Beyle

Beyle, MARIE-HENRI, a French author, better known by his nom de plume, 'Stendhal,' born at Grenoble, 1783, was painter, government-clerk, soldier, and merchant by turns, and accompanied the fatal Russian campaign of 1812. After some years' residence in Milan, he returned in 1821 to Paris, where he acquired a high reputation as a littérateur. He was consul at Trieste and Civita Vecchia from 1830 to 1841, and died at Paris, March 23, 1842. Stendhal's keen powers of criticism and psychological analysis give greater value to his works on art and music than to his romances, although the same piquant style, brilliant wit, and wide knowledge of the world, appear in all his writings. His defects are a morbid straining after originality, and an ostentatious cynicism and contempt for moral sentiment. His best novels, which all lack consistency of plot, are Le Rouge et le Noir (1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839). His principal critical works are Histoire de la Peinture en Italie (1817); De l'Amour (1822); Racine et Shakespeare (1823), which greatly aided the cause of romanticism; Vie de Rossini (1824); and Promenades dans Rome (1829).—See Paton's Henry Beyle (1874), and E. Rod's Stendhal (Paris, 1892).