Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Poet and literary critic. Born in Montbrison, Loire. Educated at Lyon and became a professor of French literature in 1847. Elected to the Académie française in 1858, succeeding Alfred de Musset. His poetry was influenced by Chateaubriand and Lamartine, followed classical forms, Romantic idealism, and a view of nature as divine, and shared similarities with the English Lake Poets. Inclined towards conservatism later in his life and repudiated utopian socialism. Some of his poetry collections include Poèmes évangéliques (1852), Idylles héroïques (1858), and Les Voix du silence (1864). His prose works, some derived from lectures, include Questions d'art et de morale (1861), Le Sentiment de la nature avant le Christianisme (1866), and Éducation libérale (1873). He also contributed to Revue des deux mondes and Revue de Paris. Biographical information: Oxford Reference; Charles Herbermann (ed.), Catholic Encyclopedia, (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1913), vol. 9. (NM)