this vast conception, and the 'Hermes' remains a mass of incoherent fragments. Andre de Chenier had not the robust common-sense that underlay all the poetic eccentricities of the poet whom in many ways he so much resembled,--Alfred de Musset. The latter knew and recognized his limitations. "My glass is not large, but I drink from my own glass," he said, and what he did attempt was well within his possibilities and was exquisitely done. Not so with Chenier. With a genius like that of De Musset, pre-eminently lyrical, but with infinitely less variety and richness, he laboriously accumulated vast piles of materials for dramas and for epics that if ever completed must have but added another page to the list of literary soporifics. He made a colossal sketch of another poem, to be called 'America,'--a sort of geographical and historical encyclopedia, M. Joubert calls it, whose enormous mass of detail could scarcely be floated by any one current of interest, but whose principal motive seemed meant to be the conquest of Peru. In the midst of these enterprises he suddenly conceived what one of his biographers calls "the amiable intention" of writing a poem on the story of 'Susannah and the Elders,' but only completed a prose sketch with two or three short passages in verse. He also began one or two tragedies which were to be after AEschylus, a comedy called 'The Charlatans,' poems on the literary life, and many other subjects; and at the same time he was keeping up his relations with many of his distinguished contemporaries;--the Polish poet Niemcewicz; Mrs. Cosway, the charming young wife of the well-known English painter, and an artist herself; the Italian poet Alfieri; and the Countess of Albany. In 1787 his father, who had returned to Paris, was anxious that Andre should begin his diplomatic career; and he was appointed attache to M. de la Luzerne, just sent as ambassador to England. The poet went to London in December,--a most unpropitious season,--and naturally nothing pleased him there; he found the climate detestable, the manners of the English rude and cold, their literature of a barbaric richness, and in fact he approved of nothing in England but its Constitution, which he thought not only good but worthy of imitation. He had been in London about sixteen months when the first rumors of the French Revolution reached him and turned all his thoughts towards the great political questions of the moment. The project of a rule of liberty and justice for France appealed to the noblest side of his nature; and while passionately opposed to all excess and violence, he was eager to assist any movement that promised to help the people.