c play. The
dramatic instinct in Musset was very strong, and may, perhaps, be said
to have exceeded in volume, originality, and variety, if not in
intensity, the purely poetical. Altogether, Musset is the most
remarkable instance in French literature, and one of the most remarkable
in the literature of Europe, of merely natural genius, hardly at all
developed by study, and not assisted in the least by critical power and
a strong will. What, perhaps, distinguished him most is the singular
conjunction of the most fervid passion and the most touching lyrical
'cry' with the finest wit, and with unusual dramatic ability.

[Sidenote: Influence of the Romantic Leaders.]

These eight sum up whatever is greatest and most influential in the
generation of 1830. Victor Hugo gave direction and leading to the
movement, identified it with his own masterly and commanding genius,
furnished it, at brief intervals, with consummate examples. Sainte-Beuve
supplied it with the necessary basis of an immense comparative
erudition, by which he was enabled to disengage and to exhibit to those
who run the true principles of literary criticism, and to point the
younger generation to the sources of a richer vocabulary, a more
flexible and highly-coloured style, a more cosmopolitan appreciation.
Alexandre Dumas, with less strictly literary virtue than any other of
the group, occupied the important vantage grounds of the theatre and the
lending library in the Romantic interest. Balzac, equalling the others
in the range of his field, added the special example of a minute
psychological analysis, and of the most untiring labour. George Sand
taught the secret of utilising to the utmost the passing currents of
personal and popular sentiment and thought. Merimee, the master least
followed, supplied, in the first place, the necessary warning against a
too enthusiastic following of school models; and, in the second, himself
held up a model of prose style of severity and exactness equal to the
finest examples of the classical school, yet possessing to the full the
romantic merits of versatile adaptability, of glowing colour, of direct
and fearless phrase. Gautier exhibited, on the one hand, a model of
absolute perfection in formal poetry, the workmanship of a gem or a
Greek vase; on the other, the model of a prose style so flexible as to
serve the most ordinary purposes, so richly equipped as to be equal to
any emergency, and yet, in its most elaborate condi