GUERIN DU CAYLA, GEORGES MAURICE DE (1810-1839), French poet, was born at the chateau of Le Cayla in Languedoc. He joined for a short time the group formed by Lamennais (q. v.) at La Chenaie. Early in 1833 he went to Paris, where he taught at the College Stanislas. In Nov. 1838 he married a Creole lady of some fortune. He died on July 19, 1839. In the Revue des deux mondes for May 15, 1840, there appeared a notice of Maurice de Guerin by George Sand, to which she added two fragments of his writings—one a composition in prose entitled the Centaur, and the other a short poem. His Reliquiae (2 vols., 1861), including the Centaur, his journal, a number of his letters and several poems, was edited by G. S. Trebutien, and accompanied with a biographical and critical notice by Sainte Beuve. A new edition, with the title Journal, lettres et poemes, followed in 1862; and an English translation of it was published at New York in 1867. Though Maurice de Guerin was essentially a poet, his prose is more striking and original than his poetry. Its peculiar and unique charm arises from his strong and absorbing passion for nature, a passion of pagan intensity.
The name of EUGENIE DE GUERIN sister of Maurice de Guerin, was closely associated with her brother's work. Her Journals (1861, Eng. trans., 1865) and her Lettres (1864, Eng. trans., 1865) indicated the possession of gifts of as rare an order as his, though of a different kind. In her case mysticism assumed a form more strictly religious, and she continued to mourn her brother's loss of his early Catholic faith. She died on May 31, 1848.
See the notices by George Sand and Sainte-Beuve referred to above; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi (vol. xii.) and Nouveaux Lundis (vol. iii.) ; G. Merlet, Causeries sur les femmes et les livres (1865) ; Selden, L'Esprit des femmes de notre temps (1864) ; Marelle, Eugenie et Maurice de Guerin (Berlin, 1869) ; Harriet Parr, M. and E. de Guerin, a monograph (187o) ; and Matthew Arnold's essays on Maurice and Eugenie de Guerin, in his Essays in Criticism.