It is twenty years since the death of Alfred de Musset, a poet whose popularity and influence, both in his own country and out of it, can be compared only to Byron’s.  Not that the Frenchman is known in England as the Englishman is known in France, but the latter country may be called the open side of the Channel, and in establishing a comparison between the relative fame and familiarity of foreign names and ideas there and on the isolated side, it is proportion rather than quantity which must be kept in view.  While Byron is out of fashion in his own country, the rage for Musset, which for a long time made him appear not so much the favorite modern poet of France as the only one, has subsided into a steady admiration and affection, a permanent preference.  New editions of his works, both cheaper and more costly, are being constantly issued, portraits of him are multiplied, his pieces are regularly performed at the Theatre Francais, his verses are on every one’s lips, his tomb is heaped with flowers on All Souls’ Day.  Until after his death it would have been easy to count those who knew even his name in this country and England:  as usual in such matters, we preceded the English in our acquaintance with him.  The freedom with which Owen Meredith and Mr. Swinburne helped themselves from his poems proves how unfamiliar the general public was with him ten years ago, but his distinction is now so well recognized in that island, so remote from external impressions, that some knowledge of his life and writings formed part of the French course last year in the higher local examinations of Cambridge University.

Alfred de Musset belongs to the class of poets whose inner history excites most curiosity, because his readers feel that there lies the spring of his power, the secret of his charm, as well as the key to the riddles and inconsistencies which his writings present:  they are so imbued with the essence of a common humanity that the heart that beats, the tears which start, the blood which courses through them, keep time with our own.  The desire to penetrate still further into the intimacy to which they admit us is quite distinct from the vulgar inquisitiveness which pursues celebrity, or merely notoriety, into privacy.  His biography has lately been published by one who recognizes the true nature of this curiosity:  Paul de Musset has reserved the right of telling his brother’s story, regarding it, he says, “not only as a duty I owe to the man I loved best, and whose most intimate and confidential friend I was, but as a necessary complement to the perfect understanding of his works, for his work was himself.”