l _vers de
societe_. Whether it is possible to go beyond this, and adapt the old
French forms to serious modern poetry, it is not for any one but time to
decide. In this matter, as in greater affairs, _securus judicat orbis
terrarum_. For my own part I scarcely believe that the revival would
serve the nobler ends of English poetry. Now let us listen again to De
Banville.

"In the _rondel_, as in the _rondeau_ and the _ballade_, all the art is
to bring in the refrain without effort, naturally, gaily, and each time
with novel effect and with fresh light cast on the central idea." Now,
you can _teach_ no one to do that, and M. De Banville never pretends to
give any recipes for cooking _rondels_ or _ballades_ worth reading.
"Without poetic _vision_ all is mere marquetery and cabinet-maker's work:
that is, so far as poetry is concerned--nothing." It is because he was a
poet, not a mere craftsman, that Villon was and remains the king, the
absolute master, of ballad-land." About the _rondeau_, M. De Banville
avers that it possesses "nimble movement, speed, grace, lightness of
touch, and, as it were, an ancient fragrance of the soil, that must charm
all who love our country and our country's poetry, in its every age." As
for the _villanelle_, M. De Banville declares that it is the fairest
jewel in the casket of the muse Erato; while the _chant royal_ is a kind
of fossil poem, a relic of an age when kings and allegories flourished.
"The kings and the gods are dead," like Pan; or at least we no longer
find them able, by touch royal or divine, to reanimate the magnificent
_chant royal_.

This is M. De Banville's apology in _pro lyra sua_, that light lyre of
many tones, in whose jingle the eternal note of modern sadness is heard
so rarely. If he has a lesson to teach English versifiers, surely it is
a lesson of gaiety. They are only too fond of rue and rosemary, and now
and then prefer the cypress to the bay. M. De Banville's muse is content
to wear roses in her locks, and perhaps may retain, for many years, a
laurel leaf from the ancient laurel tree which once sheltered the poet at
Turbia.

HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK

The Greek language is being ousted from education, here, in France, and
in America. The speech of the earliest democracies is not democratic
enough for modern anarchy. There is nothing to be gained, it is said, by
a knowledge of Greek. We have not to fight the battle of life with
Hellenic