GÉRARD DE NERVAL (1808-1855) is the adopted name of Gérard Labrunie, a French litterateur, and that by which he is generally known. The son of an officer in the army, and born at Paris, May 21, 1808, he received his early education chiefly from his father, who taught him German, and he afterwards studied at the college of Charlemagne. He made his literary début by the publication of a volume of political odes, and in 1828 he published a translation of Goethe’s Faust, of which Goethe himself expressed high approval, and the choruses of which were afterwards made use of by Berlioz for his legendsymphony, The Damnation of Faust. Several other translations from the German, contributed chiefly to the Mercure de France, a number of poetical pieces, and three comedies combined to acquire for him, at the age of twenty-one, a considerable literary reputation, and led to his being associated with Theophile Gautier in the preparation of the dramatic feuilleton for the Presse. On the death of Jennie Colon, an actress with whom he had contracted a liaison, he resigned his connexion with the Presse, and travelled in various parts of Europe, leading a somewhat dissipated life. He contributed an account of his travels to the Revue des Deτιx Mondes and other periodicals. After his return to Paris in 1844 he resumed for a short time the feuilleton. From 1841 he was subject to periodical attacks of insanity, aud he committed suicide by hanging, 25th January 1855. The literary style of Gérard is simple and unaffected, and he has a peculiar faculty of giving to his imaginative creations an air of naturalness and reality. In a series of novelletes, afterwards published under the name of Les Illuminés ou les Précurseurs du Socialisme (1852), he gave a sort of analysis of the ...