 1891; F. Brunot, la Doctrine de Malherbe, 1891; F. Brunetire, l'volution des genres, vol. i, 1890; tudes critiques sur l'histoire de la littrature franaise, vol. v, 1893.

21. CONSOLATION M. DU PRIER. 5. TITHON, Tithonus, who obtained from the gods immortality but not eternal youth. After age had completely wasted and shriveled him he was changed into a grasshopper. 6. PLUTON, Pluto, god of the nether world, the abode of the dead. 8. ARCHMORE, Archemorus or Opheltes, son of Lycurgus, king of Nemea, died in infancy from the bite of a serpent.

22. I. FRANOIS, Francis I.; his oldest son, Francis, born in 1517, died suddenly in 1526, and Charles V. was suspected of having had him poisoned, and dire vengeance was wreaked upon the person of Sebastian de Montecuculli, cupbearer of Charles V. The suspicions proved to be wholly groundless. 5. ALCIDE, Alcides, by which name Hercules was known till he consulted the oracle of Delphi. 9. LA DURANCE, a river in southwestern France, flowing into the Rhone below Avignon. After beginning an agressive campaign in this part of France in the summer of 1536, the Spaniards were in September forced to a disastrous retreat. 13. DE MOI, for my own part; Malherbe had lost his first two children, Henry in 1587 and Jourdaine in 1599. 27. LOUVRE; the palace of the Louvre, begun in 1541 by Francis

I. on the site of a royal chteau built by Philip Augustus, and added to by his successors, was a royal residence until the Revolution.

23. CHANSON. 20. en sa libert, i.e. free from her pursuit. PARAPHRASE DU PSAUME CXLV. This is Psalm CXLVI in our English Bible.

JEAN RACINE.

1639-1699.

A dramatic genius of the highest order. But besides being a great dramatist he was a consummate master of language. The choruses in Esther and Athalie are excellent examples of the kind of lyric that the tendencies represented by Malherbe permitted. The extract here given is from Esther, Act III. The approach to the language of the Psalms is evident throughout.

JEAN-BAPTISTE ROUSSEAU.

1670-1741.

The chief representative of the serious lyric in the eighteenth century. This ode is a favorable example of the form which lyric utterance assumed in this philosophizing century and under the tradition of poetic dignity and propriety.

27. ODE LA FORTUNE. 16. SYLLA (138-78 B.C.), the enemy of Marius and author of the bloody proscription against the adherents of his rival. 17. ALEXANDRE, Alexander the Great. 18. ATTILA, king of the Huns from 434 to 453, who ravaged southern and western Europe from 450 to 452 and was known as "the scourge of God."

28. 16. LE RETOUR, i.e. the adverse turn.

VARISTE-DSIR DESFORGES DE PARNY.

1753-1814.

He wrote mostly in a lighter and erotic vein. He had many admirers in his day who styled him the French Tibullus. His influence is perceptible in the style of Lamartine.

Works: Posies rotiques, 1778; Opuscules potiques, 1779, enlarged in succeeding editions; les Rosicroix, 1807; Oeuvres, 5 vols., 1808; Oeuvres choisies, 1827.

For reference : Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xv; Portraits contemporains, vol. iv; George Saintsbury, Miscellaneous Essays, London, 1892.

NICOLAS GILBERT.

1751-1780.

He has often been compared with Chatterton and has owed much of his fame to the unfounded legend that he was a child of genius brought to an untimely death by poverty and lack of recognition. His satires on the vices of his time enjoyed a temporary reputation, but his real legacy to posterity is the well-known lines here given.

Works: Oeuvres compltes, 1788, and frequently thereafter.

ROUGET DE L'ISLE.

1760-1836.

Though he wrote much in both prose and verse, nothing of his lives except the Marseillaise, which has become the national song of France. He composed both words and music in the night of April 25, 1792, while he was an officer of engineers at Strassburg. The last stanza vas added later by another hand. The name, la Marseillaise, comes from the fact that it was introduced to Paris by the troops from Marseilles.

Works: Essais en vers et en prose, 1796.

For reference: J. Tiersot, Rouget de l'Isle, son oeuvre, sa vie, 1892.

32. LA MARSEILLAISE. 6. Beuill, Franois-Claude Amour, marquis de (1739-1800), a devoted royalist, who planned the flight of Louis XVI. When the king was captured at Varennes he fled to England, where he died.

MARIE-ANDR CHNIER.

1762-1794.

The most genuine poet of the eighteenth century. Born at Constantinople of a Greek mother, he knew Greek early and fed himself on the Greek poets, imbibing something of their spirit. His elegies, idyls, and odes are not mere repetitions of the conventional commonplaces, but new, original, and vigorous in idea and expression. He anticipated the Romanticists in breaking over the received rules of versification and in giving greater flexibility and variety to the Alexandrine line.

Works : Posies, first published by H. de Latouche, 1819; later editions are by Becq de Fouquires, 1862 and 1872; G. de Chnier, with new material, 3 vols., 1874; by Louis Moland, 2 vols., 1878-79.

For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Portraits littraires, vol. i; Portraits contemporains, vols, ii and v; Causeries du lundi, vol. iv; Nouveaux lundis, vol. iii; E. Faguet, le Dix- huitime sicle, 1890; E. Caro, la Fin du dix-huitime sicle, vol. ii, 1882; J. Haraszti, la Posie d'Andr Chnier, 1892.

32. LA JEUNE CAPTIVE. This, as well as the Iambes following, was written in the Saint-Lazare prison shortly before Chnier was sent to the guillotine. The young captive was Mlle. Aime de Coigny; she escaped the guillotine and afterwards married M. de Montrond; she died in 1820.

33. 18. PHILOMLE; Philomela was daughter of Pandion, king of Athens. Pursued by Tereus, king of Thrace, she was changed into a nightingale. The name is frequently employed in poetry for the nightingale.

34. 16. PALS, a Roman divinity of flocks and shepherds.

35. IAMBES. 23. BAVUS, a conventional name; it is not clear who was in the poet's mind.

MARIE-JOSEPH CHENIER.

1764-1811.

A younger brother of Andr Chnier, enjoyed a great reputation as a dramatic poet and critic. Aside from the Chant du dpart, which had a reputation approaching that of the Marseillaise, he is hardly to be considered as a lyric poet.

Works: Oeuvres compltes, 8 vols., 1823-1826; Posies, 1844.

37. LE CHANT du DPART. 9. De BARRA, DE VIALA; Agricole Viala and Franois-Joseph Barra (properly Bara) were both young boys, thirteen and fourteen years of age, who fell fighting with the revolutionary armies, the former in the Vende, the latter near Avignon. To both the Convention voted the honors of burial in the Pantheon. Their names are often coupled, as here.

ANTOINE-VINCENT ARNAULT.

1766-1834.

He wrote a number of tragedies and a collection of fables that were admired in their day, but his name is best preserved for the larger public by this brief elegy, which is found in most anthologies. The circumstances attending its composition, on the eve of his departure from France after his banishment in January, 1816, are related by Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. vii, in the course of his notice of Arnault, which should be consulted.

FRANOIS-REN, VICOMTE DE CHAUTEAUBRIAND.

1768-1848.

An enormous literary force at the beginning of this century; M. E. Faguet calls him the "greatest date in French letters since the Pleiad." But the instrument of his power was prose. His attempts in verse were poor. Yet he exercised a direct influence towards the renewal of lyric poetry, as has been indicated in the introduction.

For reference: E. Faguet, tudes littraires sur le dix-neuvime sicle, 1887 ; F. Brunetire, l'volution de la posie lyrique au dix-neuvime sicle, vol. i, 1894.

39. LE MONTAGNARD EXIL. Introduced into the prose tale, le Dernier des Abencrages (1807). "J'en avais compos les paroles pour un air des montagnes d'Auvergne remarquable par sa douceur et sa simplicit." (Author's note.) 24. la Dore, a rapid stream in the department Puy- de-Dme, flowing into the Allier. 27. l'airain, i.e. the bell.

MARIE-ANTOINE DSAUGIERS.

1772-1827.

He represents a domain of the lyric that has always been industriously tilled in France, that of the chanson. The tradition of the song is distinctly bacchanalian, and rarely has it claimed serious consideration as literature. But Dsaugiers now and then foreshadows the larger and more serious treatment the chanson was to receive at the hands of Branger and Dupont.

Works: Chansons et Posies diverses, 3 vols., 1808-1816; a Choix de chansons appeared in 1858; another in 1859, and others since.

For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. v; George Saintsbury, Miscellaneous Essays, London, 1892.

CHARLES NODIER.

1780-1844.

Promoted the romantic movement by his personal contact with the group of young writers that he drew around him more than by what he himself wrote. He was one of those who felt and transmitted the influence of Germany. He is better known by his stories than by his verse.

Works : Essais d'un jeune barde, 1804 ; Posies diverses, 1827.

For reference : Mme. Mennessier-Nodier, Charles Nodier, pisodes et souvenirs de sa vie, 1867 ; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits littraires, vol. i.

PIERRE-JEAN DE BRANGER.

1780-1857.

The first in rank of the chansonniers. The chanson in his hands took on a breadth, a meaning, and a seriousness that it had never before possessed, and that make him secure of a place in the literature of his country. He used the song largely as a vehicle for his political opinions, even as a political weapon. The object of his attack was the monarchy of the restoration and the pre-revolutionary ideas which it tried to revive, and his weapon was formidable because it was so well fitted to be caught up and wielded by the masses of the people. Branger was popular in the more original sense of the word. He appealed to the masses by his ideas, which were those of the average man, and by the form which he gave them and the efficient aid of the current airs to which he wedded them, so that his words not only reached the ears of an audience far wider than that of the readers of books, but found a lodgment in their memories. Works: The successive collections of Chansons appeared in 1815, 1821, 1825, 1828, 1833; Oevres posthumes, and Oeuvres compltes, 2 vols., 1857.

For reference: Saint-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. i; Causeries du lundi, vols, ii, xv; Nouveaux lundis, vol. i; E. Caro, Potes et romanciers, 1888; C. Coquelin in The Century, vol. xxiv, with portraits.

43. LE ROI D'YVETOT (May, 1813) is perhaps the most famous of his songs. Yvetot is a small town in Normandy, near Havre. The lords of Yvetot were given the title of king in the fifteenth century. The reference of the song to Napoleon is clear.

44. 11. BAN; lever le ban means to call out one's vassals or subjects. 13. TIRER AU BLANC, to shoot at a target.

45. LE VILAIN. 30.LE LOPARD; the French heralds describe the device of the English coat of arms as a lion lopard; so the French often use the leopard as a symbol for the English.

46. 3. LA LIGUE, the Catholic League, a union of Catholics between 1576 and 1596, principally to secure the supremacy of their religion; it became the partisan of the Duc de Guise against Henry I. and Henry IV., fomented civil strife, allied itself with Spain, and became guilty of cruel excesses. MON HABIT 20. Socrate: the poverty of Socrates is notorious. 27. FTE: a person's fte is the day of the saint whose name he bears.

47. 17. DES RUBANS; little bits of ribbon are worn in the buttonhole by members of the Legion of Honor, established by Napoleon in 1802. Membership in it is a purely honorary distinction, conferred by the government for conspicuous services of any kind, civil as well as military, and usually much coveted. Branger refused all such favors from the government. 26. METTRE POUR JAMAIS HABIT BAS, i.e. mourir.

48. LES TOILES QUI FILENT, "shooting stars" (Jan., 1820). This poem is based upon the popular superstition that connects human destinies with the stars, and interprets a shooting star as the passing of a human life.

49. 2. C'TAIT QUI LE NOURRIRAIT, each strove to outdo the other in feeding him.

50. LES SOUVENIRS DU PEUPLE. This is one of the poems that contributed to increase the prestige of the name of Napoleon. 9. BIEN ... QUE; the parts of the conjunction are sometimes thus separated.

51. 10. CHAMPAGNE, previous to the Revolution a political division of France, having Lorraine on the east and Burgundy on the south. Like most other provinces it belonged formerly to independent princes. It came to the kings of France by the marriage of Philip IV. in the last half of the thirteenth century. Since the Revolution all these historical divisions have been supplanted by the dpartements, new administrative districts intended to obliterate the old boundaries. But the old names are still familiarly used. Champagne was invaded in 1814 by an army of the powers allied against Napolon. 18. S'ASSOIT, instead of the usual s'assied of cultivated speech, is in keeping with the unlettered condition and familar tone of the speaker.

52. LES FOUS. Perhaps the word "cranks" comes nearest to giving the force of the title. 22. SAUF , reserving the privilege of.

53. 5. SAINT-SIMON; Claude-Henri, comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), was the founder of French socialism. He demanded the application of the principle of association to the production and distribution of wealth. 13. Francois- Marie-Charles FOURIER (1772-1837), the founder of Fourierism, advocated a social reform in the direction of communism, and proposed to reorganize society in large groups, or phalanxes, living together in a perfect community in one building, called a phalanstery. Such communities as Brook Farm were attempts at a practical application of Fourier's ideas. See O. B. Frothingham's Life of George Ripley. 21. Barthlemy-Prosper ENFANTIN (1796-1864) was a follower of Saint-Simon and developed his doctrines. His means for securing the emancipation and equality of woman was the abolition of marriage.

CHARLES-HUBERT MILLEVOYE.

1782-1816.

Author of several poetical tales of chivalry and a considerable number of elegies, is remembered for hardly anything but these celebrated lines:

Works: Oeuvres, 5 vols., 1814-16; a collection of his Posies is published in one volume, with a notice by Sainte- Beuve.

54. LA CHUTE DES FEUILLES. 19. PIDAURE; Epidaurus, a town in Argolis on the Saronic gulf, the chief seat of the worship of Aesculapius, the god of the healing art.

MADAME MARCELINE DESBORDES-VALMORE.

1786-1859.

Is still ranked well among the lyric poets of the first part of the century, though the celebrity that she enjoyed for a time has passed. Though her language still has a flavor of the eighteenth century, the note of emotion is direct and sincere. The theme that best inspired her was love—love betrayed and disappointed.

Works: Posies, 1818; les Pleurs, 1833; Pauvres Fleurs, 1839; Contes en vers pour les enfants, Lyon, 1840; Bouquets et prires, 1843; there is a selection, with notice by Sainte-Beuve, with the title: Posies de Madame Desbordes-Valmore.

For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. ii; Causeries du lundi, vol. xiv; Nouveaux lundis, xii; these notices are collected in a volume: Madame Desbordes-Valmore, sa vie et sa correspondance; Montesquiou-Fezensac, Flicit, tude sur la posie de Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 1894.

57. LES ROSES DE SAADI. Saadi (1195-1296) was a Persian poet; one of his works is the Gulistan, or Garden of Roses.

ALPHONSE-MARIE-LOUIS DE LAMARTINE. 1790-1869

The first great poet of the century and still one of the greatest. He passed a quiet youth in the shelter of home influences on his father's estate near Mcon, receiving his most lasting impressions from his mother's instruction, from the fields and woods, and from certain favorite books, among which were the Bible and Ossian. This education was supplemented by a visit to Italy in 1811-12, memorable for the episode of Graziella, and a short service in the royal guards. His first volume, the Mditations potiques (1820), was something entirely new in French letters and made him famous at once. These poems were saturated with the poet's personality and informed with his emotions; and to communicate his pervading melancholy he found the secret of lines which, while they did not yet have the color, brilliancy, and variety that the Romanticists presently gave to verse, charmed the ear with a harmony and a music unattained before. His long poems, with more or less of philosophical intention, especially Jocelyn (1836), are important works, but it was as a lyric poet that he made his chief impression.

Works: Mditations potiques, 1820; Nouvelles Mditations, 1823; Harmonies potiques et religieuses, 1830; Recueillements potiques, 1839; Posies indites, 1839; Posies indites, 1873; republished under the same names in various collected editions of his Oeuvres since 1860.

For reference: Faguet, tudes littraires sur le dix-neuvime sicle, 1887; Sainte-Beuve, Premiers lundis, vol. i; Portraits contemporains, vol. i; F. Brunetire, volution de la posie lyrique, vol. i; Histoire et littrature, vol. iii, 1892; F. Reyssi, la Jeunesse de Lamartine, 1891; E. Deschanel, Lamartine, 2 vols., 1893; J. Lematre, les Contemporains, vol. vi, 1896; E. Zyromski, Lamartine pote lyrique, 1898.

58. LE LAC. Written September 17-23, 1817; from les Mditations potiques. The lake here celebrated is Lake Bourget in Savoy. Here the poet met in 1816 Mme. Charles, wife of the well known physicist, with whom he fell very much in love and who is immortalized by him under the names Julie and Elvire. She died Dec. 18, 1817. Cf. Anatole France, l'Elvire de Lamartine, 1893. When this poem was written Lamartine already knew that she was hopelessly ill. This experience of his colors many poems of his first two volumes. Le Lac has often been set to music; most successfully by the Swiss composer Niedermeyer (1802-1861). For interesting variants in the text see Reyssi, la Jeunesse de Lamartine, p. 201.

L'AUTOMNE. November, 1819; from les Mditations potiques.

61. 9. PEUT TRE L'AVENIR, etc.; "allusion l'attachement srieux que le pote avait conu pour une jeune Anglaise qui fut depuis la compagne de sa vie." (Commentaire de l'auteur.) LE SOIR. Spring of 1819; from les Mditations potiques.

63. LE VALLON. Summer of 1819; from les Mditations potiques. "Ce vallon est situ dans les montagnes du Dauphin." (Commentaire de l'auteur.)

65 9. PYTHAGORE; Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C., who is said to have taught the doctrine that the "organization of the universe is an harmonious system of numerical ratios." L'ISOLEMENT. September, 1818; from

les Mditations potiques. Reyssi in the work above cited gives interesting variants for this poem.

67 LE CRUCIFIX. 1818? From les Nouvelles Mditations. "Mon ami M. de V(irieu), qui assistait aux derniers moments de Julie, me rapporta, de sa part, le crucifix qui avait repos sur ses lvres dans son agonie ... J'crivis, aprs une anne de silence et de deuil, cette lgie." (Commentaire de l'auteur.) Compare with this note the eleventh stanza of the poem, which points back to the time of the Graziella affair. See below.

70. ADIEU A GRAZIELLA. From les Nouvelles Mditations. Graziella, whose heart Lamartine won during his visit to Naples in the winter of 1811-12 and whom he abandoned, was the daughter of a Neapolitan fisherman. She died soon afterward. Later the poet idealized her and his relation to her and immortalized her memory in his works. Cf. le Premier regret below.

71. LES PRLUDES. 1822; from les Nouvelles Mditations. This poem, addressed to Victor Hugo, consists of several divisions, in different meters, only the last of which is here given. It inspired the symphonic poem of Liszt by the same name.

73. HYMNE DE L'ENFANT SON RVEIL. From les Harmonies potiques et religieuses.

76. LE PREMIER REGRET. From les Harmonies potiques et religieuses. It was inspired by the memory of Graziella. 7. MER DE SORRENTO, bay of Naples; Sorrento is a small town on the bay, south-east of Naples.

77. 27. NMI; the lake is in the hollow of an extinct volcano, in the Alban mountains, a few miles southeast of Rome.

81. STANCES. From les Nouvelles Mditations. 18. MEMNON, son of Tithonus and Eos, king of the Ethiopians, slain by Achilles. The Greeks connected with Memnon various ancient monuments and buildings, especially the great temple at Thebes and one of the colossi of Amenophis III., currently called the statue of Memnon; legend reported of it that when touched by the first rays of the dawn it gave forth a musical sound.

83. LES RVOLUTIONS. From les Harmonies potiques et religieuses. Only the last of the three divisions of the poem is given here.

84. 20. SIBYLLES ANTIQUES; concerning the sibyls, sibylline books, and sibylline leaves consult a classical dictionary. 23. VERBE; used currently for the second person of the Trinity; here it goes back to a passage in the first division of the poem, where speaking of God's process of creation; he says:

"Son Verbe court sur le nant! Il court, et la Nature ce Verbe qui vole Le suit en chancelant de parole en parole, Jamais, jamais demain ce qu'elle est aujourd'hui! Et la cration, toujours, toujours nouvelle, Monte ternellement la symbolique chelle Que Jacob rva devant lui! "

85. 8. LES NOEUDS, knots of nautical reckoning.

ALFRED DE VIGNY.

1797-1863.

One of the great poets of the century. He surpassed most, if not all, of his fellow Romanticists in the intellectual quality of his verse. His lyrics are not merely the product of a moment of passion or of a passing emotion; the strings of his lyre were not set vibrating by every breeze that blew. The personal emotion from which the lyric springs was with him subjected to the action of an intellectual solvent, was generalized and made almost impersonal before it was given form and expression. For this reason partly the bulk of his poetry is small, not exceeding the limits of one small volume. But there are few poems that one would be content to lose. One should read, besides the two given here, Mose, la Maison du Berger and la Mort du loup. De Vigny's influence on the poetry of the latter half of the century has been considerable.

Works: _Pomes_, 1822; _Pomes antiques et modernes_, 1826; _les Destines_, 1864; in the Oeuvres compltes_, of which several editions have appeared, the _Posies_ make one volume.

For reference : Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. II; E. Caro, Potes et romanciers, 1888 ; E. Faguet, tudes littraires sur le dix-neuvime sicle, 1887 ; F.Brunetire, volution de la posie lyrique, vol. ii ; Dorison, Alfred de Vigny, pote philosophe, 1891 ; M. Palologue, Alfred de Vigny, 1891.

86. LE COR. 1828. The story of the surprise of the rearguard of Charlemagne by the Moors and of the death of Roland (Orlando in the Italian poems) is told in the Chanson de Roland (end of the eleventh century), the finest of the old French heroic poems. 19. FRAZONA ; this name is not found on ordinary maps or in descriptions of this region. MARBOR, a mountain of the Pyrenees. 21. GAVES, name given in the Pyrenees to streams that descend from the mountains.

87. 11. RONCEVAUX, a Spanish village at the entrance to one of the passes of the Pyrenees. 14. OLIVIER, Oli- ver, like Roland and Turpin mentioned later, one of the twelve peers of Charlemagne, standard figures in the old French poems that deal with Charlemagne.

88. 4. LUZ, ARGELS, villages in the department of Hautes- Pyrnes. 6. ADOUR, a river of France rising in the Pyrenees and flowing into the Bay of Biscay. 15. SAINT Denis is the patron saint of France. 24. Obron, king of the fairies in mediaeval folk-lore; cf. A Midsummernight's Dream.

89. LA BOUTEILLE LA MER, 1853. Bears the sub-title: Conseil un jeune homme inconnu. 19. Chatterton (1752-1770), the precocious English poet who, failing to get recognition for his talents, was reduced to destitution and ended his life by poison. Wordsworth wrote of him in

The Leech-Gatherer:

"I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride."

For de Vigny he stood almost as the type of the poet; he used his career as literary material in the narrative Stello (1832) and in the drama Chatterton (1835). Gilbert, see p. 320. He is also brought into Stello. MALFILTRE (1732-1767), a French poet who was tempted by the praise given to his ode, le Soleil fixe au milieu des plantes, to try a literary career at Paris and died in great poverty. He has passed wrongly for an unappreciated genius.

9O. 27. TERRE-DE-FEU, Terra del Fuego.

91. 6. CES PICS NOIRS, les pics San-Diego, San-Ildefonso. (Author's note.) 13. Reims, a city in Champagne, the center of the champagne trade. 25. A, a town in Champagne, near Reims, noted for its wine; the name is also applied to the wine.

8. DES FLORIDES; in speaking of both coasts of Florida the French formerly used the plural.

VICTOR HUGO.

1802-1885.

The foremost literary figure of the century in France. His commanding influence as the chief of the Romantic school and the champion of a revolution in literary doctrine and practice has led to his being generally considered in connection with the movement to which he gave such a powerful impulse. But he was not merely a great party chief and a great influence. He was also a great poet, and a great lyric poet. He was that by reason of the breadth and variety of his lyric performance, the surprising mastery of form that he showed, the new capacities for picturesque expression that he discovered in the language or created for it, the new possibilities of rhythm and melody that he opened to it, and the range, power, and sincerity of many of the thoughts and feelings to which he gave so sonorous and musical a body. No doubt in a large part of his early work, as les Orientales, the body was more to him than the spirit that it lodged. Poetry to him was an art that had its technical side, like any other. The development of its technical resources had a charm of its own, and he had the artist's delight in skillful and exquisite workmanship. The

mastery that he attained was so perfect, he seemed so fully to exhibit the utmost capacities of the language for the most various effects of rhythm and harmony, that Thodore de Banville said of la Lgende des sicles that it must be the Bible and the Gospel of every writer of French verse. But he did not stop with the dexterity and virtuosity of the craftsman. More and more he used the mastery that he had achieved not for the mere pleasure of practicing or exhibiting it, but to give fitting and adequate expression to feelings and to thoughts. The domestic affections, the love of country, and the mystery of death had the deepest hold upon him, and whenever he approaches these themes he is almost sure to be genuine and sincere. His pity for the poor and unfortunate was very tender, and was the real spring of a great deal of his democracy, and he had a fine gift of wrathful indignation, which was called into exercise especially by Napoleon III. No part of his lyrical production is more spontaneous and genuine than many poems of Les Chtiments. There was from the first a bent towards philosophical reflection observable in him, and in the latter part of his life, beginning with les Contemplations and la Lgende des sicles, it preponderated more and more over the lyrical impulse, though the latter was never reduced to silence for long.

Works: Odes et Posies diverses, 1822; Nouvelles Odes, 1824; Odes et Ballades, 1826, 1828; les Orientales, 1829; les Feuilles d'Automne, 1831; les Chants du crpuscule, 1835; les Voix intrieures, 1837; les Rayons et les ombres, 1840; les Chtiments, 1853; les Contemplations, 1856; la Lgende des sicles, 1859, 1876, 1883; les Chansons des rues et des bois, 1865; l'Anne terrible, 1872; l'Art d'tre grandpre, 1876; les Quatre Vents de l'esprit, 1881; Toute la lyre, 1889, 1893. The most convenient form in which they are now to be found is the ne varietur edition of Hetzel-Quantin in 16mo, at two francs a volume; the volumes correspond to those given above, except that the first three are all included in the one Odes et Ballades.

For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. i; E. Caro, Potes et romanciers, 1888; A. Barbou, Victor Hugo, 1882; E. Dupuy, Victor Hugo, l'homme et le pote, 1887; L. Mabilleau, Victor Hugo, 1893 ; E. Bir, Victor Hugo avant 1830, 1883; Victor Hugo aprs 1830, 2 vols., 1891; Victor Hugo aprs 1852, 1894; A. C. Swinburne, Victor Hugo, London, 1886; C. Renouvier, Victor Hugo, le pote, 1893; E. Dowden, Studies in Literature, London, 1878; E. Faguet, le Dix-neuvime sicle, 1887; F. Brunetire, volution de la posie lyrique, 2 vols., 1894.

95. LES DJINNS. August, 1828; from les Orientales. The poem is especially noteworthy from a technical point of view. The quiet before the descent of the spirits, their approach, their fury, their receding, and the quiet that follows, are suggested by the movement of the lines. The motto is from Dante's Inferno, Canto v, 46-49; he is describing the tormented spirits of the carnal malefactors "Who reason subjugate to appetite." Djinns are spirits of Mohammedan popular belief, created of fire, and both good and evil. The vowel is not nasal.

97. 25. PROPHTE, Mohammed.

99. ATTENTE. 1828; from les Orientales. The motto is Spanish, "I was waiting in despair."

100. EXTASE. November, 1828; from les Orientales. The motto is from the Bible, Rev. i, 10. LORSQUE L'ENFANT PARAT. May 18, 1830; from les Feuilles d'Automne. Les Feuilles d'Automne were largely the reflection of the domestic affections of the poet. He had been married in 1822, and had at this time three children, Lopoldine, Charles, and Victor.

102. 17. ENNEMIS; the reference is doubtless to the literary opponents of Hugo; the struggle between the champion of tradition and the Romanticists brought many personal bitternesses. DANS L'ALCVE SOMBRE. Nov. 10, 1831; from les Feuilles d'Automne. The motto is from a poem, la Veille, addressed by Sainte-Beuve to Hugo on the birth of his son Franois-Victor, Oct. 21, 1828.

103. 19. lys, lis; this spelling is usual with Victor Hugo and frequent in this century, especially with later writers.

1O4. 27. CHIMRE has here more the force of cauchemar. NOUVELLE CHANSON SUR UN VIEIL AIR. Feb. 18, 1834; from les Chants du crpuscule.

106. "PUISQU'ICI-BAS." May 19, 1836; from les Voix intrieures.

108. OCEANO NOX. July, 1836; from les Rayons et les ombres. The title is from Vergil, Aen. ii, 250: Vertitur interea caelum et ruit Oceano nox.

110. NUITS DE JUIN. 1837; from les Rayons et les ombres. "LA TOMBE DIT LA ROSE." June 3, 1837; from les Voix intrieures. TRISTESSE D'OLYMPIO. October, 1837; from les Rayons et les ombres. See the discussion of this poem in Brunetire, volution de la posie lyrique, i, 200 ff. His view is indicated in the following extract: "Ces grands thmes, les plus riches de tous,—la Nature, l'Amour et la Mort,—dans le dveloppement desquels nous sommes convenus de chercher et de vrifier la mesure du pouvoir lyrique, Hugo les mle ou les fond ensemble, il les enchevtre, il les complique, il les multiplie les uns par les autres, et de cette complication, admirez les effets qu'il tire.... C'est en effet ici qu'clate, mon avis, la supriorit de la Tristesse d'Olympio sur le Lac de Lamartine ou sur le Souvenir de Musset, qu'on lui a si souvent, et tort, prfrs. Non pas du tout, vous le pensez bien, que je veuille nier le charme pur et pntrant du Lac, ou la douloureuse et poignante loquence du Souvenir! Incomparable lgie, le Lac de Lamartine a pour lui la discrtion mme, l'lgance, l'idale mlancolie, la caresse ou la volupt de sa plainte; et, dans le Souvenir de Musset, nous le verrons bientt, c'est la passion mme qui parle toute pure. Mais, dans la Tristesse d'Olympio, de mme que les voix des instruments se marient dans l'orchestre, la note aigu, dchirante et prolonge du violon la lamentation plus profonde et plus grave de l'alto, le tumulte clatant des cuivres aux sons plus perants de la flte, tandis qu'au-dessus d'eux la voix humaine continue son chant d'amour ou de colre, de haine ou d'adoration, c'est ainsi que la mlodie trs simple et comme lmentaire du souvenir s'enrichit, s'augmente, se renforce, et se soutient chez Hugo d'un accompagnement d'une prodigieuse richesse, ou tout concourt ensemble, toute la nature et tout l'homme, toute la posie de l'amour, toute celle des bois et des plaines, toute la posie de la mort."

116. "A QUOI BON ENTENDRE." July, 1838; from the drama Ruy Blas, act ii, scene I.

117. CHANSON. "SI VOUS N'AVEZ RIEN ME DIRE." May, 18—; from les Contemplations.

118. "QUAND NOUS HABITIONS TOUS ENSEMBLE." Sept. 4, 1844; from les Contemplations. The poet's daughter Lopoldine had married Charles Vacquerie in the summer of 1843. On the fourth of September of the same year she was drowned, together with her husband, in the Seine near Villequier. Her death was a great shock to Hugo, and the few verses that we have from these years are full of the bitterness of loss sweetened by remembrance of happy earlier days. Her memory is everywhere present in the Contemplations; compare the following poems.

119. 5. SI JEUNE ENCORE; jeune refers of course to the subject; Hugo was twenty-two when Lopoldine was born. "O SOUVENIRS! PRINTEMPS! AURORE!" Villequier, Sept. 4, 1846; from les Contemplations. Notice the date.

120. 2. MONTLIGNON, Saint-Leu, small places just out of Paris to the north.

121. ARIOSTE, Ariosto (1474-1533), a famous Italian poet, author of Orlando Furioso. "DEMAIN, DS L'AUBE." Sept. 3, 1847; from les Contemplations. Notice the date. 21. DEMAIN, i.e. the anniversary of his daughter's death.

122. 2. HARFLEUR, a small town on the Channel coast, a few miles from Havre, near the mouth of the Seine. VENI, VIDI, VIXI. April, 1848; from les Contemplations.

123. LE CHANT DE CEUX QUI S'EN VONT SUR MER. Dated: En mer, 1er aot, 1852. This and the next following poems, from les Chtiments, are the expression of the poet's hatred for Napoleon III. This volume was the direct fruit of his exile in consequence of his determined opposition to the imperial ambitions of Napoleon. He had been active in trying to organize resistance after the coup d'tat, and with difficulty had evaded arrest and escaped to Brussels. After the publication of his denunciatory volume, Napolon le Petit, the Belgian government expelled him. and he took refuge first in England, whence he passed immediately to the island of Jersey, where he arrived on the fifth of August, 1852. In 1855 residence in Jersey was forbidden him and he removed to Guernsey, where he continued to reside till the downfall of Napoleon I.

124. LUNA. July, 1853. 23. L'AN QUATRE-VINGT-ONZE, 1791, the beginning of the French Revolution.

126. LE CHASSEUR NOIR. September, 1853. 27. SAINT ANTOINE; Saint Anthony (250-356) was a native of Upper Egypt, withdrew to the desert, and gave his life up to ascetic devotion in solitude and voluntary poverty. Legend represents him as beset by tempting demons.

128. LUX. December, 1853. 9. Capets; the kings of France from the accession of Hugh Capet in 987 to that of the house of Valois with Philip VI. in 1328 were Capets.

129. ULTIMA VERBA. December, 1853. 4. Mandrin, a notorious bandit, executed in 1755.

130. 3. Louvre, see note p. 318. 22. Sylla, see note p. 319. CHANSON. "Proscrit, regarde les roses." May, 1854; from les Quatre Vents de l'esprit, livre lyrique. Concerning the inexact rhyme semai: mai, rare with Hugo, see Revue politique et littraire, July 16, 1881.

132. EXIL. Between 1868 and 1881; from les Quatre Vents de l'esprit, livre lyrique. 5. COLOMBE, his daughter Lopoldine. 6. ET TOI, MRE; Mme Victor Hugo died in 1868. SAISON DES SEMAILLES. LE SOIR. From les Chansons des rues et des bois. The poem is not dated; the volume appeared in 1865.

133. 2. LABOURS, plowed fields. This seems almost to have been written for the well-known painting of "The Sower" by Millet, exhibited in 1850. However, Millet's sower is a young man. UN HYMNE HARMONIEUX. From les Quatre Vents de l'esprit, the poem bears no date.

134. PROMENADE DANS LES ROCHERS. From les Quatre Vents de l'esprit; not dated.

AUGUSTE BRIZEUX.

1803-1858.

He is remembered for his simple and touching poems, full of the landscape and of the rural life of his native Brittany. He also translated Dante's Divine Comedy.

Works: Marie, 1835; les Ternaires, 1841 (the title of this collection was later changed to la Fleur d'or); les Bretons, 1845; Histoires potiques, 1855; Oeuvres compltes, 1861, 2 vols.; Oeuvres, 4 vols., 1879-84.

For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vols, ii and iii; Lecigne, Brizeux, sa vie et ses oeuvres, Lille, 1898.

AUGUSTE BARBIER.

1805-1880.

He secured immediate fame by the vigorous satire of his first work, Iambes, and he is probably still best remembered for this, though later volumes, especially Il Pianto, contain work of more perfect finish.

Works: Iambes, 1831; La Popularit, 1831; Lazare, 1833; Il Pianto, 1833 (these are now included in one volume, Iambes et pomes); Nouvelles Satires, 1837; Chants civils et religieux, 1841; Rimes hroques, 1843; Sylves, 1865.

For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. ii.

138. L'IDOLE. May, 1831. The whole poem consists of five parts.

2. MESSIDOR, one of the months of the revolutionary calender, beginning with the nineteenth of June. It was the first of the summer months.

MADAME D'AGOULT.

1806-1876.

Marie-Sophie Catherine de Flavigny, comtesse d'Agoult, wrote under the pseudonym Daniel Stern. Her work is mainly in prose, in history, criticism and fiction, but she wrote a few lyrics marked by deep and true sentiment. A biographical notice by L. de Ronchand will be found in the second edition of her Esquisses morales, 1880.

FLIX ARVERS.

1806-1851.

He wrote mainly for the stage, and left but one volume of poems, Mes Heures perdues, which are all forgotten save this famous sonnet. The lady who inspired it is said to have been the daughter of Charles Nodier, afterwards Mme. Mennessier-Nodier. Mes Heures perdues was reprinted in 1878, with a notice of Arvers by Th. de Banville.

GRARD DE NERVAL.

1808-1855.

Grard Labrunie, known in letters as Grard de Nerval, was one of the group of young Romanticists who gathered around Hugo. Symptoms of insanity developed early, and at different times he was an inmate of an asylum. He finally committed suicide. He felt profoundly the influence of German literature, and his lyrics show something of this in the spiritual quality of their sentiment.

Works: lgies nationales et satires politiques, 1827; translation of Goethe's Faust, 1828; la Bohme galante, 1856; Oeuvres completes, 5 vols., 1868.

For reference: Th. Gautier, Histoire du romantisme; Portraits et souvenirs littraires; Arvde Barine, Nvross, 1898.

140. FANTAISIE. Gioacchino Antonio ROSSINI (1792-1868), one of the foremost Italian composers of the century, author of William Tell (1829), and other well-known operas. Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART was a native of Austria, and one of the greatest musical geniuses that ever lived. Among his works are the operas Le Nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Die Zauberflte (1791); the famous Requiem; the symphony in G minor, etc. Karl Maria von WEBER (1786-1826), one of the founders of German as opposed to Italian opera. Der Freischtz is his most famous work.

HGSIPPE MOREAU.

1810-1838.

In his short and unhappy struggle with poverty and illness he produced a few graceful short stories and a thin volume of verse, le Myosotis (1838), that reveals a genuine, though not remarkable, lyric gift. See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. iv. The poems of le Myosotis, and some others, now make vol. ii. of his Oeuvres compltes, 2 vols., 1890-91.

141. LA FERMIRE. This poem was sent as a New Year's gift to Madame Gurard, who had taken the poet in and entertained him when ill.

142. 31. FILS DE LA VIERGE, "dbris de toiles d'araigne que le vent emporte"; air-thread, gossamer.

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

1810-1857.

A lyric poet of a comparatively narrow range, but within it surpassingly genuine and spontaneous. Almost his only theme was the passion of love, in some form or degree. But what he lacked in breadth he made up in the directness and intensity of his accent, and these eminently lyric qualities give his lyrics a distinction among those of his country. He began as a Romanticist, but soon grew away from the school of Hugo as it developed. With his negligence of form and his surrender to the passion of the moment, he is the opposite of Gautier; and the poets of the later school which derives from Gautier have neglected and depreciated him.

Works: Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie, 1830; le Spectacle dans un fauteuil, 1833; after this most of his poems appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes; they are now collected in Premires posies, 1 vol., containing the poems of the first two volumes and a few others, and Posies nouvelles, 1 vol., containing the Nuits, and the later poems.

For reference: P. de Musset, _Biographie d'Alfred de Musset_ 1877 (naturally partial); A. Barine, _Alfred de Musset_, 1893; Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, _la Vritable histoire de "Elle et Lui"_ 1897; Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits contemporains, vol. ii; _Causeries du lundi_, vols, i and xiii; E. Montgut, _Nos Morts contemporains_, 1883; E. Faguet, _le Dix-neuvime sicle_, 1887; F. Brunetire, _volution de la posie lyrique_, vol. i, 1894; M. Clouard, _Bibliographie des oeuvres d'Alfred de Musset_, 1883; O. L. Kuhns, _Slections from de Musset_, Boston, 1895, for the sympathetic and interesting introduction.

143. Au LECTEUR. This sonnet was prefixed in 1840 to a new edition of his poems.

145. STANCES. 1828; from Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie. 3. VESPRES; see note on 7, 10. LA NUIT DE MAI. May 1835. The poet's liaison with the novelist George Sand, begun in 1833, and culminating in the Italian journey of 1834, with its successions of passion, violent ruptures, and penitent reconciliations, was the profoundest experience of his life, and the inspiration of many of his poems, including the famous Nuits of May, August, October and December.

146. 21. PARESSEUX ENFANT; the charge of indolence had often already been brought against Musset; cf. ton oisivet, 150. 3.

147. 29. ARGOS, the capital of Argolis, in the Peloponnesus. PTLEON, Pteleum, an ancient town of Thessaly (Iliad ii, 697.) 30. MESSA, city and harbor of Laconia (Iliad ii, 582); Homer's epithet is "abounding in doves." 31. PLION, a mountain in Thessaly ; Homer (Iliad ii, 757) calls it "quivering with leaves."

148. 1. TITARSE, a river in Thessaly. Homer's epithet (Iliad ii, 751) is "lovely". 3. OLOOSSONE, a city in Thessaly, called "white" also by Homer (Iliad ii, 739). Camyre, no doubt Homer's Kameiros (Iliad ii, 656), which he calls "shining." It was situated on the island of Rhodes; Musset neglects the geographical fact in bringing it into connection with Oloossone.

149. 6. SON TERTRE VERT, St. Helena.

150. 13. LORSQUE LE PLICAN; this passage is one of the most famous of French poetry. Compare Ronsard's reference to the pelican, p. 8, 1. 19. With this view of the poet's lot and mission compare that expressed in les Montreurs of Leconte de Lisle, p. 199, and in l'Art of Gautier, p. 190. The fable of the pelican giving his blood to his young is current in the literature of the middle ages.

152. LA NUIT DE DCEMBRE. November, 1835. 18. GLANTINE; a wild rose was one of the prizes given the victors in the poetical contests called the Jeux Floraux held at Toulouse; it symbolizes distinction in poetry.

153. 11. UN HAILLON DE OURPRE EN LAMBEAU symbolizes the power of youth wasted in debauchery. 12. MYRTE; the myrtle was sacred to Venus.

154. 10. PISE, Pisa. 14. BRIGUES, a small town in the Rhone valley in Switzerland, at the foot of the Simplon pass. 16. GNES, Genoa. 17. VEVAY, a town on Lake Geneva. 19. LIDO, an island between Venice and the sea, a favorite resort of the inhabitants of the city. Musset calls it affreux, because with it he associated his quarrel with George Sand.

159. STANCES LA MALIBRAN. October, 1836. 11. MARIA FELICIT, daughter and pupil of Manuel Garcia, afterwards Madame Malibran, by which name she is remembered, was a remarkable singer (1808-1836).

24. PARTHNON: the Parthenon, completed in 438 B.C., was built under the direction of Phidias, who was also the sculptor of the colossal statue of Athena within the temple. The most famous work of Praxiteles Was the statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus, not extant, but represented in the Venus of the Capitol and the Venus de Medicis.

160. 26. CORILLA, a character in one of Rossini's operas. 27. ROSINA, heroine of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Seviglia (1816). 29. LE SAULE, the song of "The Willow" in Rossini's Otello (1816); cf. Shakspere's Othello, iv, 3.

161. 9. LONDRE, usually spelled Londres; the s is omitted here for the metre. 21. GRICAULT, an important French painter (1790-1824); his most famous picture is Le Radeau de la Mduse, now in the Louvre. CUVIER, a great

French naturalist (1769-1852).

162. 3. ROBERT, Lopold (1794-1835), a French painter of merit. BELLINI, Vincenzo (1802-1835), an Italian composer of operas; among his works are La Somnambula (1831), Norma (1831), and I Puritani (1835). 5. CARREL, Armand (1800-1836), a French publicist, fatally wounded in a duel with mile de Girardin.

163. 18. LA PASTA; Giuditta Pasta (1798-1865) was one of the famous sopranos of her day; for her Bellini wrote La Somnambula and Norma.

164. CHANSON DE BARBERINE. From the comedy Barberine (1836).

165. CHANSON DE FORTUNIO. From le Chandelier ( 1836), where it is sung by a character named Fortunio. 25. MA MIE, instead of m'amie; this is a remnant of what was the regular practice in the earliest period of French, the use of the feminine forms, ma, ta, sa, with elision of the vowel, before nouns beginning with a vowel; the substitution of the masculine forms in such cases begins in the twelfth century.

166. 167. TRISTESSE. June 14, 1840. "RAPPELLE-TOI." 1842. SOUVENIR. February, 1841. This poem is of the same order of thought as le Lac of Lamartine and the Tristesse d'Olympia of Victor Hugo; see note on the latter poem.

169. 17. DANTE, POURQUOI DIS-TU; the passage referred to is in the Inferno, canto v, 1. 121 ; Francesca da Rimini (in French Franoise) begins the short and immortal story of her love for Paolo with these words :

"There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery."

170. 24. PI, an old spelling of pied, used here to satisfy the rules of rhyme. Cf. following page, 1. 26.

172.17. MA SEULE AMIE. George Sand. The latest revelations from the correspondence of George Sand and Musset give us a more favorable view of her part in their unhappy affair and fail to justify the terms in which he refers to her here. See the volume of Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul cited among the works for reference.

174. SUR UNE MORTE. October, 1842; the lady referred to was the Princess Belgiojoso (1808-1871), who after the unsuccessful movement for Italian liberty in 1831 left Italy and resided in Paris, where Musset came often to her salon, i. LA NUIT, one of the famous allegorical statues made by Michaelangelo for the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici.

175 A M. VICTOR HUGO. April. 26, 1843. CHANSON. "ADIEU, SUZON." 1844.

THOPHILE GAUTIER.

1811-1872.

One of the most important poets of the century, though he can not be called in any large sense one of the greatest. His importance is due to the emphasis that he placed on the element of form both by his precept and by his practice. The directness and sincerity of the emotional cry are lost sight of in the pursuit of exquisite and perfect workmanship in the representation of outward beauty. L'Art, p. 190, sums up his poetic art. Later poetry has been profoundly influenced by this doctrine. His natural gifts adapted him perfectly to the rle that he played, for, while he was without great intellectual depth or emotional intensity, he had a rare power of seeing the forms and colors of things.

Works: Posies, 1830; Albertus, 1833; la Comdie de la mort, 1838; the preceding were republished in one volume with additions in 1845; maux et Cames, 1852; Posies nouvelles, 1863; in the edition of his Oeuvres compltes the Posies compltes make two volumes, Emaux et Cames, one.

For reference : E. Bergerat, Thophile Gautier, 1879; M. Du Camp, Thophile Gautier, 1890; Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des oeuvres de Th. Gautier, 2 vols., 1887; Sainte-Beuve, Premiers lundis, ii; Portraits contemporains, ii, v; Nouveaux lundis, vi; E, Faguet, XIXe sicle, 1887; Brunetire, volution de la posie lyrique, vol. ii.

177. VOYAGE. From the Posies of 1830. The line of the motto from La Fontaine is from the one-act comedy Clymene, line 35. Catullus 87-47 B.c.) was a Latin poet whose lyrics show intensity of feeling and rare grace of expression. The lines here quoted are from the Carmina, xlvi. The idea of the poem is quite characteristic of Gautier, who delighted especially in the picturesque aspects of travel, as his famous descriptions of foreign lands show (Voyage en Espagne, Voyage en Russie, Voyage en Italie, etc.).

178. 17. ENRAYE, puts on the brakes. Of the other poems of Gautier here given all but CHOC DE CAVALIERS, LES COLOMBES, LAMENTO, TRISTESSE, and LA CARAVANE are from maux et Cames; these five will be found in vol. i of the Posies completes under the title Posies diverses.

186. PREMIER SOURIRE DU PRINTEMPS. 15. HOUPPE DE CYGNE, powder puff.

188. L'AVEUGLE, i. LES PUITS DE VENISE; the dungeons of Venice are famous.

189. LE MERLE. 18. The Arve joins the Rhone just after the latter issues from Lake Geneva. The water of the Rhone is very clear and blue, while that of the Arve, especially when swollen by rain and melted snow, is muddy and grayish-yellow.

19O. 4. mettre en dmeure, to summon by legal process.

191. L'ART, i. CARRARE, PAROS, marbles especially fine and white and adapted for statuary, the former from Carrara, Italy, the latter from Paros, an island in the Aegean Sea. 21. NIMBE TRILOBE; the Virgin was often represented in early paintings with a halo of three rounded lobes, in the shape of a trefoil, symbolizing the Trinity.

VICTOR DE LAPRADE.

1812-1883.

A poet of elevation and purity, whose worth is rather greater than his reputation, which has been somewhat eclipsed by that of his greater contemporaries.

Works: Psych, 1840; Odes et Pomes, 1844; Pointes vangliques, 1852; Symphonies, 1855; Idylles hroques, 1858; Pernette, 1868; Pomes civiques, 1873; le Livre d'un pre, 1878; collected edition, Oeuvres potiques, 4 vols., 1886-89.

For reference: E. Bir, Victor de Laprade, sa vie et ses oeuvres, 1886; Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, vol. i; E. Caro, Potes et romanciers, 1888.

193. A UN GRAND ARBRE. 1840; from Odes et Pomes. 5. CYBLE, or Rhea, goddess of the earth. LE DROIT D'ANESSE. 1875; from le Livre d'un pre. 15. CHERRA, from choir.

MME. ACKERMANN.

1813-1890.

Louise-Victorine Choquet, who became Mme. Paul Ackermann by her marriage in 1844 and was left a widow

in 1846, lived a life of great retirement and seclusion. Her work, the fruit of long solitude, bears the impress of a strong, reflective mind. It is deeply linged with pessimism.

Works: Contes et posies, 1863; Posies philosophiques, 1874; collected in one volume, Posies, 1877.

For reference: Comte d'Haussonville, Mme. Ackermann, d'aprs des lettres et des papiers indits, 1891.

CHARLES-MARIE LECONTE DE LISLE.

1818-1894.

Born on the island of Bourbon, the tropical landscape that was familiar to his boyhood recurs constantly in his poems. Coming to France to complete his studies and to reside, he became the master spirit among the poets of the middle of the century and the recognized leader of the Parnassiens. From the beginning he protested vigorously against the Romanticists of 1830, not only as making an immodest and on the whole vulgar display of self (cf. les Montreurs, p. 199), but also as inevitably falling short of artistic perfection because, being possessed, or at least moved, by the emotion they were expressing, they could not be wholly masters of the instrument of expression. To be thus wholly master of the resources of poetic art one must be quite untroubled by one's own personal joys and sorrows, have the brain clear and free. This call to the poet to rid himself of the personal element was emphasized by the reflection that individual emotions are of little importance or interest, being dwarfed by the collective life of humanity in general, which in turn is overshadowed by the vast phenomenon of life as a whole, while this again is but a transient vapor on the face of the immense universe. So the poetic creed of an impersonal and impassive art was more or less blended with a materialism pervaded with a buddhistic pessimism that is vexed and wearied with the vain motions of this human world, and longs for the rest of Nirvana; and this vexation and weariness frequently rise to a poignant intensity. However far he may then be thought to be from the impassive impersonality of his doctrine, there is but one opinion as to his rare command of form and the exquisite perfection of his art, which have won for him the epithet impeccable.

Works: Pomes antiques, 1853; Pomes et posies, 1855; Posies compltes, 1858 (contains the two previous collections); Pomes barbares, 1862; Pomes tragiques, 1884; Derniers pomes, 1894. He was also an industrious translator of the Greek poets and of Horace.

For reference: P. Bourget, Nouveaux essais de psychologie contemporaine, 1885; J. Lematre, les Contemporains, vol. ii, 1887; F. Brunetire, volution de la posie lyrique, vol. ii, 1894; also in Contemporary Review, vol. lxvi.

199. LES MONTREURS. From Pomes barbares. MIDI and NOX are from the Pomes antiques. The poems from L'ECCLSIASTE to REQUIES inclusive, and also LE MANCHY, are from the Pomes barbares. The rest, except the last, are from the Pomes tragiques.

203. LA VERANDAH, I. HKA, oriental pipe.

215. SI L'AURORE. 10. PITONS, mountain peaks; the word is used in the French colonies. 21. VARANGUE, a kind of porch, cf. verandah.

LE MANCHY. A manchy is a kind of sedan-chair, or litter.

217. LE FRAIS MATIN DORAIT. 28. LETCHIS, a tropical plant.

218. TRE FILA D'ORO. The words of the title, which is Italian, are found in the final line of each stanza, trois fils d'or.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

1821-1867.

His was a perverse nature, endowed with rare gifts which he persistently abused. Pure physical sensation supplied a large part of the material for his poetry, and among the senses it was especially the one that has the remotest association with ideas that he drew upon most constantly—the sense of smell. In his desperate search for new and strange sensations he went the round of violent and exhausting dissipations, and as his senses flagged he spurred them with all sorts of stimulants. Meanwhile he observed himself curiously ; the result in his poems is an impression of peculiarly wilful depravity. They reflect his physical and mental experience, are always without sobriety, often lacking in sanity. The title, les Fleurs du mal, is both appropriate and suggestive; they invite no epithets so much as "unhealthy" and "unwholesome."

He was extremely fond of Edgar A. Poe, and translated his works.

Works: les Fleurs du mal, 1857, new edition, 1861; Oeuvres posthumes, 1887.

For reference : Gautier, Portraits et souvenirs littraires; E. Crpet, Oeuvres posthumes et correspondance indite de Ch. Baudelaire, prcdes d'une tude biographique, 1887; Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine, 1883, F. Brunetire in Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1st, 1892; Henry James, French Poets and Novelists, London, 1884; George Saintsbury, Miscellaneous Essays, London, 1892.

The poems given here are all from les Fleurs du mal.

221. 19. BOUCHER; Franois Boucher (1703-1770) was a painter of pastoral and genre subjects.

PIERRE DUPONT.

1821-1870.

He enjoyed a moment of great popularity about 1848, paid for since by being too much forgotten. His chansons are simple, sincere, and sweet, breathing a delight in rural life and sympathy with the lot of the poor. Works: Chansons, 1860; Chansons et posies is the title of the current edition of his poems.

For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. iv.

ANDR LEMOYNE.

1822.

Has achieved especial success by his poetic descriptions of nature, which proceed from a close and loving observation and a quick responsiveness to her moods. Works: Stella Maris.—Ecce Homo, etc., 1860; les Roses d'Antan, 1865; les Charmeuses, 1867; Lgendes des Bois et Chansons marines, 1871; Fleurs des ruines, 1888; Fleurs du soir, 1893.

232. 12. CHANSON MARINE. CAP FRHEL, on the north coast of Brittany, just south of the Channel Islands. 24. GRANVILLE and AVRANCHES are small towns on the Channel coast, between St. Malo and Cherbourg. 26. The ORNE and VIRE are small streams flowing northward into the Channel in the same region.

THEODORE DE BANVILLE.

1823-1891.

A precocious and voluminous writer, who delighted in playing with the technical difficulties of lyric forms. His devotion to form was his chief excellence and gave him a considerable influence on the group of Parnassiens. He was especially responsible for the revival of the fixed forms of the older French poetry. He took up and developed the dictum of Saint-Beuve that rhyme is "l'unique harmonie du vers" and his Odes funambulesques sought even to make it a main means of comic effect. His work is deficient in substance.

Works : Les Cariatides, 1842; les Stalactites, 1846; Odelettes, 1856; Odes funambulesques, 1857; les Exils, 1860; Idylles prussiennes, 1871; les Princesses, 1874; Sonnailles et Clochettes, 1890; Dans la fournaise. Dernires posies, 1892.

For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xiv; J. Lematre, les Contemporains, vol. i, 1886; A. Lang, Essays in Little, London, 1891.

234. LA CHANSON DE MA MIE. MA MIE, see note on 165, 25.

235. BALLADE DES PENDUS. From the comedy Gringoire (1866). 20. FLORE, the Roman goddess of fruits and flowers. 26. du roi Louis ; Louis XI. (1461-1487), whose measures to break down feudalism and establish the power of the monarchy are notorious.

HENRI DE BORNIER.

1825.

Primarily a dramatic poet, he obtained one of the striking successes of the latter half of the century by his drama la Fille de Roland (1875) which, evoking memories of recent disaster and the dearest hopes of France, deeply touched the patriotic sentiment of his country. His lyric poems make but one volume.

Works: Les Premires Feuilles, 1845; the volume Posiescompltes, 1881, contains, besides the poems of the first volume, a number that appeared at intervals, several of which received prizes from the Academy, as l'Isthme de Suez, 1861, and la France dans l'extrme Orient, 1863; Posies compltes, new edition, 1894.

ANDRE THEURIET.

1833.

Though now best known as a novelist, he began as a poet, and it is not certain that he will not finally be best remembered for his verse. His eyes and his sympathies are for the woods and fields and for the simple toilers whose lives lie close to them. He has instilled into his poems something of the odors of the forest and of the soil.

Works: Le Chemin des bois, 1867 ; les Paysans de l'Argonne, 1792. 1871; le Bleu et le Noir, 1873; le Livre de la Payse, 1882.

For reference: E. Besson, Andr Theuriet, sa vie et ses oeuvres, 1890.

237. BRUNETTE. From le Bleu et le Noir.

238. LES PAYSANS. From le Livre de la Payse.



GEORGES LAFENESTRE.

1837.

Though he is perhaps more widely known as a critic of art than as a poet, his poems have a certain distinction by reason of their deep and serious thought and their clear and noble expression.

Works: Les Esprances, 1864; Idylles et Chansons, 1874. The poems here given are from Idylles et Chansons.

240. 21. MICHEL-ANGE, Michaelangelo.

FLIX FRANK.

1837.

He is chiefly known to the world of scholars by his studies in literary history and his editions of writers of the Renaissance.

Works : Chants de colre, 1871; le Pome de la Jeunesse, 1876; la Chanson d'amour, 1885.

243. C'TAIT UN VIEUX LOGIS. From le Pome de la Jeunesse.

ARMAND SILVESTRE.

1838.

A prolific writer of both prose and verse. He has a rich gift of style, but he appeals to his reader more often by the sensuous charm of his lines than by their originality or depth.

Works: Rimes neuves et vieilles, 1866; Renaissances, 1870; la Gloire du souvenir, 1872; these three volumes are collected in Premires posies, 1875; la Chanson des heures,1878; les Ailes d'or, 1880; le Pays des roses, 1882; le Chemin des toiles, 1885: Roses d'octobre, 1889; l'Or des couchants, 1892; les Aurores lointaines, 1895.

For reference: J. Lematre, les Contemporains, vol. ii, 1887.

245. LE PLERINAGE. From les Ailes d'or.

ALBERT GLATIGNY.

1839-1873.

Led a wandering and adventurous life. He was at different times actor in a travelling company, prompter, and writer. In his poems he shows a native gift of expression that made him a favorite of the Parnassiens.

Works: Les Vignes folles, 1857; les flches d'or, 1864; Gilles et Pasquins, 1872.

For reference: J. Lazare, A. Glatigny, sa vie, son oeuvre; Catulle Mends, Lgende du Parnasse contemporain, 1884.

SULLY PRUDHOMME.

1839.

Ren-Franois-Armand Prudhomme, known as Sully Prudhomme, combines the artistic punctiliousness of a Parnassien with sincere emotion and a deeply philosophic mind. The intellectual quality of his work is conspicuous, but hardly less so the grace and finish of its form. It bears deep traces of the influence of the scientific movement of our time and of the transformation it has wrought in our ideas of man and nature and their relations. The personal emotion from which his lyrics spring appears always intellectually illumined, with its background of scientific corollaries and logical consequences. It is not abandoned to itself, to wreak itself on expression, but is checked by the challenge of doubt or scientific curiosity or moral scruple. His verse thus unites in rare degree the qualities of lyrical impulse and philosophical reflection.

Works: Stances et Pomes, 1865; les preuves, 1866; les Solitudes, 1869; les Destins, 1872; les Vaines Tendresses, 1875; la Justice, 1878; le Prisme, 1886; le Bonheur, 1888; these have appeared in a new edition as Oeuvres, 5 vols., 1883-1888.

For reference: J. Lematre, les Contemporains, vol. i, 1886; E. Caro, Potes et romanciers, 1888; G. Paris, Penseurs et potes, 1896; F. Brunetire, volution de la posie lyrique, vol. ii, 1894.

The first eleven poems are from Stances et Pomes. LES DANADES, UN SONGE and LE RENDEZ VOUS are from les preuves; LA VOIE LACTE is from les Solitudes; REPENTIR, from Impressions de la Guerre (1872;) CE QUI DURE, LES INFIDLES, LES AMOURS TERRESTRES and L'ALPHABET, from les Vaines Tendresses; and the last two sonnets, from la Justice.

255. LE LEVER DU SOLEIL. 5. Hellade, Hellas, country inhabited by the Hellenes, or Greeks, a name at first given to a district of Thessaly, later to all Greece.

257. LES DANADES. The Danades were the fifty daughters of Danaus, twin-brother of Aegyptus, whose fifty sons they married and then murdered. As a punishment they were condemned to pour water forever into a sieve. 2. Thano, Callidie, Amymone, Agav are names of four of the daughters.

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

1840-1897.

Though of world-wide fame as a brilliant novelist, he introduced himself to the public by a volume of verse, les Amoureuses, which contains many poems delicate in sentiment and exquisite in style.

HENRI CAZALIS (JEAN LAHOR).

1840.

The poems of Henri Cazalis, who has preferred to give his later works to the public under the nom de plume Jean Lahor, have the grave pessimism of Leconte de Lisle, but with more of buddhistic resignation. They are often sustained by a high moral fortitude, and though they are clothed in a less rich and brilliant garment than the poems of Leconte de Lisle, they have a charm of their own, "inquitant et pntrant," says Paul Bourget, "comme celui des tableaux de Burne Jones et de la musique tzigane, des romans de Tolstoi et des lieder de Heine."