that what was upmost in his mind was the fact that I had read
"Negations." His pale eyes had for the first time gleamed. I felt as one
who is about to be examined viva voce on the very subject in
which he is shakiest. I hastily asked him how soon his poems were to be
published.

"Next week," he told me.

"And are they to be published without a title?"

"No. I found a title at last. But I sha'n't tell you what it is," as
though I had been so impertinent as to inquire. "I am not sure that it
wholly satisfies me. But it is the best I can find. It suggests something
of the quality of the poems--strange growths, natural and wild, yet
exquisite," he added, "and many-hued, and full of poisons."

I asked him what he thought of Baudelaire. He uttered the snort
that was his laugh, and, "Baudelaire," he said, "was a bourgeois
malgre lui." France had had only one poet--Villon; "and two
thirds of Villon were sheer journalism." Verlaine was "an
epicier malgre lui." Altogether, rather to my
surprise, he rated French literature lower than English. There were
"passages" in Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. But, "I," he summed up, "owe
nothing to France." He nodded at me. "You'll see," he predicted.

I did not, when the time came, quite see that. I thought the author
of "Fungoids" did, unconsciously of course, owe something to the young
Parisian decadents or to the young English ones who owed something to
THEM. I still think so. The little book, bought by me in Oxford,
lies before me as I write. Its pale-gray buckram cover and silver lettering