Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/124

Rh 112 M U S M U S cynical man of the world and the other the wholly tender romantic lover ; Marianne is that type of the highest comedy to which events lend a touch of tragedy, while in Hermia Celio s mother, is the very poetry of maternal love. The piece is called* a comedy, and it owes this title to its ex traordinary brilliance of dialogue, truth of characterization, and swiftness in action, under which there is ever latent a sense of impending fate. Many of the qualities indicated are found in others of Musset s dramatic works, and notably in On ne badine pas avec I Amour, where the skill in insen sibly preparing his hearers or readers through a succession of dazzling comedy scenes for the swift destruction of the end is very marked. But Les Caprices de Marianne is per haps for this particular purpose of illustration the most compact and most typical of all. One other point in Musset s method may be noted in connexion with this play. Paul de Musset asked him where he had ever met a Marianne. He answered, &quot; Everywhere and nowhere ; she is not a woman, she is woman.&quot; The appearance of Les Caprices de Marianne in the Revue was followed by that of Rolla, a marked symptom of the &quot; maladie du siecle.&quot; Then came the unfortunate journey which Musset made to Italy with George Sand. It is well known that the rupture of what was for a time a most passionate attachment had a disastrous effect upon Musset, and brought out the weakest side of his moral character. He was at first absolutely and completely struck down by the blow. But it was not so well known until Paul de Musset pointed it out that the passion expressed in the Nuit de Decembre, written about twelve months after the journey to Italy, referred not to George Sand but to another and quite a different woman. The story of the Italian journey and its results are told under the guise of fiction from two points of view in the two volumes called respectively Elle et Lui and Lui et Elle. During Musset s absence in Italy Fantasia was published in the Revue, and not long after his return On ne badine 2&amp;gt;as avec I Amour appeared in the same way. In 1835 he produced Lucie, La Nuit de Mai, La Quenouitte de Barberine, Le Chandelier, La Loi sur la Presse, La Nuit de Decembre, and La Confession d un Enfant du Siecle. The last-named work, a prose work, is exceptionally interesting as exhibiting the poet s frame of mind at the time, and the approach to a revulsion from the Bonapartist ideas amid which he had been brought up in his childhood. To the supreme power of Napoleon he in this work attri buted that moral sickness of the time which he described. &quot; One man,&quot; he wrote, &quot; absorbed the whole life of Europe; the rest of the human race struggled to fill their lungs with the air that he had breathed.&quot; When the emperor fell, &quot; a ruined world was a resting-place for a genera tion weighted with care.&quot; The Confession is further im portant, apart from its high literary merit, as exhibiting in many passages the poet s tendency to shun or wildly protest against all that is disagreeable or difficult in human life a tendency to which, however, much of his finest work was due. In 1836 appeared, amongst other things, // ne faut jurer de Rien, a comedy which holds, and is likely long to hold, the stage of the Theatre Franais, and the beginning of the brilliant letters of Dupuis and Cotonet on romanti cism. II ne faut jurer de Rien is as typical of his comedy work as is Les Caprices de Marianne of the work in which a terrible fatality underlies the brilliant dialogue and light keen characterization. In 1839 were published the Caprice (which afterwards found its way to the Paris stage through, in the first instance, the accident of Madame Allan the actress hearing of it in a Eussian translation) and some of the Nouvelles. In 1 839 he began a romance called Le Poete Dechu, of which the existing fragments are full of passion and insight. In 1840 he passed through a period of feel ing that the public did not recognize his genius as, indeed, they did not and wrote a very short but very strik ing series of reflexions headed with the words &quot; A trente Ans,&quot; which Paul de Musset published in his Life. In 1841 there came out in the Revue de Paris Musset s Le Rhin Allemand, an answer to Becker s poem which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. This fine war-song made a great deal of noise, and brought to the poet quantities of challenges from German officers. Between this date and 1845 he wrote comparatively little. In the last-named year the charming &quot;proverbe&quot; II faut qu une Porte soit ouverte oufermee appeared. In 1847 Un Caprice was produced at the Theatre Francais, and the employment in it of such a word as &quot; rebonsoir &quot; shocked some of the old guard of the old school. In 1848 II ne faut jurer de Rien was played at the Theatre Frangais, and the Chandelier at the Theatre Historique. Between this date and 1851 Bettine was pro duced on the stage and Carmosine written ; and between this time and the date of his death, from an affection of the heart, in May 1857, the poet produced no large work of importance. Alfred de Musset now holds the rank which Sainte-Beuve first accorded, then denied, and then again accorded to him as a poet of the first rank. He had genius, though not genius of that strongest kind which its possessor can always keep in check. His own char acter worked both for and against his success as a writer. His very weakness and his own consciousness of it produced such beautiful work as, to take one instance, the Nuit d Octobrc, but it too often prevented him, from one cause or another, from producing any work at all. His Nouvelles are extraordinarily brilliant ; his poems are charged with passion, fancy, and fine satiric power ; in his plays he hit upon a method of his own, in which no one has dared or availed to follow him with any closeness. He was one of the first, most ori ginal, and in the end most successful of the first-rate writers included in the phrase &quot;the 1830 period.&quot; The wildness of his life, though it cannot be denied, has probably been exaggerated ; and it has lately been suggested by M. Arsene Houssaye that the symptoms of the heart disease which caused his death may sometimes have been mistaken for the symptoms of intoxication. His brother Paul de Musset has given in his Biographic a striking testimony to the finer side of his character. In the later years of his life Musset was elected, not without some difficulty, a member of the French Aca demy. Besides the works above referred to, the Nouvelles et Conies and the (Euvres Posthumcs, in which there is much of interest concerning the great tragic actress Rachel, should be specially mentioned. Musset has had no successor in France either as a poet or as a dramatist. (W. H. P. ) MUSTARD. The varieties of mustard -seed of com merce are produced from several species of the Cruciferous genus Brassica. Of these the principal are the Black or Brown Mustard, Brassica nigra (Sinapis nigra, L.), the White Mustard, Brassica alba, and the Sarepta Mustard, B. juncea. The finest qualities of Black and White Mustard are cultivated in the eastern counties of England. The former is a plant requiring a rich soil and much care in its treatment, but its seeds, which are very minute, weigh ing not more than one -fiftieth of a grain, are the most valuable for commercial purposes. The peculiar pungency and odour to which mustard owes much of its value are due to an essential oil developed by the action of water on two peculiar chemical substances contained in the black seed. These bodies are a compound termed by its dis coverers myronate of potassium, but since called sinigrin, C 10 H 18 KNS 2 O 10, and an albuminoid body, myrosin. The latter substance in presence of water acts as a ferment on inigrin, splitting it up into the essential oil of mustard, a potassium salt, and sugar. It is worthy of remark that this reaction does not take place in presence of boiling water, and therefore it is not proper to use very hot water .n the preparation of mustard. Essential oil of mustard s in chemical constitution an iso-sulphocyanate of allyl 3 4 H-NS. It is prepared artificially by a process, discovered by Zinzin, which consists in treating bromide of allyl with mlphocyanate of ammonium and distilling the resultant ilphpcyanate of allyl. The seed of White Mustard con tains in place of sinigrin a peculiar principle called sinalbin,