Alfred-Victor, Count de Vigny, was born in Loches, Touraine, March 27, 1797.  His father was an army officer, wounded in the Seven Years’ War.  Alfred, after having been well educated, also selected a military career and received a commission in the “Mousquetaires Rouges,” in 1814, when barely seventeen.  He served until 1827, “twelve long years of peace,” then resigned.  Already in 1822 appeared a volume of ‘Poemes’ which was hardly noticed, although containing poetry since become important to the evolution of French verse:  ’La Neige, le Coy, le Deluge, Elva, la Frigate’, etc., again collected in ‘Poemes antiques et modernes’ (1826).  Other poems were published after his death in ‘Les Destinies’ (1864).

Under the influence of Walter Scott, he wrote a historical romance in 1826, ‘Cinq-Mars, ou une Conjuration sans Louis XIII’.  It met with the most brilliant and decided success and was crowned by the Academy.  Cinq-Mars will always be remembered as the earliest romantic novel in France and the greatest and most dramatic picture of Richelieu now extant.  De Vigny was a convinced Anglophile, well acquainted with the writings of Shakespeare and Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, and Leopardi.  He also married an English lady in 1825—­Lydia Bunbury.

Other prose works are ‘Stello’ (1832), in the manner of Sterne and Diderot, and ‘Servitude et Grandeur militaire’ (1835), the language of which is as caustic as that of Merimee.  As a dramatist, De Vigny produced a translation of ‘Othello—­Le More de Venice’ (1829); also ’La Marechale d’Ancre’ (1832); both met with moderate success only.  But a decided “hit” was ‘Chatterton’ (1835), an adaption from his prose-work ’Stello, ou les Diables bleus’; it at once established his reputation on the stage; the applause was most prodigious, and in the annals of the French theatre can only be compared with that of ‘Le Cid’.  It was a great victory for the Romantic School, and the type of Chatterton, the slighted poet, “the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul that perished in his pride,” became contagious as erstwhile did the type of Werther.

For twenty years before his death Alfred de Vigny wrote nothing.  He lived in retirement, almost a recluse, in La Charente, rarely visiting Paris.  Admitted into L’Academie Francaise in 1845, he describes in his ’Journal d’un Poete’ his academic visits and the reception held out to him by the members of L’Institut.  This work appeared posthumously in 1867.

He died in Paris, September 17, 1863.

                  Charlesde MAZADE
                de l’Academie Francaise.

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