long, but we must pass on after
noticing an unnamed poem which is the French counterpart of Keats' "Ode
to a Greek Urn":

"Qu'autour du vase pur, trop beau pour la Bacchante,
La verveine, melee a des feuilles d'acanthe,
Fleurisse, et que plus bas des vierges lentement
S'avancent deux a deux, d'un pas sur et charmant,
Les bras pendants le long de leurs tuniques droites
Et les cheyeux tresses sur leurs tetes etroites."

In the same volume of the definite series of poems come "Les Odelettes,"
charming lyrics, one of which, addressed to Theophile Gautier, was
answered in the well-known verses called "L'Art." If there had been any
rivalry between the writers, M. De Banville would hardly have cared to
print Gautier's "Odelette" beside his own. The tone of it is infinitely
more manly: one seems to hear a deep, decisive voice replying to tones
far less sweet and serious. M. De Banville revenged himself nobly in
later verses addressed to Gautier, verses which criticise the genius of
that workman better, we think, than anything else that has been written
of him in prose or rhyme.

The less serious poems of De Banville are, perhaps, the better known in
this country. His feats of graceful metrical gymnastics have been
admired by every one who cares for skill pure and simple. "Les Odes
Funambulesques" and "Les Occidentales" are like ornamental skating. The
author moves in many circles and cuts a hundred fantastic figures with a
perfect ease and smoothness. At the same time, naturally, he does not
advance nor carry his readers with him in any direction. "Les Odes
Funambulesques" were at first unsigned. They appeared in journals and
magazines, and, as M. de Banville applied the utmost lyrical skill to
light topics of the moment, they were the most popular of "Articles de
Paris." One must admit that they bore the English reader, and by this
time long _scholia_ are necessary for the enlightenment even of the
Parisian student. The verses are, perhaps, the "bird-chorus" of French
life, but they have not the permanent truth and delightfulness of the
"bird-chorus" in Aristophanes. One has easily too much of the Carnival,
the masked ball, the _debardeurs_, and the _pierrots_. The people at
whom M. De Banville laughed are dead and forgotten. There was a certain
M. Paul Limayrac of those days, who barked at the heels of Balzac, and
other great men, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. In his honour De
B