y and cunningly, and with as perfect an interest in the
process and as lofty and august a faith in the result, as if he were
carving the Venus of Milo, or scoring Beethoven's 'Fifth,' or producing
_King Lear_ or the _Ronde de Nuit_. He is profoundly artificial, but he
is simple and even innocent in his artifice; so that he is often
interesting and even affecting. He knows so well what should be done and
so well how to do it that he not seldom succeeds in doing something that
is actually and veritably art: something, that is, in which there is
substance as well as form, in which the matter is equal with the manner,
in which the imagination is human as well as aesthetic and the invention
not merely verbal but emotional and romantic also. The dramatic and
poetic value of such achievements in style as _Florise_ and _Diane au
Bois_ is open to question; but there can be no doubt that _Gringoire_ is
a play. There is an abundance of 'epical ennui' in _le Sang de la Coupe_
and _les Stalactites_; but the 'Nous n'irons plus au bois' and the
charming epigram in which the poet paints a processional frieze of
Hellenic virgins are high-water marks of verse. But, indeed, if Pierrot
and Columbine were all the race, and the footlights might only change
places with the sun, then were M. de Banville by way of being a
Shakespeare.

DOBSON

Method and Effect.

His style has distinction, elegance, urbanity, precision, an exquisite
clarity. Of its kind it is as nearly as possible perfect. You think of
Horace as you read; and you think of those among our own eighteenth
century poets to whom Horace was an inspiration and an example. The
epithet is usually so just that it seems to have come into being with the
noun it qualifies; the metaphor is mostly so appropriate that it leaves
you in doubt as to whether it suggested the poem or the poem suggested
it; the verb is never in excess of the idea it would convey; the effect
of it all is that 'something has here got itself uttered,' and for good.
Could anything, for instance, be better, or less laboriously said, than
this poet's remonstrance _To an Intrusive Butterfly_? The thing is
instinct with delicate observation, so aptly and closely expressed as to
seem natural and living as the facts observed:

'I watch you through the garden walks,
I watch you _float_ between
The _avenues_ of dahlia stalks,
And _flicker_ on the green;
You _hover_ round the garden