To return to the Leconte de Lisle. See his "Discours de Réception." Is it possible to imagine anything more absurdly arid? Rhetoric of this sort, "_des vers d'or sur une éclume d'airain_" and such sententious platitudes as this (speaking of the realists), "_Les épidémies de cette nature passent, et le génie demeure_."
Theodore de Banville. At first I thought him cold, infected with the rhetorical ice of the Leconte de Lisle. He had no new creed to proclaim nor old creed to denounce, the inherent miseries of human life did not seem to touch him, nor did he sing the languors and ardours of animal or spiritual passion. But there is this: a pure, clear song, an instinctive, incurable and lark-like love of the song. He sings of the white lily and the red rose, such knowledge of, such observation of nature is enough for the poet, and he sings and he trills, there is trilling magic in every song, and the song as it ascends rings, and all the air quivers with the ever-widening circle of the echoes, sighing and dying out of the ear until the last faintness is reached, and the glad rhymes clash and dash forth again on their aerial way. Banville is not the poet, he is the bard. The great questions that agitate the mind of man have not troubled him, life, death, and love he perceives only as stalks whereon he may weave his glittering web of living words. Whatever his moods may be, he is lyrical. His wit flies out on clear-cut, swallow-like wings; in speaking of Paul Alexis' book "Le Besoin d'aimer," he said: "_Vous avez trouvé un titre assez laid pour faire reculer les divines étoiles_." I know not what instrument to compare with his verse. I suppose I should say a flute; but it seems to me more like a marvellously toned piano. His hands pass over the keys and he produces Chopin-like fluidities.
It is now well known that French verse is not seventy years old. If it was Hugo who invented French rhyme it was Banville who broke up the couplet. Hugo had perhaps ventured to place the pause between the adjective and its noun, but it was not until Banville wrote the line, "_Elle filait pensivement la blanche laine_" that the cæsura received its final _coup de grâce_. This verse has been probably more imitated than any other verse in the French language. _Pensivement_ was replaced by some similar four-syllable adverb, _Elle tirait nonchalamment les bas de soie, etc_. It was the beginning of the end.
