elephantine didactic epics on one's admirers. Unfortunately, too, the
poet undertook to teach the art of verse in his _Réflexions_ (1892) and
his _Testament Poétique_ (1901), brochures which greatly irritated the
young. It is probably wise for academicians, whether poets or the
reverse, to sit beside their nectar, and not to hurl bolts down into the
valley. But, behind these errors of judgment, there they remain--those
early volumes, which seemed to us all so full of exquisite little
masterpieces. Why is it that nobody, except a few elderly persons, any
longer delights in them? The notices which Sully-Prudhomme's death
awakened in the Paris Press were either stamped with the mark of old
contemporary affection, or else, when they were not abusive, were as
frigid as the tomb itself. "Ses tendresses sucrées, sirupeuses, sont
vaines en effet," said a critic of importance! Indeed, it would appear
so; and where are the laurels of yester-year?

To those who were young when Sully-Prudhomme entered into his
immortality it seems impossible to realise that the glory has already
departed. Gaston Paris celebrated "the penetrating sincerity and the
exquisite expression of feeling" which distinguished Sully-Prudhomme
above all other poets. He was the bard of the inner life, sincere and
dignified, full of melancholy reverie. A great critic compared _La Vote
Lactic_ and _Les Stalactites_ with the far-off sound of bells heard down
some lovely valley in a golden afternoon. Yet the images and the
language were precise; Sully-Prudhomme was a mathematician, and if he
was reproached with anything like a fault, it was that his style was
slightly geometrical. It would be otiose to collect any more tributes to
his genius, as it appeared to all Frenchmen, cultivated or
semi-cultivated, about the year 1880. With an analysis of
Sully-Prudhomme's poetry I am not here concerned, but with the question
of why it is that such an authority as Rémy de Gourmont could, in 1907,