ough to
have its exponent. If the presumption is against the dignity of deeply
poetic utterance, poor Musset is, in the vulgar phrase, nowhere--he is
a mere grotesque sound of lamentation. But if in judging him you don't
stint your sympathy, you will presently perceive him to have an
extraordinarily precious quality--a quality equally rare in literature
and in life. He has passion. There is in most poetry a great deal of
reflection, of wisdom, of grace, of art, of genius; but (especially in
English poetry) there is little of this peculiar property of Musset's.
When it occurs we feel it to be extremely valuable; it touches us
beyond anything else. It was the great gift of Byron, the quality by
which he will live in spite of those weaknesses and imperfections which
may be pointed out by the dozen. Alfred de Musset in this respect
resembled the poet whom he appears most to have admired--living at a
time when it had not begun to be the fashion to be ashamed to take
Byron seriously. Mr. Swinburne in one of his prose essays speaks of him
with violent scorn as Byron's "attendant dwarf," or something of that
sort. But this is to miss the case altogether. There is nothing
diminutive in generous admiration, and nothing dwarfish in being a
younger brother; Mr. Swinburne's charge is too coarse a way of stating
the position. Musset resembles Byron in the fact that the beauty of his
verse is somehow identical with the feeling of the writer--with his
immediate, sensible warmth--and not dependent upon that reflective
stage into which, to produce its great effects, most English poetic
expression instantly passes, and which seems to chill even while it
nobly beautifies. Musset is talked of nowadays in France very much as
Byron is talked of among ourselves; it is noticed that he often made
bad verse, and he is accused of having but half known his trade. This
sort of criticism is eminently just, and there is a weak side of the
author of "Rolla" which it is easy to attack.

Alfred de Musset, like Mr. Murray's fastidious correspondent, wrote
poetry as an amateur--wrote it, as they say in France, _en
gentilhomme_. It is the fashion, I believe, in some circles, to be on
one's guard against speaking foreign tongues too well (the precaution
is perhaps superfluous) lest a marked proficiency should expose one to
be taken for a teacher of languages. It was a feeling of this kind,
perhaps, that led Alfred de Musset to a certain affectation of
negli