nhappy Italian
experience. It is an ambitious and deeply interesting work, and shows
whither his dread of all moral compulsion and self-control was leading
him.

De Musset also wrote some critical essays, witty and satirical in tone,
in which his genius appears in another light. It is not generally known
that he was the translator into French of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an
Opium Eater' (1828). He was also a prominent contributor to the 'Revue
des Deux Mondes.' In 1852 he was elected to the French Academy, but
hardly ever appeared at the sessions. A confrere once made the remark:
"De Musset frequently absents himself," whereupon it is said another
Immortal answered, "And frequently absinthe's himself!"

While Brunetiere, Lemattre, and others consider De Musset a great
dramatist, Sainte-Beuve, singularly enough, does not appreciate him as a
playwright. Theophile Gautier says about 'Un Caprice' (1847): "Since the
days of Marivaux nothing has been produced in 'La Comedie Francaise' so
fine, so delicate, so dainty, than this tender piece, this chef-d'oeuvre,
long buried within the pages of a review; and we are greatly indebted to
the Russians of St. Petersburg, that snow-covered Athens, for having dug
up and revived it." Nevertheless, his bluette, 'La Nuit Venetienne', was
outrageously treated at the Odeon. The opposition was exasperated by the
recent success of Hugo's 'Hernani.' Musset was then in complete accord
with the fundamental romantic conception that tragedy must mingle with
comedy on the stage as well as in life, but he had too delicate a taste
to yield to the extravagance of Dumas and the lesser romanticists. All
his plays, by the way, were written for the 'Revue des Deux Mondes'
between 1833 and 1850, and they did not win a definite place on the stage
till the later years of the Second Empire. In some comedies the dialogue
is unequalled by any writer since the days of Beaumarchais. Taine says
that De Musset has more real originality in some respects than Hugo, and
possesses truer dramatic genius. Two or three of his comedies will
probably hold the stage longer than any dramatic work of the romantic
school. They contain the quintessence of romantic imaginative art; they
show in full flow that unchecked freedom of fancy which, joined to the
spirit of realistic comedy, produces the modern French drama. Yet De
Musset's prose has in greater measure the qualities that endure.

The Duke of Orleans created De Musse