The first time I read of _une bouche d'ombre_ I was astonished, nor
the second nor third repetition produced a change in my mood of mind; but
sooner or later it was impossible to avoid conviction, that of the two "the
rosy fingers of the dawn," although some three thousand years older was
younger, truer, and more beautiful. Homer's similes can never grow old;
_une bouche d'ombre_ was old the first time it was said. It is the
birthplace and the grave of Hugo's genius.

Of Alfred de Musset I had heard a great deal. Marshall and the Marquise
were in the habit of reading him in moments of relaxation, they had marked
their favourite passages, so he came to me highly recommended.
Nevertheless, I made but little progress in his poetry. His modernisms were
out of tune with the present strain of my aspirations, and I did not find
the unexpected word and the eccentricities of expression which were, and
are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of diction is very
pardonable if it does not err on the side of the commonplace; the
commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent to me; and I have
never been able to read with any very thorough sense of pleasure even the
opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical outburst. What I remember
of it now are those two odious _chevilles--marchait et respirait_, and
_Astarté fille de l'onde amère_; nor does the fact that _amère_
rhymes with _mère_ condone the offence, although it proves that even
Musset felt that perhaps the richness of the rhyme might render tolerable
the intolerable. And it is to my credit that the Spanish love songs moved
me not at all; and it was not until I read that magnificently grotesque
poem "La Ballade à la Lune," that I could be induced to bend the knee and
acknowledge Musset a poet.

I still read and spoke of Shelley with a rapture of joy,--he was still my