for the first time, its proper place as one of the main illuminating
forces of the nineteenth century.

It was not until one hundred years after this poet's birth that it became
clearly recognized that he is one of the most important of all the great
writers of France, and he is distinguished not only in fiction, but also
in poetry and the drama. He is a follower of Andre Chenier, Lamartine,
and Victor Hugo, a lyric sun, a philosophic poet, later, perhaps in
consequence of the Revolution of 1830, becoming a "Symbolist." He has
been held to occupy a middle ground between De Musset and Chenier, but he
has also something suggestive of Madame de Stael, and, artistically, he
has much in common with Chateaubriand, though he is more coldly
impersonal and probably much more sincere in his philosophy. If Sainte-
Beuve, however, calls the poet in his Nouveaux Lundis a "beautiful angel,
who has been drinking vinegar," then the modern reader needs a strong
caution against malice and raillery, if not jealousy and perfidy,
although the article on De Vigny abounds otherwise with excessive
critical cleverness.

At times, indeed, under the cruel deceptions of love, he seemed to lose
faith in his idealism; his pessimism, nevertheless, always remained
noble, restrained, sympathetic, manifesting itself not in appeals for
condolence, but in pitying care for all who were near and dear to him.
Yet his lofty prose and poetry, interpenetrated with the stern despair of
pessimistic idealism, will always be unintelligible to the many. As a
poet, De Vigny appeals to the chosen few alone. In his dramas his genius
is more emancipated from himself, in his novels most of all. It is by
these that he is most widely known, and by these that he exercised the
greatest influence on the literary life of his generation.