disquieting.

The triumphant chorus of Rops's admirers comprises the most critical
names in France and Italy: Barbey d'Aurevilly, J.K. Huysmans,
Pradelle, Joséphin Péladan--once the _Sâr_ of Babylonian fame--Eugène
Demolder, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian poet; Camille Lemonnier,
Champsaur, Arsène Alexandre, Fromentin, Vittorio Pica, De Hérédia,
Mallarmé, Octave Uzanne, Octave Mirbeau, the biographer Ramiro and
Charles Baudelaire. The last first recognised him, though he never
finished the projected study of him as man and artist. In the newly
published letters (1841-66) of Baudelaire there is one addressed to
Rops, who saw much of the unhappy poet during his disastrous sojourn
in Brussels. It was the author of Les Fleurs du Mal who made the
clever little verse about "Ce tant bizarre Monsieur Rops... Qui n'est
pas un grand prix de Rome, mais dont le talent est haut, comme la
pyramide de Chéops."

A French critic has called Rops "a false genius," probably alluding to
the malign characters of the majority of his engraved works rather
than to his marvellous and fecund powers of invention. Perverse
idealist as he was, he never relaxed his pursuit of the perfection of
form. He tells us that in 1862 he went to Paris, after much
preliminary skirmishing in Belgian reviews and magazines, to "learn
his art" with Bracquemond and Jacquemart, both of whom he never ceased
praising. He was associated with Daubigny, painter and etcher, and
with Courbet, Flameng, and Thérond.

He admired Calmatta and his school--Bal, Franck, Biot, Meunier,
Flameng. He belonged to the International Society of Aquafortistes. He
worked in aquatint and successfully revived the old process, _vernis