Fontaine in the 17th century with Viennet in the 19th. None of the links, however, of this chain, with the exception of Jean Pierre Florian (1759-1794) deserve much attention. The universal faculty of Voltaire (1694-1778) showed itself in his poetical productions no less than in his other works, and it is perhaps not least remarkable in verse. It is impossible nowadays to regard the _Henriade_ as anything but a highly successful prize poem, but the burlesque epic of _La Pucelle_, discreditable as it may be from the moral point of view, is remarkable enough as literature. Chenier. The epistles and satires are among the best of their kind, the verse tales are in the same way admirable, and the epigrams, impromptus, and short miscellaneous poems generally are the _ne plus ultra_ of verse which is not poetry. The Anglomania of the century extended into poetry, and the _Seasons_ of Thomson set the example of a whole library of tedious descriptive verse, which in its turn revenged France upon England by producing or helping to produce English poems of the Darwin school. The first of these descriptive performances was the _Saisons_ of Jean Francois de Saint-Lambert (1716-1803), identical in title with its model, but of infinitely inferior value. Saint-Lambert was followed by Jacques Delille (1738-1813) in _Les Jardins_, Antoine Marin le Mierre (1723-1793) in _Les Fastes_, and Jean Antoine Roucher (1745-1794) in _Les Mois_. Indeed, everything that could be described was seized upon by these describers. Delille also translated the _Georgics_, and for a time was the greatest living poet of France, the title being only disputed by Escouchard le Brun (1729-1807), a lyrist and ode writer of the school of J. B. Rousseau, but not destitute of energy. The only other poets until Chenier who deserve notice are Nicolas Gilbert (1751-1780)--the French Chatterton, or perhaps rather the French Oldham, who died in a workhouse at twenty-nine after producing some vigorous satires and, at the point of death, an elegy of great beauty; Jacques Charles Louis Clinchaut de Malfilatre (1732-1767), another short-lived poet whose "Ode to the Sun" has a certain stateliness; and Jean Baptiste Gresset (1709-1777), the author of _Ver-Vert_ and of other poems of the lighter order, which are not far, if at all, below the level of Voltaire. Andre Chenier (1762-1794) stands far apart from the art of his century, though the strong chain of custom, and his early death by the guillotine, prevented him from breaking finally through the restraints of its language and its versification. Chenier, half a Greek by blood, was wholly one in spirit and sentiment. The manner of his verses, the very air which surrounds them and which they diffuse, are different from those of the 18th century; and his poetry is probably the utmost that its language and versification could produce. To do more, the revolution which followed a generation after his death was required. Diderot (plays).