It is not necessary to exaggerate the importance of the half-dozen volumes which make up the works of Gérard de Nerval. He was not a great writer; he had moments of greatness; and it is the particular quality of these moments which is of interest for us. There is the entertaining, but not more than entertaining, _Voyage en Orient;_ there is the estimable translation of _Faust,_ and the admirable versions from Heine; there are the volumes of short stories and sketches, of which even _Les Illuminés,_ in spite of the promise of its title, is little more than an agreeable compilation. But there remain three compositions: the sonnets, _Le Rêve et la Vie,_ and _Sylvie;_ of which _Sylvie_ is the most objectively achieved, a wandering idyl, full of pastoral delight, and containing some folk-songs of Valois, two of which have been translated by Rossetti; _Le Rêve et la Vie_ being the most intensely personal, a narrative of madness, unique as madness itself; and the sonnets, a kind of miracle, which may be held to have created something at least of the method of the later Symbolist. These three compositions, in which alone Gérard is his finest self, all belong to the periods when he was, in the eyes of the world, actually mad. The sonnets belong to two of these periods, _Le Rêve et la Vie_ to the last; _Sylvie_ was written in the short interval between the two attacks in the early part of 1853. We have thus the case of a writer, graceful and elegant when he is sane, but only inspired, only really wise, passionate, collected, only really master of himself, when he is insane. It may be worth looking at a few of the points which so suggestive a problem presents to us. 2