wn glass that he
drank. The most beautiful of his comedies, "Il ne faut pas badiner avec
l'Amour," dates from 1834, and to the same year belongs the
"Lorenzaccio," the strongest, if not the most exquisite, of his
dramatic attempts. His two most agreeable _nouvelles_, "Emmeline" and
"Frederic et Bernerette," appeared about the same time. But we have not
space to enumerate his productions in detail. During the fifteen last
years of his life, as we have said, they grew more and more rare; the
poet had, in a certain sense, out-lived himself. Of these last years
Herr Lindau gives a rather realistic and unflattered sketch; picturing
him especially as a figure publicly familiar to Parisian loungers, who
were used to observe him as "an unfortunate with an interesting face,
dressed with extreme care," with the look of youth and the lassitude of
age, seated in a corner of a cafe and gazing blankly over a marble
table on which "a half empty bottle of absinthe and a quite empty
glass" stood before him. M. Paul de Musset, in describing his brother's
later years, is mindful of the rule to glide, not to press; with a very
proper fraternal piety, he leaves a great many foibles and
transgressions in the shade. He mentions, however, Alfred's partiality
for spirits and stimulants--a taste which had defined itself in his
early years. Musset made an excessive use of liquor; in plain English,
he got drunk. Sainte-Beuve, somewhere in one of his merciless but
valuable foot-notes, alludes to the author of "Rolla" coming tipsy to
the sittings of the French Academy. Herr Lindau repeats a pun which was
current on such occasions. "Musset s'absente trop," said some one. "Il
s'absinthe trop," replied some one else. He had been elected to the
Academy in 1852. His speech on the occasion of his reception was a
disappointment to his auditors. Herr Lindau attributes the sterility of
his later years to indolence and perversity; and it is probable that
there is not a little justice in the charge. He was unable to force
himself; he belonged to the race of gifted people who must do as it
pleases them. When a literary task was proposed to him and he was not
in the humor for it, he was wont to declare that he was not a
maid-of-all-work, but an artist. He must write when the fancy took him;
the fancy took him, unfortunately, less and less frequently. With a
very uncertain income, and harassed constantly by his debts, he scorned
to cultivate a pecuniary inspiratio