| |
| | Alphonse de Lamartine |
 | | Born of a noble and Christian family, Lamartine at an early age read selected passages from the Bible, later from Fénelon, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, Mme de Staël, Racine, Voltaire, Parny, and among foreign poets, Tasso, Dante, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Ossian, especially the last, who was then very popular. |
 | | Lamartine had long been taking part in politics, and had been elected a member of Parliament in 1833. |
 | | The "Histoire des Girondins" was an episode in this: it was written with the desire to glorify the principles and the men of the French Revolution, without, however, approving their crimes. |
| www.catholicity.com /encyclopedia/l/lamartine,alphonse_de.html (766 words) |
|