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 Musset Librarian in the Department of the Interior.  It was sometimes stated that there was no library at all.  It is certain that it was a sinecure, though the pay, 3,000 francs, was small.  In 1848 the Duke had the bad taste to ask for his resignation, but the Empire repaired the injury.  Alfred de Musset died in Paris, May 2, 1857.

                  Henride BORNIER
               de l’Academie Francaise.

THE CONFESSIONS OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY

BOOK 1.

PART I