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. 141. LA FERMIÈRE. This poem was sent as a New Year's gift to Madame Guérard, who had taken the poet in and entertained him when ill. 142. 31. FILS DE LA VIERGE, "débris de toiles d'araignée que le vent emporte"; air-thread, gossamer. ALFRED DE MUSSET. 1810-1857. A lyric poet of a comparatively narrow range, but within it surpassingly genuine and spontaneous. Almost his only theme was the passion of love, in some form or degree. But what he lacked in breadth he made up in the directness and intensity of his accent, and these eminently lyric qualities give his lyrics a distinction among those of his country. He began as a Romanticist, but soon grew away from the school of Hugo as it developed. With his negligence of form and his surrender to the passion of the moment, he is the opposite of Gautier; and the poets of the later school which derives from Gautier have neglected and depreciated him. Works: _Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie_, 1830; _le Spectacle dans un fauteuil_, 1833; after this most of his poems appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_; they are now collected in _Premières poésies_, 1 vol., containing the poems of the first two volumes and a few others, and _Poésies nouvelles_, 1 vol., containing the _Nuits_, and the later poems.