tion, worthy to rank
with his own verse. Lastly, again as an outsider (a position which he
shares in the group with Merimee, though in very different fashion),
Musset brought the most natural and unaffected tears and laughter by
turns, to correct the too scholastic and literary character of the
movement, and to show how the most perfectly artistic effect could be
produced with the least apparatus of formal study or preparation.

Under the influence partly of these men, and directly exercised by them,
partly of the general movement of which they were the leaders and
exponents, the literature of France has developed itself for the rest of
the century. It remains to give a brief sketch of its principal
ornaments during that time. Many names, whose work is intrinsically of
all but the highest interest and merit, will have to be rapidly
dispatched, but their chief achievements and their significance in the
general march can at least be indicated.

[Sidenote: Minor Poets of 1830.]

At the head of the poets of this minor band has to be mentioned
Millevoye, who might, perhaps with equal or greater appropriateness,
have found a place in the preceding book. He is chiefly remarkable as
the author of one charming piece of sentimental verse, _La Chute des
Feuilles_; and as the occasion of an immortal criticism of
Sainte-Beuve's, 'Il se trouve dans les trois quarts des hommes un poete
qui meurt jeune tandis que l'homme survit.' The peculiarity of Millevoye
and his happiness was that he did not survive the death of the poet in
him, but died at the age of thirty-four. Except the piece just
mentioned, he wrote little of value, and his total work is not large.
But he may be described as a simpler, a somewhat less harmonious, but a
less tautologous Lamartine, to whom the gods were kind in allowing him
to die young. A curious contrast to Millevoye is furnished by his
contemporary, Ulric Guttinguer. Guttinguer was born in 1785, and, like
Nodier, he joined himself frankly to the Romantic movement, and was
looked up to as a senior by its more active promoters. Like Millevoye,
he has to rest his fame almost entirely on one piece, the verses
beginning, 'Ils ont dit: l'amour passe et sa flamme est rapide;' but,
unlike him, he lived to a great age, and was a tolerably fertile
producer. By the side of these two poets ranks Marceline
Desbordes-Valmore, who shares, with Louise Labe and Marie de France, the
first rank among the poetesses of her co