1852.
Like Maupassant, he early forsook poetry for the novel, and for
literary criticism. His verse, like his prose, is the work of a
psychologist, who observes and analyzes his own experiences. He is
never so far possessed by his emotion as to cease to inspect it
curiously. In the restlessness of his spirit, the unsettled currents
of his moral atmosphere, his doubts and longings, he represents a
large fraction of his generation.
Works: _La Vie inquiète_, 1874; _Edel_, 1878; _les Aveux_, 1882;
collected in two volumes with the title _Poésies_, 1885-87.
For reference: J. Lemaître, _les Contemporains_, vol. ii, 1887; A. N.
van Daell, _Extraits choisis des oeuvres de Paul Bourget_, Boston,
1894 (introduction and _lettre autobiographique_).
302. PRAETERITA is from _la Vie inquiète_; the other poems here given
are from _les Aveux_. 13, 14; the second of November, _jour des
Trépasses_, is in the church calendar the day of the special
commemoration of the dead.