He wrote mainly for the stage, and left but one volume of poems, Mes Heures perdues, which are all forgotten save this famous sonnet. The lady who inspired it is said to have been the daughter of Charles Nodier, afterwards Mme. Mennessier-Nodier. Mes Heures perdues was reprinted in 1878, with a notice of Arvers by Th. de Banville.
GÉRARD DE NERVAL.
1808-1855.
Gérard Labrunie, known in letters as Gérard de Nerval, was one of the group of young Romanticists who gathered around Hugo. Symptoms of insanity developed early, and at different times he was an inmate of an asylum. He finally committed suicide. He felt profoundly the influence of German literature, and his lyrics show something of this in the spiritual quality of their sentiment.
Works: Élégies nationales et satires politiques, 1827; translation of Goethe's Faust, 1828; la Bohême galante, 1856; Oeuvres completes, 5 vols., 1868.
For reference: Th. Gautier, Histoire du romantisme; Portraits et souvenirs littéraires; Arvède Barine, Névrosés, 1898.
140. FANTAISIE. Gioacchino Antonio ROSSINI (1792-1868), one of the foremost Italian composers of the century, author of William Tell (1829), and other well-known operas. Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART was a native of Austria, and one of the greatest musical geniuses that ever lived. Among his works are the operas Le Nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Die Zauberflöte (1791); the famous Requiem; the symphony in G minor, etc. Karl Maria von WEBER (1786-1826), one of the founders of German as opposed to Italian opera. Der Freischütz is his most famous work.
HÉGÉSIPPE MOREAU.
1810-1838.
In his short and unhappy struggle with poverty and illness he produced a few graceful short stories and a thin volume of verse, le Myosotis (1838), that reveals a genuine, though not remarkable, lyric gift. See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. iv. The poems of le Myosotis, and some others, now make vol. ii. of his Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols., 1890-91.