THE INSTITUTE OF FKANCE IN 1894. 707 



to his subject. Posterity will undoubtedly apply to our colleague the 

 ancient saying of Cicero '' that qualities of honor and probity must be 

 exhibited even in the style." 



Not only the Institute, but all France, mourns for Leconte de Lisle 

 this year. For she honors in him one of the most sterling poetic celeb- 

 rities of this century. His name will live as long as his three master- 

 pieces, " The Poemes Antiques," the " Poemes Carbares," and the 

 "Poemes Tragiques." He was engaged for thirty years in perfecting 

 that great and magnificent work, which, by its very nature, seems to be 

 destined for immortality. 



He came to ns from a distant island, a French possession lost in the 

 tropical seas. La Eeuuion. It was there that he first came into the 

 world, on the 22d of August, 1820. His parentage was from Brittany, 

 and it may be that it Avas this dual origin that enabled him to depict 

 with such fidelity the wrath of the Scandinavian seas and the splendor 

 of Indian climes. In France he lived in obscure and modest seclusion, 

 accessible only to the guard of honor made up of a few friends and 

 elected disciples. These certainly knew that the illustrious recluse 

 was anything but insensible and supercilious. A cursory perusal of 

 his poems may liave given rise to such an imjiression, but the testi- 

 mony of those who came in contact with him and greater familiariza- 

 tion with his verses place him before ns in the attitude not of a frigid 

 marble god, but simply that of an ancient sage absorbed in his work 

 and following ii with patient ardor. 



In 1886 the votes of tlie.xVcademy sought him in his retirement. 

 Glory did not come to his name until a very late hour. He himself 

 never thought of complaint on that ground; he well knew that the 

 character of his works was not such as to largely draw the admiration 

 of the multitude. He reviews India and its religions; Greece, the birth- 

 place of art; the restless and dark-souled barbarians in his works, and 

 in all of thciu he takes a tragic and picturesque view of history, and 

 looks npon nature as the eternal soother of all sorrows. 



In history- he gave preference to obscure and legendary periods. 

 They afforded him a wider field for the description of human passions 

 pitched to a degree of grandeur and energy which does not comport 

 with the periods of j^eaceful civilization. A decided foe of the morbid 

 sentimentality which partially pervades the literature of the first half 

 of this century, he raised the principle of impersonality in art to the 

 eminence of a dogma. His poetry is in a high degree stamped with the 

 characteristics of scientific thought. It partakes of it by the logical 

 developmentof the subject-matter, by the stanch erudition which leads 

 him through the traditions of all the races, and in his poems he again 

 brings the soul of ancient heroes into powerfully realistic life. In some 

 of those revivals he combines the clear-sightedness of Thncydides with 

 the fiery imagination of Lucretius. 



No poet, perhaps, has been more of an artist thaa LeQonte de Lisle, 



