On turning to the French poets and bearing in mind the long biographies accorded British poets, one cannot help feeling amazed at the scant treatment which the former receive. Baudelaire, for instance, is given less space than Christina Rossetti, William Watson, Henley, Coventry Patmore, John Davidson, or Austin Dobson. Catulle Mendès receives considerably less space than Stephen Phillips. Verlaine is given equal space with Watts-Dunton, and less than half the space given to Austin Dobson! Stéphane Mallarmé receives only half the space given to John Davidson, Christina Rossetti, or William Watson. Jean Moréas receives only half the space given to Sydney Dobell or Christina Rossetti. Viélé-Griffin draws a shorter biography than Kendall, the Australian poet; and Régnier and Bouchor are dismissed in fewer words than is the Scotch poet, Alexander Smith. Furthermore, these biographies are rarely critical, being in the majority of instances a cursory record of incomplete data.
Here attention should be called to the fact that only in the cases of the very inconsequent British poets is criticism omitted: if the poet is even fairly well known there is a discussion of his work and an indication of the place he is supposed to hold in his particular field. But with foreign writers—even the very prominent ones—little or nothing concerning them is vouchsafed save historical facts, and these, as a general rule, fall far short of completeness. The impression given is that obscure Englishmen are more important than eminent Frenchmen, Germans, or Americans. Evidently the editors are of the opinion that if one is cognizant of British culture one can easily dispense with all other culture as inferior and unnecessary. Otherwise how, except on the ground of deliberate falsification, can one explain the liberal treatment accorded English poets as compared with the meagre treatment given French poets?
Since the important French poets mentioned receive such niggardly and grudging treatment, it is not to be wondered at that many other lesser poets—yet poets who are of sufficient importance to be included in an encyclopædia—should receive no biographical mention. If you wish information concerning Adolphe Retté, René de Ghil, Stuart Merrill, Emmanuel Signoret, Jehan Rictus, Albert Samain, Paul Fort, who is the leading balladist of young France, Hérold, Quillard, or Francis Jammes, you will have to go to a source even more “supreme” than the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. These poets were famous in 1900, and even in America there had appeared at that time critical considerations of their work. Again, one ought to find, in so “complete” a “library” as the _Britannica_, information concerning the principal poets of the Belgian Renaissance. But of the eight leading modern poets of Belgium only three have biographies—Lemonnier, Maeterlinck, and Verhaeren. There are no biographies of Eekhoud, Rodenbach, Elskamp, Severin and Cammaerts.