He received his classical education with the priests of Saint Vincent at Senlis, and after his visit to Havana he studied at the Ecole des Chartes at Paris.

[1] To this new school, form – the technical part of their art – was of supreme importance, and, as a reaction against the influence of Alfred de Musset, they repressed in their work the expression of personal feeling and emotion.

"True poetry," said M. de Heredia in his discourse on entering the academy, "dwells in nature and in humanity, which are eternal, and not in the heart of the creature of a day, however great."

He was granted French nationality in 1893 and was subsequently elected to the Académie française on 22 February 1894, in the place of Charles de Mazade the publicist.

A small volume of verse; a translation, with introduction, of Diaz del Castillo's History of the Conquest of New Spain (1878–1881); a translation of the life of the nun Alferez (1894), Thomas de Quincey's "Spanish Military Nun"; one or two short pieces of occasional verse; and an introduction or so – this is but small literary output.