plause of the young romanticists, who worshipped
Shakespeare ardently if not wisely, and who bore the shock of hearing
the unclassical word _mouchoir_ valiantly pronounced on the French
stage. The triumph of his drama of _Chatterton_ (1835) was
overwhelming, though its glory to-day seems in excess of its deserts.
Ten years later Vigny was admitted to the Academy. But with the
representation of _Chatterton_, and at the moment of his highest fame,
he suddenly ceased from creative activity. Never was his mind more
energetic, never was his power as an artist so mature; but, except
a few wonderful poems contributed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
and posthumously collected, nothing was given by him to the world
from 1835 to 1863, the year of his death.

He had always been a secluded spirit; external companionship left
him inwardly solitary; secret--so Sainte-Beuve puts it--in his
"tower of ivory"; touching some mountain-summit for a moment--so
Dumas describes him--if he folded his wings, as a concession to
humanity. A great disillusion of passion had befallen him; but, apart
from this, he must have retreated into his own sphere of ideas and
of images, which seemed to him to be almost wronged by an attempt
at literary expression. He looked upon the world with a disenchanted
eye; he despaired of the possibilities of life for himself and for
all men; without declamation or display, he resigned himself to a
silent and stoical acceptance of the lot of man; but out of this calm
despair arose a passionate pity for his fellows, a pity even for things
evil, such as his Eloa felt for the lost angel. _La Colere de Samson_
gives majestic utterance to his despair of human love; his _Mont des
Oliviers_, where Jesus seeks God in vain, and where Judas lurks near,
expresses his religious despair. Nature, the benevolent mother, says
Vigny, is no mother, but a tomb. Yet he would not clamour against
the heavens or the earth; he would meet death silently when it comes,
like the dying wolf of his poem (_La Mort du Loup_), suffering but
voiceless. Wealth and versatility of imagination were not Vigny's
gifts. His dominant ideas were few, but he lived in them; for them
he found apt imagery or symbol; and in verse which has the dignity
of reserve and of passion controlled to sobriety, he let them as it
were involuntarily escape from the seclusion of his soul. He is the
thinker among the poets of his time, and when splendours of colour
and opulence o