SOLVESTRE, Émile (1806-1854), a French novelist of merit, was born on April 15, 1806, and died on July 5, 1854. He was a native of Morlaix, and his affection for Brittany coloured most of his best work in after life. He had rather a chequered career of employment besides his literary pursuits. He was by turns a bookseller’s assistant, a private schoolmaster, a journalist, and professeur at the grammar schools of Brest and Mulhouse. In 1848 he received what may sound to English ears the odd appointment of “professor of administrative style” in a school founded for the instruction of civil servants. His literary work, however, was his labour of love. He began like most Frenchmen with the drama, but was never very successful with it. In novel-writing he did much better, and with Jules Sandeau (though on a somewhat lower level of writing, construction, and grasp of character) may be said to rank as the chief recent French novelist who deliberately aimed at making the novel an engine of moral instruction. With less genius and less sense of art than

Sandeau, he did not always escape the reproach of dulness. His best work is undoubtedly to be found in the charming Derniers Bretons (1835-1837) and Foyer Breton (1844) (where the folklore and natural features of his native province are worked up into story form, with a success hardly excelled by any other writer), and in Un Philosophe sons les Toits, which received the honour of an academic prize in the year 1851. This Souvestre deserved, not merely for his sentiments, but for his easy and agreeable style. He also wrote a not inconsiderable number of other works—novels, dramas, essays, and miscellanies.