ANATOLE FRANCE

Anatole France, novelist, critic, poet, and scholar, was born at Paris in 1844. As a poet he belongs to the Parnassian group, by his élégant and tender verses called Vers Dorés, Les Noces Corinthiennes. As a novelist he published Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, Les Désirs de Jean Servten, Jocaste et le Chat Maigre, Thaïs, Le Livre de mon Ami. As a critic he wrote the weekly Chronique (literary gossips) of La Vie Littéraire in Le Temps. Iike Jules Lemaître, he belongs to the school of subjective criticism.

Page 143. — 1. M. Weiss. Famous French critic who died a few years ago. He wrote Essais sur P Histoire de la Littérature française and a great many dramatic Chroniques in the Revue politique et littéraire and in the Journal des Débats. He was a very brilliant, witty, original, as well as a deep critic. Jules Lemaître has written a most interesting article on J.-J. Weiss (Les Contemporains, deuxième série).

Page 144. — z. Et . . . parti: and get reconciled to the idea, make up their minds to accept what they cannot change.

Page 145. — z. Et . . . exprès: and they are not conscious enough of what they are doing.

Page 147. — z. Il . . . parnassien : i.e. he became one of the poets of the Parnassian group.

2. Leconte de Lisle. See article Paul Bourget, page 79, note 1.

Page 148. — z. André Chénier (1 762-1794). A French poet, born at Constantinople. He was at heart a Greek. He learned from the ançients the exquisite purity of form, the admirable restraint, the chastened vigor of thought and diction, which render him prééminent among modem poets. He wrote some Élégies, VArt d'Aimer, Hermès, and La Liberté, a fine idyl which cost him his life. He was arrested on the 6th of January, 1794, and sent to the scaffold on the 25th of June, three days before Robespierre's fall. In his prison he wrote the beautiful elegy La Jeune Captive.