become the favourite versifier of those who love "thoughtful" poetry in France. Here, obviously of the school of Baudelaire, but paying more attention than Baudelaire had done to form, and already aiming at something not yet known to French prosody, was a poet who some twenty years later, after strange and invidious adventures, reappeared-appearing as for the first time to the short-memoried or the ignorant -and became for a time the most indubitable poet that France in one of her vacant interlunar periods has possessed-Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). Here was another who (also later) was to be elevated for a time by a sort of literary blague or claque to the same position as chief of yet another school, the "Symbolists -Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898). Here (indeed he should have been mentioned earlier, for he came between Banville and Leconte de Lisle) was another creole poet, José Maria de Hérédia (d. 1905), whose name would have been a poetical fortune in 1830, and who succeeded in obtaining considerable repute, now and afterwards, by sonnets of admirable workmanship, but perhaps with not very much else. And here were others, Léon Dierx (b. 1838), Henri Cazalis, Emmanuel des Essarts, Villiers de L'Isle Adam (18381889), whom it was interesting for the lover of poetry to look up or to follow in the slender volumes of Parnassian verse which they or some of them from time to time put forth, following the liturgy of Lemerre, as their predecessors thirty years earlier had "followed the ritual of Renduel."

There was nothing aggressive or partisan in the

The second
Parnasse.

title of Parnasse, which was merely a revival of an old French seventeenth-century label; but the book, in any case a remarkable one, and coming after Sainte-Beuve's series of articles on "La Poésie Française" in 1865, might be thought to show, and did in fact show, a rally of poetical energy in France. As the names above given will indicate at once, especially to those who know their later work, writers of the most different character were in fact included among the nearly forty contributors to the book. But, as very often if not usually happens, a definite confession of faith was made up for them: and by degrees "Impassible," the caricature-epithet referred to above, was invented as a synonym for "Parnassien." They were supposed all to have sworn allegiance to the doctrine of "Art for Art's sake"; to have forsworn "the subject," and so forth. As a matter of fact there was little community, and certainly no definite and aggressive purpose,-only a devotion in different degrees to the three great principles of nineteenth-century poetry so often formulated -appeal to the eye, appeal to the ear, and the preference of short lyrical or semi-lyrical pieces, having strong connections of suggestion with art and literature or philosophy, to large narrative canvasses. There was, in addition, something of the Romantic devotion to new metres and elaborate harmonies, instead of the inevitable Alexandrine solid, or Alexandrine cut into lengths, of eighteenth and late seventeenth century poetry that was not confessedly light.

The reception of the book was scarcely enthusiastic;

but it pleased its contributors well enough to induce them to repeat the experiment. And in 1869 there appeared (in parts, the reception of which by subscribers was interrupted by the war of 1870, and not finally terminated till after peace was concluded) a new volume with the same title, but bulkier by a hundred pages, and sweeping still more of the poets of the day into its net. Gautier no longer led off, though he appears later; the post of honour was given to a poem of some size on "Kain," by Leconte de Lisle (who would doubtless have deserted the fellowship if they had spelt it with a C'), and Banville followed with (among other things) ten charming Ballades Joyeuses, part of a larger batch which he afterwards (1875) published separately. Even SainteBeuve, who died this year, contributed; and though Baudelaire was gone, the two Deschamps, Auguste Barbier, a survivor of 1830 itself, and others of the old guard, rallied again round the new standard. Victor de Laprade, who had not been enlisted for the earlier volume, here gave a pleasing piece of verse; and among older and younger recruits were to be found Albert Glatigny (1839-1873), an ill-starred child of the better Bohemia; Anatole France (b. 1844), to become later one of the most delightful critics and tale-tellers of France; Joséphin Soulary (1815-1891), a poet almost as old as Gautier and a most skilful sonneteer; André Theuriet, another novelist to be; Armand Silvestre (1839-1900), whom something of the same evil angel attended as that which haunted M. Catulle Mendès, but a master of gauloiserie in

his prose, and of ethereal fancy in his verse; Louisa Siefert (1845-1877), a poetess keeping up the éploré character of French poetesses; and the jewellerbibliophile-poet Claudius Popelin (1825-1892), one of the frequenters of the Princess Mathilde's literary and artistic salon. Possibly-I do not remember-a fine sonnet of Gautier's in this volume, entitled "L'Impassible," helped some one to invent the nickname above noted, though there is no coincidence of meaning.

The third.

The third Parnasse, seven years later, had again enlarged itself to accommodate fresh recruits of older and younger generations,-Madame Ackermann (1813-1890), another pensive and, in this case, philosophic poetess; Emile Bergerat, the husband to be of Gautier's younger daughter; the veteran Marseillais poet and dramatist, Autran (1813-1877); Paul Bourget, famous since in prose; the painter, Jules Breton (?-1906); the eccentric but powerful author of Les Va-nu-Pieds, Léon Cladel (1835-1892); and some much younger men, among whom one, Maurice Rollinat, made a certain stir for a time with independent volumes of verse. Gautier was now dead, and excepting Hugo himself-who was too much of a divinity to appear in a collection except by absence-there really was hardly a poet in France who had not at one time or another made appearance on this Parnassus. The cometic and deceptive apparition of a Richepin, the pseudo-Tyrtæan outpourings of a Deroulède, and some other things require little more than allusions; and we shall content ourselves with repeating that "Symbolists,"

"Decadents," and the like, much more "Naturists," Simplists," and other tickets which have followed, are mere foam-balls in the river of poetry, worth casting an eye at perhaps, certainly not worth elaborately recording. Only one poet indeed of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century in France (be it said with no discourtesy to some ingenious and agreeable writers whom we have not mentioned or have mentioned but slightly 1) deserves record, and he has been mentioned as having appeared at a date nearly forty years distant from the present time. The incalculable and no doubt slightly "unhinged" eccentricity of Paul Verlaine meddled Verlaine. with the Commune, saved itself by exile in England, and on returning merged itself for some time in cloaques (as the French appropriately call them) of vice, which there is no need for us to explore. But Verlaine was the very paragon of that doubleness which, incident to humanity at all times, has never been more apparent, unless it be in the times of the Roman Empire, than during the nineteenth century. In the later 'eighties he emerged from his sloughs of debauchery, and, by his bad points and his good at once, obtained a position which was by no means the reward of charlatanism and effrontery

1 The reformation of form, however (despite vers libres and the like), has maintained itself, and in the latest of many periodical miscellanies, Vers et Prose (1905), better quality has been shown than in anything of the kind since the last Parnasse itself.

It has been complained that Verlaine has been made the victim of a "legend." There is some truth in this. But unluckily a good deal of the skeleton of the legend is simple fact.