ghter kinds of poetry than in the severer, that the
_Pucelle_ is not only more amusing, but actually better as poetry, than
the _Henriade_, the latter being stiff in plan and servilely modelled on
the classical epics, declamatory in tone, tedious in action, and
commonplace in character. Besides these two long poems Voltaire produced
an immense quantity of miscellaneous work, tales in verse, epistles in
verse, discourses in verse, satires, epigrams, _vers de societe_ of
every possible kind. These are almost invariably distinguished by the
felicity of expression--spoilt only by too close adherence to the
mannerism of the time--the brilliant wit, the keen observation which are
identified with the name of Voltaire. The number and the small
individual size of these works make it impossible to particularise them
here. But _Le Pauvre Diable_ may be specified as an almost unique
example of easy Horatian satire less conventional than most of its kind;
and the verses to the Princess Ulrique of Prussia as a model of
artificial but exquisitely polished gallantry in verse.

[Sidenote: Descriptive Poets. Delille.]

Le Franc de Pompignan had the misfortune to incur the enmity of
Voltaire, and has consequently borne in France the traditional ignominy
which in England hangs on certain victims of Dryden and Pope. He had,
however, some poetical talent, which was shown principally in his ode on
the death of J. B. Rousseau. The charming poem of _Ver-Vert_ (the
burlesque history of a parrot, the pet of a convent) made, and not
unjustly, the reputation of Gresset. This reputation his other poetical
works--though he wrote a comedy of much merit--failed to sustain. Saint
Lambert, the rival of Voltaire in love if not in literature, imitated
Thomson's _Seasons_ very closely in a poem of the same name, which set
the fashion of descriptive poetry in France for a considerable time. The
three most remarkable of his followers, all considerably superior to
himself in power, were Lemierre, Delille, and Roucher. Some paradoxical
critics have endeavoured to make Lemierre into a great poet; but his
poems (_La Peinture_, _Les Fastes_, etc.), written on ill-selected
subjects and in a style full of conventional mannerism, have at best the
occasional striking lines which are to be found in Armstrong and other
followers of Young or Thomson in England. Jacques Delille and his
extraordinary popularity form, perhaps, the greatest satire on the taste
of the eighte