rdinary abundance and
vivacity of imagination, and really, out of those same "histories" of
Shakespeare, it is hard to see where one should find an equal
spontaneity in dealing with the whole human furniture of a period.
Alfred de Musset, in "Lorenzaccio," has the air of being as ready to
handle a hundred figures as a dozen--of having imagination enough for
them all. The thing has the real creative _souffle_, and if it is not
the most perfect of his productions, it is probably the most vigorous.

We have not spoken of his tales; their merit is the same as of the
_comedies_--that of spontaneous feeling, and of putting people before
us in whose feelings we believe. Besides this, they have Musset's grace
and delicacy in a perhaps excessive degree; they are the most mannered
of his productions. Two or three of them, however--"Emmeline," "Les
Deux Maitresses," "Frederic et Bernerette"--are masterpieces; this last
epithet is especially to be bestowed upon the letter written by the
heroine of the last-mentioned tale (an incorrigibly _volage_ grisette)
to her former lover on the occasion of his marrying and settling. The
incoherency, the garrulity, the mingled resignation and regret of an
amiable flirt of the lower orders, divided between the vivacity of her
emotion and the levity of her nature, are caught in the act; and yet it
is not fair to say of anything represented by Musset that it is caught
in the act. Just the beauty and charm of it is that it is not the exact
reality, but a something seen by the imagination--a tinge of the ideal,
a touch of poetry. We must try to see Musset himself in the same way;
his own figure needs to a certain extent the help of our imagination.
And yet, even with such help taken, we cannot but feel that he is an
example of the wasteful way in which nature and history sometimes
work--of their cruel indifference to our personal standards of
economy--of the vast amount of material they take to produce a little
result.

Alfred de Musset's exquisite organization, his exaltations and
weaknesses, his pangs and tears, his passions and debaucheries, his
intemperance and idleness, his years of unproductiveness, his
innumerable mistresses (with whatever pangs and miseries it may seem
proper to attribute to _them_), his quarrel with a woman of genius, and
the scandals, exposures, and recriminations that are so ungracefully
bound up with it--all this was necessary in order that we should have
the two or th