HEREDIA, JOSE MARIA DE (1842-1905), French poet, the modern master of the French sonnet, was born at Fortuna Cafeyere, near Santiago de Cuba, being in blood part Spanish Creole and part French. At the age of eight he came from the West Indies to France, and received his classical education with the priests of Saint Vincent at Senlis. After a visit to Havana he returned to study at the Ecole des Chartes at Paris. In the later '6os, with Francois Coppee, Sully-Prudhomme, Paul Verlaine and others less distinguished, he made one of the band of poets who gathered round Leconte de Lisle, and received the name of Par nassiens. To this new school, form—the technical side of their art--was of supreme importance, and, in reaction against the in fluence of Musset, they rigorously repressed in their work the expression of personal feeling and emotion. "True poetry," said Heredia in his discourse on entering the Academy—"true poetry dwells in nature and in humanity, which are eternal, and not in the heart of the creature of a day, however great." Heredia's place in the movement was soon assured. He was the eleve bien aime of the master. He wrote very little, and published even less, but his sonnets circulated in ms., and gave him a reputation before they appeared in 1893, together with a few longer poems, as a volume, under the title of Les Trophees. He was elected to the Academy on Feb. 22, 1894, in the place of Louis de Mazade Percin the publicist. Few purely literary men can have entered the Academy with credentials so small in quantity :—a small vol ume of verse—a translation, with introduction, of Diaz del Cas tillo's History of the Conquest of New Spain (1878-81)—a trans lation of the life of the nun Alferez (1894), de Quincey's Spanish Military Nun—and one or two short pieces of occasional verse, and an introduction or so. But the sonnets are of their kind among the most superb in modern literature. "A Legende des siecles in sonnets," M. Francois Coppee called them. Each pre sents a picture, striking, brilliant, drawn with unfaltering hand— the picture of some characteristic scene in man's long history. Each line is flawless, polished like a gem. Heredia was one of the most skilful craftsmen who ever practised the art of verse. In 1901 he became librarian of the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal at Paris. He died at the Château de Bourdonne (Seine-et-Oise) on Oct. 3, 1905, having completed his critical edition of Andre Chenier's works.