of letters for-relieved them of this tax, and about 1855 accordingly, with a curious unanimity, persons of literary faculty thought it worth while to be born in Belgium. From this year date MM. Lemonnier, Verhaeren, and the late M. Rodenbach, while M. Eeckhoud was born the year before, though M. Maeterlinck, who has made himself the greatest vogue of all, waited till 1862. This unanimity had, however, one drawback-that it exposed them as they came to literary age to the full influence of Naturalism, to which some have succumbed.

The younger

poets.

Still, they and some others have earned for so small a country a remarkable place in the most recent European literature, such as it is. The novels of MM. Lemonnier and Eeckhoud might indeed have been better-they could not in some respects have been worse-if M. Zola had not preceded them; but though they have been praised absurdly, it would be more absurd to deny them energy and novelists and a certain accomplishment. With the merits of MM. Verhaeren and Rodenbach there is no need to deal obliquely. The former, in a long series of mostly small volumes, from Les Flamandes (1883) to Les Heures d'après Midi (1905), and M. Rodenbach in somewhat fewer, of which Bruges la Morte (1892) is the chief, have carried nearly as far as it will go the system of short poems -word-pictures rather than poems merely-on which the whole century has been more and more concentrating its strength, and to which the famous sonnets of Bowles (many degrees "under-proof" as

they are) inspirited Coleridge even before its commencement. M. Rodenbach, as everybody who knows the place will admit, could not have had a more admirable foyer for his work than Bruges, and the results of his brooding over it are distinctly fascinating. Whether the "larger air" does not sometimes make the want of it felt, is a question which one puts with some reluctance, and not in the least in the way of denigration. It may seem paradoxical or ungracious to say that the same question suggests itself in regard to M. Verhaeren's work, in spite of its greater range of apparent subject. The range of subject is greater, but the same can hardly be said of the range of treatment. The tendency of modern times towards division of labour asserts itself unduly, and the poet of these isolated impressions reminds one a little of the cook who is said to be kept in great establishments, exclusively for the accomplishment of pommes frites; yet there are not many better things than really good chip-potatoes, crisp, dry, and bladdery.

The time for judging M. Maeterlinck has not yet come. His unquestionable affectation-though there are worse things than affectation when M. Maeterlinck. there is something behind it—and the wild excesses of engouement which greeted his earlier work, can affect the judgment of no competent critic unfavourably; but they might in more ways than one affect the reception of that judgment. And inasmuch as he is still almost a young man, and has already described a rather curious orbit from poetry, through

drama of a kind, to prose, it might be desirable to see what future work he produces, and to take it in conjunction with that which he has produced, before attempting to grasp him. On one point, to which we shall return in the Conclusion, there can be no doubt, that his work, almost the latest of the century in unquestionable distinction, shows what an utter mistake it is to suppose that Romanticism is dead. Everything about M. Maeterlinck, down to his very zoological observation, is coloured, dyed, permeated with Romanticism of the purest and most unmitigated kind. It is not merely in his mediæval nomenclature and costuming that this exists and consists; not in his eccentricity; not in his divergence from established models of any kind of speech; but in the constant effort to suffuse and diffuse Imagination all over the work-no matter what its substance may be. Idealist-Impressionist is perhaps as good a label as can be devised for M. Maeterlinck. Now, Romanticism has always been Idealism; and long before the name was ever hit upon it has always been-as long as it exists it always must be-Impressionist. A parallel between Eschylus and Maeterlinck may remind some too much of a famous examination paper, and perhaps those who admire the Belgian most are not very familiar with the Greek. But let them seek and they will find.

The Naturalist movement appears also to have affected Holland very forcibly; but more forcibly than fruitfully, according to the verdicts of the most

indulgent judges. Potgieter, mentioned in the last volume, had survived till a few years before Holland. the influence was felt, and Hofdijk, the poetplaywright, Anna Bosboom-Toussaint, the novelist, and others, still later. But little work of the third quarter of the century became European, the chief exception being a ponderous purpose - novel (1876) attacking Dutch policy in the East, entitled Max Havelaar, and written by an author who called himself "Multatuli," but whose real name was Edward Douwes Dekker. This book, like most things of the kind, had a wide circulation, and it has even been spoken of as showing genius. In so far as it is possible to judge from translation, the present writer would be disposed to describe it as a well-intentioned but extremely heavy performance, in which the purpose and the materials have altogether failed to be brought under artistic transformation and control. The work of "Maarten Maartens" has been mostly in foreign languages, but the novels of Marcellus Emants (b. 1848) are very well spoken of, as well as those of F. van Eeden. But the only fruit of the new or modern movement who is described, without hesitation, and with colour of reason, as more than promising, is Louis Couperus (b. 1863), a poet and novelist who seems to be expressing in Dutch that "creole" influence which has been powerful in the Romance languages, but which, curiously enough, has had much less effect on English. Of other novelists of newest schools, Querido seems to be most in the mouths of men.

Of the literatures of Scandinavia, the first place must be given on the one-man principle, which literature is bound to observe to the

Norwegian. most modern, in a sense, of the three. Norwegian, by its proper name "Norse," is, of course, heir to the treasures of Old Norse, one of the greatest literary languages of early modern Europe; but here it has competitors in Swedish and Danish, not to mention French, German, and English. After medieval times Norway had hardly any literature at all, and the best known literary language of modern Norway is a partly artificial tongue-Danish with little difference. But when Norway was separated politically from Denmark and coupled with a partner by no means beloved, Denmark had not been much so, but these things get forgotten,-much really good work, as has been told in the last volume, was done. Indeed the leeway was partly made up during the first half of the nineteenth century.1

Björnson

At present Ibsen obscures all other Norse writers; but it was not so thirty years ago, when the contention for the primacy-among those who and others. knew anything about the two-between Ibsen and Björnson was sharp. To these we shall add the names Kjelland and Lie, and this may suffice. Three of the four must put up with summary handling; Ibsen, in any work dealing with European

1 There has, however, been a more recent attempt to make spoken Norse into a literary tongue quite different from Danish. The chief writer in it, who is very highly spoken of by some good critics, appears to be Arne Garborg.

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