Alphonse Marie Louis De Lamartine, a French poet, born in Macon, Oct. 21, 1790, died in Paris, March 1,1869. His early education was superintended by his mother at the village of Milly, near Macon, where his father, who had passed the reign of terror in prison, had retired on the fall of Robespierre. In his 12th year he was sent to study Latin under a neighboring priest, who, a sportsman as well as an ecclesiastic, afterward furnished the subject of Jocelyn. He was soon transferred to the college of Lyons, and again to the school of the Jesuits at Belley, whence he returned in 1809 to Milly and devoted himself to the reading of the poets. In 1811 he accompanied a relative to Italy. Near the close of the empire he returned to France, entered the royal body guards in 1814, and on the escape of Napoleon from Elba retired to Switzerland, returning to Paris after the second restoration. In 1817 he wrote his elegy of the Lac, in which he first displayed the ability of a great poet. His earliest published collection appeared in 1820 under the title of Meditations poetiques, and won a remarkable success, 45,000 copies being sold within four years.

Soon afterward he was appointed secretary to the embassy at Naples. On his way thither he married at Geneva Miss Birch, a wealthy young English lady, who had received a brilliant literary and artistic education. In 1823 he published his Nouvelles meditations, which, though it contained many of his finest poems, was less popular than the preceding volume. In 1824 he became secretary of legation at Florence, and in 1825 appeared his Dernier chant de Childe Harold, an imitation of Byron, containing a severe tirade on Italy, which resulted in a duel with Col. Pepe, an Italian revolutionist, in which Lamartine was wounded. After a residence of five years in Florence, he returned to Paris, was received into the academy, and published Harmonies poetiques et religieuses (1830). In 1832 he set sail from Marseilles, with his wife and daughter, in a vessel chartered and furnished by himself, on a journey to the East, which had been the religious and romantic dream of his life. The French emir, as the Arabs called him, travelled like a sovereign, making princely presents, buying houses for his convenience, and having whole caravans of horses in his service. Leaving his family at Beyrout, he went alone to Jerusalem, where he heard of the death of his daughter.

He returned to Paris after 16 months' absence, by way of Constantinople and the Danube, and published Voyage en Orient, sourenirs, impressions, pensees et paysages (4 vols., 1835), a work splendid in design, but in parts carelessly composed, and inexact in facts. During his absence the electors of Bergues, Le Nord, had chosen him to represent them in the chamber of deputies, in which he took his seat two months after his arrival in France. Though he acted with no political party, his eloquence gave him distinction, and many who doubted his aptitude for practical questions admired in his discourses the language of poetry applied to political affairs. In 1836 appeared Jocelyn, a poem of love and duty, announced as a journal found in a village curacy. It is one of his finest productions, combining dramatic movement with lyric fervor. Two years later followed La chute d'un ange, a poem whose negligences and extravagances justified the coldness of its reception. Similar defects characterized his Recueillements poetiques (1830). As an orator he made remarkable progress in the chamber. At once conservative and progressive, he stood between the ministry and the opposition, assailing the inflexibility of the one and the violence of the other.

In 1842 he foreshadowed his ultimate adherence to the liberal side, by contending that the regency should be conferred on the duchess of Orleans by a vote of the chamber, thus asserting the principle of the national sovereignty; and in 1843 he broke definitely with the conservatives. He anticipated the subversion of the throne, and contributed powerfully to it in his brilliant His-toire des Girondins (8 vols., Paris, 1847). After the escape of the royal family, when the duchess of Orleans appeared in the last assembly of the chamber (Feb. 24, 1848) with her eldest son, the count of Paris, and an attempt was made to declare the latter king by acclamation, the eloquence of Lamartine decided the establishment of a provisional government, which he was among the first to propose. This included Dupont de l'Eure, who presided, Arago, Lamartine, Ledru- Rollin, Cremieux, Garnier-Pages, Marie, Marrast, Flo-con, Louis Blanc, and Albert. On the morning of the 25th, when the insurgent and famishing crowds appeared before the hotel de ville, demanding bread and work, and the raising of the red flag, Lamartine advanced alone among them and gained his greatest triumph of eloquence.

To his intrepid stand on this occasion it is mainly due that the republic did not pass immediately into a new reign of terror. He took the department of foreign affairs in the new government, and one of his first acts was to address a pacific circular to the ministers of foreign states, in which the design of forcible revolutionary propagandism was disavowed. His popularity was proved by his election to the national assembly (April 23) from 10 departments; but he fatally compromised himself by a coalition with Ledru-Rol-lin, and instead of receiving the first place in the executive commission which was to succeed the provisional government till the formation of a constitution, he was the fourth on the list, the others being Arago, who became president, Ledru-Rollin, Garnier-Pages, and Marie. Cremieux, Carnot, Goudchaux, and others were attached as ministers. The "red" movement of May 15, under Blanqui, Barbes, Raspail, and others, having been subdued, Lamartine strove to prevent the insurrection of June, which the unsettled condition of labor and the socialist propaganda matured; but perceiving that the time demanded not reason but the sword, he favored the dictatorship of Gen. Cavaignac, and resigned his own executive office.

He was supported for the presidency by Pelletan and La Gueronniere in the Pays newspaper, but received only 17,910 votes, and he was returned to the assembly in 1840 by but one obscure department. After the coup d'etat of Dec. 2, 1851, he retired from public life. For several years his private affairs had demanded much of his attention. From the time of his oriental tour, the income of his writings and diminished fortune, and the illusive wealth of large territorial grants by the sultan, had been unequal to the expenditures incident to his elegant mode of life. He condemned himself therefore to indefatigable literary labors in the production of numerous works, often of ephemeral importance. His friends opened a subscription for him in 1858, but with unsatisfactory results. The municipality of Paris presented him in 1860 with a country seat near the Bois de Boulogne, and in 1867 the government of Napoleon III. gave him for life the income from a capital of 500,000 francs. His principal later publications are: Trois mois an pouvoir (1848); Histoire de la revolution de 1848 (2 vols., 1849); Confidences and Raphael (1849), memoirs of his youth; Toussaint l' Ouverture, a drama (1850); Genevieve (1851); Le tailleur de pierre de Saint-Point (1851); Histoire de la restauration, (6 vols., 1851-'3); Visions (1852), a poetic fragment; Nouveau voyage en Orient (1853); Histoire des constituants (4 vols., 1854); Histoire de la Turquie (6 vols., 1854); Histoire de la Russie (2 vols., 1855); Regina (1862); Esprit de Mme. de Girardin (1862); a series of literary portraits, Bossuet, Antar, Ciceron, Christophe Colomh, Homere et Socrate, Nelson (1863), He-loise et Abailard, Mme, de Sevigne, Shakspeare et son a'uvre (1864); Civilisateurs et conquerants (2 vols., 1865); Les grands hommes de l' Orient, Vie de Cesar, Les hommes de la revolution (1865); J. J. Rousseau, son faux contrat social et le vrai contrat social (1866); Vie du Tasse (1866); and Antoniella (1867). He conducted at various times the periodicals Le conseiller dupeuple (1849-'52), Le civilisateur (1852-'6), and the Conrs familier de litterature (1856 et seq.). His Correspondance (4 vols., Paris, 1873 et seq.) was edited by his niece. - See Lacre-telle's Lamartine el ses amis (Paris, 1872), Ma-zade's Lamartine. sa vie litteraire et politique (Paris, 1872), and Vingt-cinq ans de ma vie, translated into English by Lady Herbert (1872).