as good as Baudelaire, as good as Gautier, as good as Coppee; he never wrote an ugly line in his life, but he never wrote a line that some one of his brilliant contemporaries might not have written.  He has produced good work of all kinds “et voila tout.”  Every generation, every country, has its Catulle Mendes.  Robert Buchanan is ours, only in the adaptation Scotch gruel has been substituted for perfumed white wine.  No more delightful talker than Mendes, no more accomplished litterateur, no more fluent and translucid critic.  I remember the great moonlights of the Place Pigale, when, on leaving the cafe, he would take me by the arm, and expound Hugo’s or Zola’s last book, thinking as he spoke of the Greek sophists.  There were for contrast Mallarme’s Tuesday evenings, a few friends sitting round the hearth, the lamp on the table.  I have met none whose conversation was more fruitful, but with the exception of his early verses I cannot say I ever frankly enjoyed his poetry.  When I knew him he had published the celebrated “L’Apres Midi d’un Faun:”  the first poem written in accordance with the theory of symbolism.  But when it was given to me (this marvellous brochure furnished with strange illustrations and wonderful tassels), I thought it absurdly obscure.  Since then, however, it has been rendered by force of contrast with the brain-curdling enigmas the author has since published a marvel of lucidity; and were I to read it now I should appreciate its many beauties.  It bears the same relation to the author’s later work as Rienzi to The Walkyrie.  But what is symbolism?  Vulgarly speaking, saying the opposite to what you mean.  For example, you want to say that music which is the new art, is replacing the old art, which is poetry.  First symbol:  a house in which there is a funeral, the pall extends over the furniture.  The house is poetry, poetry is dead.  Second symbol:  “notre vieux grimoire,” grimoire is the parchment, parchment is used for writing, therefore, grimoire is the symbol for literature, “d’ou s’exaltent les milliers,” thousands of what? of letters of course.  We have heard a great deal in England of Browning obscurity.  The “Red Cotton Nightcap Country” is child’s play compared to a sonnet by a determined symbolist such as Mallarme, or better still his disciple Ghil who has added to the difficulties of symbolism those of poetic instrumentation.  For according to M. Ghil and his organ Les Ecrits pour l’Art, it would appear that the syllables of the French language evoke in us the sensations of different colours; consequently the timbre of the different instruments.  The vowel u corresponds to the colour yellow, and therefore to the sound of flutes.