SOURCE: "Lamartine Steps Down," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3266, October 1, 1964, pp. 889-90.

In the following excert from a review of an edition of Lamartine's complete poetry, the critic delivers a harsh assessment of Lamartine's appeal for modern readers, identifying his central weaknesses as "the poverty of imagination, the crippling inability to explore the particular, the readiness to vamp."

One of the few funny poems that Lamartine wrote is styled simply "Au Comte d'Orsay." Alfred d'Orsay had modelled a statue of his illustrious cousin; he is thanked in verse for his labours, but advised to throw them into the river; otherwise posterity will look on the throbbing brow, the fiery lips, the ecstatic flank, the masterful arm, the dreaming eye, the heaving heart, the stubborn foot ("Phidias a pétri sept âmes dans l'airain")—will look on all this and be struck dumb by the thought that the...