le duels between
journalists so common in France, at the age of twenty-two, would
probably have done remarkable work had he lived. Hegesippe Moreau, to
whom a life but very little longer was vouchsafed, devoted himself
partly to bacchanalian and satirical work, for which he had not the
slightest genius, but produced also some poems of country life, which
rank among the sweetest and most natural of the century. Much of his
work is little more than a corrupt following of Beranger. In the same
way the imitation of Lamartine was not fortunate for Victor de Laprade
(_Psyche_, _Les Symphonies_, _Les Voix de Silence_). This imitation is
not so much in subject (for M. de Laprade was a philosopher rather than
a sentimentalist) as in manner and versification. His verse is also much
more strongly impregnated than Lamartine's with classical culture. With
due allowance for difference of dates and countries, there is a
considerable resemblance between Laprade and Southey. Both had the same
accomplishment of style, the same unquestioning submission to the dogmas
of Christianity, the same width of literary information. It is
unfortunate for France that Laprade was somewhat deficient in humour, a
rare growth on her soil at all times.

[Sidenote: Curiosites Romantiques.]

[Sidenote: Petrus Borel.]

[Sidenote: Louis Bertrand.]

All these names are more or less widely known, but there is a class of
'oublies et dedaignes,' as one of their most faithful biographers has
called them, who belong to the movement of 1830, and whose numbers are
probably, while their merit is certainly, greater than is the case at
any other literary epoch. Few of them can be mentioned here, but those
few are worthy of mention, and it may perhaps be said that the native
vigour of most of them, though warped and distorted for the most part by
oddities of temperament or the unkindness of fortune, equals, if it does
not surpass, that of many of their more fortunate brethren. The first of
these is Petrus Borel, one of the strangest figures in the history of
literature. Very little is known of his life, which was spent partly at
Paris and partly in Algeria. He was perhaps the most extravagant of all
the Romantics, surnaming himself 'Le Lycanthrope,' and identifying
himself with the eccentricities of the _Bousingots_, a clique of
political literary men who for a short time made themselves conspicuous
after 1830. Borel wrote partly in verse and partly in prose. His mos