("The difference between Byron's and Voltaire's laughter is this, that Voltaire had not suffered"), to the sentimental and half orthodox Lamartine the English poet is still the fallen angel. Lamartine's _Fifth Canto of Childe Harold_, in which he endeavours to strike the Byronic note, shows in what he believed himself to resemble the English nobleman, namely, in his romantically heroic personality. Masking as Byron he gives expression to the doubts and rebellious feelings of which we only catch a rare glimpse in his _Meditations_, but to which he was soon to give utterance in his own name. It was probably Byron who lured both him and Hugo to the East; Hugo contented himself with imaginary excursions, but Lamartine made princely preparations and set off on a grand tour. And if Byron's last works made no profound political impression on these two authors, his last actions and his death did. Byron's influence is, then, unmistakably traceable in the works of most of the young poets of our period; but so marked and powerful was the originality of this generation of authors, that his sentimental despair, which was so infectious, and which led to so much imitation and affectation in many literatures, glanced off them. There was only one of them in whose ears this particular Byronic note rang like a message from a kindred spirit, and he was, curiously enough, the most elegant and aristocratic, the truest Parisian among them all--Alfred de Musset. Most of the literary notables in question were born in the provinces--Victor Hugo and Nodier at Besançon, George Sand in Berry, Gautier at Tarbes, Lamennais in Brittany, Sainte-Beuve at Boulogne--and each of these brings with him his characteristic fund of provincialism which does not allow itself to be interpenetrated by the Byronic influence, although both George Sand and Gautier were, in curiously different ways, affected by Byron. Mérimée, who was born in Paris, cooled too quickly to feel the influence of Byron's poetic temperament; it was Byron's spirit of negation which influenced him, and that at second hand, through Beyle. But upon no one does Byron make the same direct, deep impression as on that slender, pale son of Paris, who is distinguished by all the weakness and all the exquisite charm which are the heritage of the last representatives of a noble and ancient race. In the earliest stages of his career, Byron, the true Englishman, had been spiritually minded and melancholy; the senses play but a small part in the poetry of his youth; not till he is the mature man and has visited Italy and lived in Latin countries does his poetry, like Goethe's in Venice, become sensual and audaciously outspoken. De Musset, on the contrary, begins in his early youth with the bold and fleshly realism which we find in some of Byron's later works, and gradually becomes more and more spiritual. At his best he is a keener observer than Byron, and his love-poetry is more delicate; it has a