Mürger, HENRI, novelist and poet, was born in Paris on March 24, 1822. He began life as a notary's clerk, and afterwards acted as secretary to Count Tolstoi, at a salary of about a pound a week. He gave himself to literature, and for several years led the life of privation and adventure which he has described in his Scènes de la Vie de Bohème (1845). At last his genius was recognised by Arsène Houssaye, the editor of the Artiste, and during his later years his popularity was secure. Every journal was open to him, but he wrote slowly and fitfully in the intervals of dissipation, and was never in easy circumstances. He died in the hospital in Paris on January 28, 1861. His first and best novel, Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, is, says Mr Saintsbury, a work final and perfect, which deserves a place in the literature of humanity. A vivid transcript from the scenes, alternately sombre and jovial, of the writer's years of struggle, it is in parts infinitely pathetic, in parts irresistibly amusing. Mürger had a rich gift of humour, but his predominant tone is one of poignant melancholy. Le Manchon de Francine is one of the saddest, as it is one of the most beautiful, short stories ever penned. He had uncommon literary skill, and could portray certain types of character admirably. But he had only one subject which he could handle successfully—the Bohemia of literary Paris. Next to the Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, his best prose works are Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse, Les Buveurs d'Eau, and the short tales included in the volume entitled Madame Olympe. His poems, Les Nuits d'Hiver, are graceful, sincere, and often deeply pathetic, bearing strong traces of the influence of Musset. One of them, La Chanson de Musette, is a lyric masterpiece—'a tear,' said Gautier, 'which has become a pearl of poetry.' Several of Mürger's pieces have been translated with rare felicity by Mr Andrew Lang in his Lays of Old France. Mürger was likewise the author of Le Dernier Rendezeux, Scènes de Campagne, Le Pays Latin, Le Sabot Rouge, Les Vacances de Camille, &c.
See the notices of Mürger by Gautier, Houssaye, Janin, and Saint-Victor in Les Nuits d'Hiver (1862).