All these notes, however, were
made many years ago; and visitors of the Riviera, though they will find
the little book charming where it speaks of seas and hills, will learn
that France has greatly changed the city which she has annexed. As a
practical man and a Parisian, De Banville has printed (pp. 179-81) a
recipe for the concoction of the Marseilles dish, _bouillabaisse_, the
mess that Thackeray's ballad made so famous. It takes genius, however,
to cook _bouillabaisse_; and, to parody what De Banville says about his
own recipe for making a mechanical "ballade," "en employment ce moyen, on
est sur de faire une mauvaise, irremediablement mauvaise
_bouillabaisse_." The poet adds the remark that "une bouillabaisse
reussie vaut un sonnet sans defaut."

There remains one field of M. De Banville's activity to be shortly
described. Of his "Emaux Parisiens," short studies of celebrated
writers, we need say no more than that they are written in careful prose.
M. De Banville is not only a poet, but in his "Petit Traite de Poesie
Francaise" (Bibliotheque de l'Echo de la Sorbonne, s.d.) a teacher of the
mechanical part of poetry. He does not, of course, advance a paradox
like that of Baudelaire, "that poetry can be taught in thirty lessons."
He merely instructs his pupil in the material part--the scansion, metres,
and so on--of French poetry. In this little work he introduces these
"traditional forms of verse," which once caused some talk in England: the
_rondel_, _rondeau_, _ballade,_ _villanelle_, and _chant royal_. It may
be worth while to quote his testimony as to the merit of these modes of
expression. "This cluster of forms is one of our most precious
treasures, for each of them forms a rhythmic whole, complete and perfect,
while at the same time they all possess the fresh and unconscious grace
which marks the productions of primitive times." Now, there is some
truth in this criticism; for it is a mark of man's early ingenuity, in
many arts, to seek complexity (where you would expect simplicity), and
yet to lend to that complexity an infantine naturalness. One can see
this phenomenon in early decorative art, and in early law and custom, and
even in the complicated structure of primitive languages. Now, just as
early, and even savage, races are our masters in the decorative use of
colour and of carving, so the nameless master-singers of ancient France
may be our teachers in decorative poetry, the poetry some cal