Excerpt from The Universal Anthology, Vol. 29: A Collection of the Best Literature, Ancient, Medieval and Modern, With Biographical and Explanatory Notes The former aspirant to a librarianship is now one of the French writers most widely known in the world, and also one of those with whom Paris concerns itself with most curiosity; both from the singularity of his character, and because he attracts the public attention as a dramatic author, as a polemist in the most ardent social questions, as a generous lover of fine arts, and as a hospitable gentleman. He rises at dawn, winter as well as in summer. The letters received by his friends during the day are all written by candle light while they are sleeping. He works with vim until noon, and at noon his day as a writer is finished. He spends the afternoon either in the Bois de Boulogne, on horseback, or in the studios of painters; and once a week he gives a dinner in his house to an army of friends, the majority of them writers and artists, and on whom, between the soup and the fruit, he pours out a treasure of witticisms, anecdotes, political epigrams, and of keen, fresh literary criticisms, which are afterwards passed from mouth to mouth, and scattered through the papers and through the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.