Francois Coppee is not one of those superb high priests disdainful of the throng:  he is the poet of the “humble,” and in his work, ‘Les Humbles’, he paints with a sincere emotion his profound sympathy for the sorrows, the miseries, and the sacrifices of the meek.  Again, in his ’Grave des Forgerons, Le Naufrage, and L’Epave’, all poems of great extension and universal reputation, he treats of simple existences, of unknown unfortunates, and of sacrifices which the daily papers do not record.  The coloring and designing are precise, even if the tone be somewhat sombre, and nobody will deny that Coppee most fully possesses the technique of French poetry.

But Francois Coppee is known to fame as a prosewriter, too.  His ’Contes en prose’ and his ‘Vingt Contes Nouveaux’ are gracefully and artistically told; scarcely one of the ‘contes’ fails to have a moral motive.  The stories are short and naturally slight; some, indeed, incline rather to the essay than to the story, but each has that enthralling interest which justifies its existence.  Coppee possesses preeminently the gift of presenting concrete fact rather than abstraction.  A sketch, for instance, is the first tale written by him, ‘Une Idylle pendant le Seige’ (1875).  In a novel we require strong characterization, great grasp of character, and the novelist should show us the human heart and intellect in full play and activity.  In 1875 appeared also ‘Olivier’, followed by ’L’Exilee (1876); Recits et Elegies (1878); Vingt Contes Nouveaux (1883); and Toute une Jeunesse’, mainly an autobiography, crowned by acclaim by the Academy.  ‘Le Coupable’ was published in 1897.  Finally, in 1898, appeared ‘La Bonne Souffrance’.  In the last-mentioned work it would seem that the poet, just recovering from a severe malady, has returned to the dogmas of the Catholic Church, wherefrom he, like so many of his contemporaries, had become estranged when a youth.  The poems of 1902, ’Dans la Priere et dans la Lutte’, tend to confirm the correctness of this view.

Thanks to the juvenile Sarah Bernhardt, Coppee became, as before mentioned, like Byron, celebrated in one night.  This happened through the performance of ‘Le Passant’.

As interludes to the plays there are “occasional” theatrical pieces, written for the fiftieth anniversary of the performance of ‘Hernani’ or the two-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the “Comedie Francaise.”  This is a wide field, indeed, which M. Coppee has cultivated to various purposes.

Take Coppee’s works in their sum and totality, and the world-decree is that he is an artist, and an admirable one.  He plays upon his instrument with all power and grace.  But he is no mere virtuoso.  There is something in him beyond the executant.  Of Malibran, Alfred de Musset says, most beautifully, that she had that “voice of the heart which alone has power to reach the heart.”  Here, also, behind the skilful player on language, the deft manipulator