gence and laxity; though he wrote for the magazines, he could
boast a long pedigree, and he had nothing in common with the natives of
Grub street. Since his death a new school of poets has sprung up--of
which, indeed, his contemporary, Theophile Gautier, may be regarded as
the founder. These gentlemen have taught French poetry a multitude of
paces of which so sober-footed a damsel was scarcely to have been
supposed capable; they have discovered a great many secrets which
Musset appears never to have suspected, or (if he did suspect them) to
have thought not worth finding out. They have sounded the depths of
versification, and beside their refined, consummate _facture_ Musset's
simple devices and good-natured prosody seem to belong to a primitive
stage of art. It is the difference between a clever performer on the
tight rope and a gentleman strolling along on soft turf with his hands
in his pockets. If people care supremely for form, Musset will always
but half satisfy them. It is very pretty, they will say; but it is
confoundedly unbusinesslike. His verse is not chiselled and pondered,
and in spite of an ineffable natural grace, it lacks the positive
qualities of cunning workmanship--those qualities which are found in
such high perfection in Theophile Gautier. To our own sense Musset's
exquisite feeling more than makes up for one-half the absence of
"chiselling," and the ineffable grace we spoke of just now makes up for
the other half. His sweetness of passion, of which the poets who have
succeeded him have so little, is a more precious property than their
superior science. His grace is often something divine; it is in his
grace that we must look for his style. Herr Lindau says that Heine
speaks of "truth, harmony, and grace" being his salient qualities. (By
the first, we take it, he meant what we have called Musset's passion.)
His harmony, from the first, was often admirable; the rhythm of even
some of his earliest verses makes them haunt the ear after one has
murmured them aloud.

Ulric, des mers nul oeil n'a mesure l'abime,
Ni les herons plongeurs, ni les vieux matelots;
Le soleil vient briser ses rayons sur leur cime,
Comme un soldat vaincu brise ses javelots.

Musset's grace, in its suavity, freedom, and unaffectedness, is
altogether peculiar; though it must be said that it is only in the
poems of his middle period that it is at its best. His latest things
are, according to Sainte-Beuve, _califich