It had been known for some time that M. Paul de Musset was preparing a biography of his illustrious brother, and the knowledge had been grateful to Alfred de Musset's many lovers; for the author of "Rolla" and the "Lettre a Lamartine" has lovers. The book has at last appeared--more than twenty years after the death of its hero.[1] It is probably not unfair to suppose that a motive for delay has been removed by the recent death of Mme. Sand. M. Paul de Musset's volume proves, we confess, rather disappointing. It is a careful and graceful, but at the same time a very slight performance, such as was to be expected from the author of "Lui et Elle" and of the indignant refutation (in the biographical notice which accompanies the octavo edition of Alfred de Musset's works) of M. Taine's statement that the poet was addicted to walking about the streets late at night. As regards this latter point, M. Paul de Musset hastened to declare that his brother had no such habits--that his customs were those of a _gentilhomme_; by which the biographer would seem to mean that when the poet went abroad after dark it was in his own carriage, or at least in a hired cab, summoned from the nearest stand. M. Paul de Musset is a devoted brother and an agreeable writer; but he is not, from the critic's point of view, the ideal biographer. This, however, is not seriously to be regretted, for it is little to be desired that the ideal biography of Alfred de Musset should be written, or that he should be delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the critics. Those who really care for him would prefer to judge him with all kinds of allowances and indulgences--sentimentally and imaginatively. Between him and his readers it is a matter of affection, or it is nothing at all; and there is something very happy, therefore, in M. Paul de Musset's fond, fraternal reticency and extenuation. He has related his brother's life as if it were a pretty "story"; and indeed there is enough that was pretty in it to justify him. We should decline to profit by any information that might be offered us in regard to its prosaic, its possibly shabby side. To make the story complete, however, there appears simultaneously with M. Paul de Musset's volume a publication of a quite different sort--a memoir of the poet by a clever German writer, Herr Paul Lindau.[2] Herr Lindau is highly appreciative, but he is also critical, and he says a great many things which M. Paul de Musset leaves unsaid. As becomes a German biographer, he is very minute and exhaustive, and a stranger who should desire a "general idea" of the poet would probably get more instruction from his pages than from the French memoir. Their fault is indeed that they are apparently addressed to persons whose mind is supposed to be a blank with regard to the author of "Rolla." The exactions of bookmaking alone can explain the long analyses and prose paraphrases of Alfred de