1850-1893.
This famous master of the short story began his literary career, like Daudet, Theuriet, and Bourget, with a volume of verse. Des Vers, 1880.
PAUL BOURGET.
1852.
Like Maupassant, he early forsook poetry for the novel, and for literary criticism. His verse, like his prose, is the work of a psychologist, who observes and analyzes his own experiences. He is never so far possessed by his emotion as to cease to inspect it curiously. In the restlessness of his spirit, the unsettled currents of his moral atmosphere, his doubts and longings, he represents a large fraction of his generation.
Works: La Vie inquiète, 1874; Edel, 1878; les Aveux, 1882; collected in two volumes with the title Poésies, 1885-87.
For reference: J. Lemaître, les Contemporains, vol. ii, 1887; A. N. van Daell, Extraits choisis des oeuvres de Paul Bourget, Boston, 1894 (introduction and lettre autobiographique).
302. PRAETERITA is from la Vie inquiète; the other poems here given are from les Aveux. 13, 14; the second of November, jour des Trépasses, is in the church calendar the day of the special commemoration of the dead.
ABEL HERMANT.
1862.