principle in some of his poems, but he was not conscious that he did so, even when, finding his inspiration in the Légende des Siècles, he tried to rival Hugo's anti-religious ardour. M. de Hérédia has never swerved. It was this central idea that the Parnassians made their rallying-point in 1866. Some illustrious prose writers-Flaubert in the first rank-encouraged them. And if M. Sully-Prudhomme and M. François Coppée escaped from the strict yoke, it was because they were affected by another influence at the same time as Leconte de Lisle's-an influence more subtle and not less powerful, that of Charles Baudelaire and his Fleurs du Mal. These poems appeared for the first time in 1857; but there are books which make themselves felt as soon as they appear, just as there are others which need, as it were, to be felt from a distance. Of such are, in the history of French prose, Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme, and, in the history of French poetry, the Fleurs du Mal. At a first glance the critics imagined-fantastic as the idea seems to us that they detected Catholicism in the Fleurs du Mal; and this was at the moment of a general reaction toward Paganism. The fact is that at a time when the elaboration of form was everything, Baudelaire's verses displayed the mosaicist's care, they suggested the prose writer who has with painful labour morticed a rime upon the end of every line. It was also a moment at which poetry tended to the impersonal; and the inspiration of Baudelaire betrays its debt to that of Vigny, and yet more to that of Sainte-Beuve,-the Sainte-Beuve of the Confessions de Joseph Delorme. He not only imitated, but exaggerated this strange morbidity. While the critics for these reasons despised even what there was of novelty in Baudelaire's product, the youth of his day recognised it, and felt its fascination. Beneath the declamatory tone, and the charlatanism, even, of his lament, they perceived the sincerity of a suffering which was not less genuine because it was purely intellectual. It has been said that of all the sensory suggestions the most material and the most diffusive are those which appeal to the olfactory perceptions, and that no others so immediately stir the memory. And if this be true, it must be remembered that the Fleurs du Mal are permeated by the whole gamut of exotic fragrance. They are full, too, of those subtle values of sensory co-ordination which Baudelaire himself indicates when he says that "forms and outlines and sounds all correspond the one to the other." There was novelty in all this, a fruitful and a lasting novelty, and as it did not seem to disagree with the lessons of the Parnassians, people listened obediently to the lofty teachings of Leconte de Lisle, but read Baudelaire with infinite delight, like children devouring a book in secret. I remember trying, twenty-five years ago, in the pages of the Revue des Deux Mondes, to describe this influence which Baudelaire exerted upon M. François Coppée, M. Sully-Prudhomme upon M. Paul Bourget, too, whose first verses had then-in 1875recently appeared, and upon other writers. François Buloz, who was still living at the time, was hugely displeased, although he had printed in the Revue Baudelaire's first verses. "So you take Baudelaire for a master, do you?" he cried. I thought that I had answered him when I said, "No, but he is a master in the eyes of the poets I named." But Buloz was not convinced. I little knew how amply time would justify me; I had not long to wait before a whole generation were invoking the name of the author of the Fleurs du Mal, the generation of Paul Verlaine and of Stephen Mallarmé. bow to the Parnassian disDespite the poet's dictum, Although they still continued to cipline, they began to chafe under it. ut pictura poësis, they began to perceive that poetry wilted in this dry perfection of execution. The precision of outline, the richness of metre, the unswerving fidelity of representation combined, embarrassed, cumbered, cramped the freedom of the imagination, the amplitude of visions. It was impossible to escape the accurate grasp of the artist, and when he had clutched you, there was no release. There was no background, no distant perspective, there was none of the indistinctness, the obscurity, the chiaroscuro, which is, nevertheless, one of the elements of true poetry. Save for some among M. Sully-Prudhomme's verses, everything was brought into the whitest light, and if, by chance, the meaning of any work, as a whole, was not quite clear, each line was in itself uncompromisingly distinct. People began to find, too, that this reproduction of nature was extended, in the past as in the present, to many objects which possessed no real interest. It does not follow that because an event has taken place it is necessarily a poetic event; nor is it true that everything that lives should be immortalised by art. It was said, too, that if ideas were plentiful enough in the masterpieces of the Parnassian School, no one idea ever passed beyond its original limits, or became the mantle and the veil of something more secret, more mysterious: the visible and palpable exterior of that which can neither be seen nor touched. There are, unquestionably, certain correspondences and associations between ourselves and the world in which we live: every sensation should lead us to an idea, and in that idea we ought to find something analogous to the sensation. The reality of things does not manifest itself in their mere exterior, they must be exposed to the light of the truth in accordance with which their forms are defined. Every representation which fails to base itself upon that fact is necessarily incomplete, superficial, mutilated. The Parnassians forgot this, and their forgetfulness created the school of symbolism. It is difficult to see very clearly the inner meaning of Paul Verlaine's work. He was an "irregular" in the eyes of all the schools, and his emancipation had been no more than a return to the liberty of the Romantic School, and a step beyond even that liberty. He owes his reputation less to the profoundness and the ingenuity of his symbolism than to the cynicism of his Confessions. He was at once violent and feeble, ingeniously perverse, capable, by turn, of the worst sentiments and the most sincere repentances, inheriting from Baudelaire and from Sainte-Beuve the love of sin and of remorse. Poor "Lélian" wrote some wretched verses, and some that were detestable; but he wrote also some that were original and exquisite. His great merit is, perhaps, that he wrote exquisitely diaphanous lines, verse as lightly burdened as French verse ought to be. Stephen Mallarmé wrote the most incomprehensible verses, more obscure than any Lycophron ever had made before his time; but he had a poet's soul; he talked limpidly, if he wrote turgidly; he possessed the secret of clothing the strangest ideas in an enchanter's web of apparent truth; he has been, and will no doubt remain, the hierophant of symbolism, as Baudelaire was its precursor. I doubt whether he will be largely represented in the anthologies of the future, but no historian of nineteenthcentury French poetry can refrain from mentioning his name. certain Maurice Scève, of Lyons, played just such a rôle in the sixteenth century, only to disappear, when he had played it, in the effulgence of the great Ronsard. A There is one more observation that should perhaps be made before terminating this too hurried essay. It is a Ronsard that symbolism has lacked, and still lacks; it is a Ronsard that we have been awaiting for nearly ten years. It would be easy to name a dozen excellent craftsmen in verse, and three or four poets, among the younger men: M. Henri de Régnier, for instance, and M. Albert Samain. But however much talent, natural or acquired, they may have shown, it must be admitted that no work of theirs has aroused the immediate and universal emotion which Lamartine's Méditations and Ronsard's Amours kindled as soon as they appeared. Why is it so? Is it, perhaps, because the time is not favourable to poets, and that our poets lack the encouragement, the complicity of opinion, so to speak, which is more necessary to their development than to the development of any other sort of artists? Surely this is not the case. On the contrary, our poets find to-day a keener audience, not in France only, but abroad, than could have been hoped for ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago. Are fewer poets born, or is it more difficult for them to find the opportunity of appealing to the verdict of the public? is life less kind to them to-day than formerly? One can hardly say so, in view of the number of volumes of verse which appear each year. Is it that they ripen less rapidly, and that the standard they set themselves is higher, more complex, and demands longer effort? Are they awaiting a rounder maturity? As they are all young, let us hope that this is the case; and if the close of the nineteenth century, so abundant in poetic talent, is somewhat barren of poetic product, |