But how to get the first line of the last stanza into five syllables I cannot think.  If ever I meet with the volume again I will look it out and see how that rude dompteur de syllables managed it.  But stay, son trone est la tombe; that makes the verse, and the generalisation would be in the “line” of Hugo.  Hugo—­how impossible it is to speak of French literature without referring to him.  Let these, however, be the concluding words:  he thought that by saying everything, and saying everything twenty times over, he would for ever render impossible the advent of another great poet.  But a work of art is valuable, and pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is better than twenty books of beautiful verses.  This is an absolute and incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth—­one verse is better than the whole poem:  a word is better than the line; a letter is better than the word; but the truth is not thereby affected.  Hugo never had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor even a single bad line, so not having time to read all, the future will read none.  What immortality would be gained by the destruction of one half of his magnificent works; what oblivion is secured by the publication of these posthumous volumes.

To return to the Leconte de Lisle.  See his “Discours de Reception.”  Is it possible to imagine anything more absurdly arid?  Rhetoric of this sort, “des vers d’or sur une ecume d’airain,” and such sententious platitudes (speaking of the realists), “Les epidemies de cette nature passent, et le genie demeure.”

Theodore de Banville.  At first I thought him cold, tinged with the rhetorical ice of the Leconte de Lisle.  He had no new creed to proclaim nor old creed to denounce, the inherent miseries of human life did not seem to touch him, and of the languors and ardours of animal or spiritual passion there are none.  What is there? a pure, clear song, an instinctive, incurable and lark-like love of the song.  The lily is white, and the rose is red, such knowledge of, such observation of nature is enough for the poet, and he sings and he trills, there is silver magic in every note, and the song as it ascends rings, and all the air quivers with the everwidening circle of the echoes, sighing and dying out of the ear until the last faintness is reached, and the glad rhymes clash and dash forth again on their aerial way.  Banville is not the poet, he is the bard.  The great questions that agitate the mind of man have not troubled him, life, death, and love he only perceives as stalks whereon he may weave his glittering web of living words.  Whatever his moods may be, he is lyrical.  His wit flies out on clear-cut, swallow-like wings as when he said, in speaking of Paul Alexis’ book “Le Besoin d’aimer,” “Vous avez trouvez un titre assez laid pour faire reculer les divines etoiles.” I know not what instrument to compare with his verse.  I suppose I should say a flute; but it seems to me more like a marvellously toned piano.  His hands pass over the keys, and he produces Chopin-like music.