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 étoiles._" 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.

It is now well known that French verse is not seventy years old. If it was
Hugo who invented French rhyme it was Banville who broke up the couplet.
Hugo had perhaps ventured to place the pause between the adjective and its
noun, but it was not until Banville wrote the line, "_Elle filait
pensivement la blanche laine_" that the caesura received its final
_coup de grâce_. This verse has been probably more imitated than any
other verse in the French language. _Pensivement_ was replaced by some
similar four-syllable adverb, _Elle tirait nonchalamment les bas de soie,
etc_. It was the beginning of the end.

I read the French poets of the modern school--Coppée, Mendès, Léon Diex,
Verlaine, José Maria Heredia, Mallarmé, Rechepin, Villiers de l'Isle Adam.
Coppée, as may be imagined, I only was capable of appreciating in his first
manner, when he wrote those exquisite but purely artistic sonnets "La
Tulipe" and "Le Lys." In the latter a room decorated with daggers, armour,
jewellery and china is beautifully described, and it is only in the last
line that the lily which animates and gives life to the whole is
introduced. But the exquisite poetic perceptivity Coppée showed in his
modern poems, the certainty with which he raised the commonest subject,
investing it with sufficient dignity for his purpose, escaped me wholly,
and I could not but turn with horror from such poems as "La Nourrice" and
"Le Petit Epicier." How anyone could bring himself to acknowledge the
vulgar details of our vulgar age I could not understand. The fiery glory of