the wood as a relic. He gave me permission. Then he led me away, telling me, meantime, a score of authentic anecdotes which appeared even to me conclusive, and from which it resulted that I must have been a marvellous scholar and the glory of his school. A Philistine would have taken a foolish pleasure in robbing the good man of his illusions. I had the less desire to do so, because I shared them with him. I quitted him without revealing who I really was, and I told no one of my visit. In fact, the Principal was right-added my master-as a question of morality; falsehood is much more amusing than truth, and has sometimes a greater probability. I had had a vision like Musset's, and had made acquaintance with the young man dressed in black, who was as like me as a brother.'"

Gautier's school friendship with Gerard de Nerval, his initiation in the Petit cénacle, his presence in the red waistcoat at the first representation of Hernani, and all the rest of it, are well known from his own account. But as he has sometimes been accused of remaining silent when he should have praised the god of his former and constant idolatry under the Empire, it is fair to give the following story, to which it need only be added that M. Victor Hugo's own words sufficiently refute the slander. "Votre main n'a pas quitté ma main,” he writes to Gautier :

"On the 21st of June, 1867, the Comédie Française reproduced Hernani. Théophile Gautier was the principal attraction in this reproduction. He was seen in his box smiling, grown young again, without his red waistcoat, but still with his long lion's mane of hair, giving the signal, and as it were the tradition of the applause. But it was asked how the critic of the Moniteur, in his position of official writer, would manage to speak of the author of the Châtiments in the journal of the Imperial Government. The next day Théophile Gautier himself brought his article to the Moniteur. They begged him to moderate the eulogy, and to soften its enthusiastic tone. Without making the slightest objection, he took up a sheet of blank paper, and wrote on it his resignation. Then having made them take him to the Minister of the Interior, he laid before M. de Lavalette his article and resignation. Choose,' said he. The minister ordered the article to be inserted without altering a word of it."

The next thing that I shall extract ought to amuse the most ferocious decriers of his tabooed book:

"It would be a mistake to believe that the romantic outpourings of Théophile and the boldness of his pen displeased his family. Pierre Gautier was, as I have already said, a great admirer of the literary and artistic ideas of his son. As for the mother, it is needless to say that she lived in a continual state of

dumb ecstasy, in the contemplation of this handsome young man with waving hair, who was gaining in the world every imaginable success. Never was child more spoilt, more petted, more admired by his family. Paternal authority never interfered except to remind the idle writer of the page begun and the end to be attained. Théophile Gautier wrote Mademoiselle de Maupin in the room which he occupied in his parent's house in the Place Royale. This work, full of spirit and animation, and which appears to have been written as it were at one breath, so that many people regard it as his masterpiece, wearied him extremely in the composing. The poet, who lived as a lion, and a man of fashion, much preferred writing lovesonnets, and displaying his gorgeous waistcoats and marvellous pantaloons on the boulevards, to shutting himself up before a lamp and blackening fair sheets of paper. Besides, in his character of romanticist he detested prose, and regarded it as in the last degree Philistine. When he came in, therefore, his father used to turn the key on him while he set him his task. 'You will not come out,' cried he through the closed door, until you have written ten pages of Maupin.' Sometimes Théophile resigned himself, sometimes he got through the

window. At other times it was his mother who let him out by stealth, always anxious and fearing lest her son should be fatigued by so much work."

Here again is a curiously characteristic reminiscence of the connection which existed between Gautier and Balzac :

"When Curmer was thinking of his publication: Les Français peints par euxmêmes, he applied to Balzac for a contribution. The great novelist agreed to give his assistance on one condition, namely, that the work should contain a study on himself, and that this study should be written by Théophile. Was not this condition included in the spirit of the title, Les Français peints par euxmêmes? Curmer agreed. Balzac instantly hurried to the Rue de Navarin, where Gautier lived, and informed him of the order. It came like a lark from the sky ready roasted. I will pay you five hundred francs,' said Balzac, for this study on myself.' Théophile had soon furnished it and carried it to the publisher, but with his usual timidity did not dare to ask for the monev due to him. A week, then a fortnight passed, still no news of Balzac. At last one morning he appeared. 'I do not know how to thank you,' he said to his friend your study is a masterpiece. As I think you may be in want of money I have brought you the sum agreed upon,' and he laid down two hundred and fifty francs.

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But,' Gautier ventured to say, 'I thought you told me five hundred. I must have misunderstood you.'

"Not the least in the world; I did tell you five hundred. But consider a moment. If I had not existed, you could never have said all the good of me which you have said; that is clear. Then, had there been no article of yours, there would have been no money. I take the half of the sum as the subject treated, and

"As Solomon himself,' replied Gautier, who, many years after, in telling me the story, declared that Balzac was perfectly right."

Besides innumerable personal anecdotes of this kind, the book contains many illustrations, even more interesting, of literary idiosyncrasy. One of M. Bergerat's notes is that Gautier, who scarcely ever altered a phrase in his manuscript, never would insert punctuation in it. He held stops and accents as a detail of the printer's business. Unfortunately, printers-may I

any

add editors?-cannot be induced to take this admirably reasonable point of view. Another interesting detail is Gautier's idea of a style-school, which seems to have been quite serious, and not to have resembled Baudelaire's possibly borrowed theory of "poetry in twenty lessons." Gautier had a perfectly just idea of the services he had rendered to

French, and the following passages, allowance being made for his lively and picturesque language, do not exaggerate

these services one whit :

"My own part in this literary revolution was very plainly marked out. I was to be the painter of the company. I threw myself vigorously into the quest for adjectives; I dug up charming and even admirable ones, which it would be impossible to do without any longer. I foraged in the sixteenth century, to the great

scandal of the subscribers of the Théâtre-Français, the academicians, and the close-shaven bourgeois, as Petrus calls them. I came back with my basket laden. I laid on the palette all the tints of dawn and the shades of sunset; I gave back to you red, dishonored by politicians; I composed poems in white major, and when I saw that the result was good, that the best writers followed my lead, and that the professors basked in their chairs, I delivered my famous axiom, 'He whom any thought, however complex, any vision, even were it the most apocalyptic, surprises, without words to express it, is not a writer.' And the goats have been separated from the sheep, the supporters of Scribe from the disciples of Hugo, in whom dwells all genius. Such is my part in the quest."

"I know not,' said my master, one day, to me, what posterity will think of me, but I fancy that I shall at least have been useful to the language of my own country. It would be positive ingratitude to refuse to me, after death, the modest merit of a philologist. Ah! my dear child,' he added, smiling, if we only had as many piastres or roubles as the words I have rescued from Malherbe! You young people will thank me some day, when you see

what an instrument I have left in your hands, and you will defend my memory against those literary diplomatists who, having no ideas to express, and no wit to make the most of, wish to reduce us to the hundred words of the language of Racine. Attend to this, that you may remember it at a future day: the day that I am acknowledged as a classic, thought will be very near attaining its full freedom in France !'"'

In another place I find a curious account of Gautier's belief in his powers of writing the roman-feuilleton, the one lucrative branch of the literary profession in France. In a single instance, as students of his works know, he put his theory into practice, and the result was La Belle Jenny"- -a remarkable book, for which I am glad to see that M. Bergerat, with all his hero-worship, has little more affection than I have myself. The criticism of M. Emile de Girardin, for whom it was written, is charming.

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He had allowed Gautier to write it as a tour de force, and the author, if not the editor, was fully satisfied with the result. In the pride of his heart Gautier wanted to go on ad infinitum, after the fashion of the kind of author whose work he was imitating. "Est-ce que l'abonné ne trouve pas qu'il en ait pour son argent?" he asked of the editor of the Presse. "Mon ami," replied that experienced person, "c'est ça, et ce n'est pas ça. L'abonné ne s'amuse pas franchement : il est géné parle style."

M. Bergerat has inserted in his volume not a few poetical waifs and strays, which have not as yet found their way into collections of Gautier's works. The best of these is not suitable for quotation here, though some day or other it will doubtless take its place among the other jewels of the" Emaux et Camées.

There are, however, two pieces which must be quoted. They seem to have been in their origin merely occasional

verse:

"Je suis le mot de la charade

Qu'on vient de jouer devant vous,
Et si je parais sur l'estrade

C'est pour que vous deviniez tous.

"Mon nom longtemps troubla le monde :
Il n'en est pas de plus connu ;
Chacun le répète à la ronde,
L'enfant même l'a retenu.

"Cherchez bien-je suis cette reine
Qui buvait des perles dans l'or,
Et dont la beauté souveraine
Fait rêver le poëte encor.

waifs of printed waste paper. The progress of his fatal illness was marked by nothing so much as by the cessation of this inveterate habit. These miscellaneous readings were undoubtedly part of the great adjective-hunt," as he was wont to phrase it. His copia verborum was thus constantly fed and increased, while at the same time his unceasing practice in writing made the store one of constantly circulating capital, and not a mere useless accumulation. There never seems to have been a time when even the most minute question of literary practice, a rhyme-hunt or the like, had not a vivid interest for him. Thus his occupation, however he might occasionally groan at and complain of it, was in practice an unfailing source of pleasure, of relief from ennui, of alternatives from self-regarding cares. It was a strong tower which successfully kept out the enemy, until sheer physical collapse ceased to make it any longer defensible. On the other hand it would be difficult to find in Lever any trace of love for or interest in his art as an art. It seems to have been always a means to an end, or rather to half a hundred different ends, pursued with less or more zest for the time, but rarely falling in with any possible or coherent plan of life. Though he was a man of letters, his interests were nothing so little as literary. The wildest absurdities of the JeunesFrance" and the "Bousingots" were somehow or other connected with literary questions. Lever's youthful escapades and later dissipation had nothing to do with literature at all, and might have been and were shared in by persons of no taste or interest in literature whatever. There is a famous sentence of Thackeray's which has sometimes excited a good deal of surprise." No class of men talk of books, or as a rule read books, so little as literary men." It is not true of England now perhaps, but it certainly was true of England then. It has never since France possessed a literature been true of France, and the difference is strikingly illustrated in comparing these two volumes. M. Bergerat's book is almost composed of literary conversations, souvenirs, jests. Here the hero is defending a thesis against M. Taine or M. Renan, there expounding another for the benefit of

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M. Bergerat, everywhere talking of books, the way to write books, and the merits of books when written. In Dr. Fitzpatrick's volumes, on the other hand, there is hardly a single literary opinion cited of Lever's, and except the obligatory notice of his own books, scarcely anything that can be said to possess literary interest. It might as well be the life of a politician or a man of business, for any interest that its subject seems to have taken in things literary. It is quite possible that there may be something to be said in favor of this. The concentration of men of letters and art in literary and artistic sets and cliques has obvious disadvantages, of which the talking of "shop" is not the worst. It tends, no doubt, to promote a severance between the different lines of thought and intellectual occupation in the nation. The eternal hatred sworn to the bourgeois is not a necessary or a beneficial phenomenon either to the bourgeois himself or the man of letters. Although the tendency of French politics since the Revolution to open political positions to literary men of distinction may have made some compensation, it is still probable that the divorce between the Philistine and the anti-Philistine there is wider than with us. divorce is at any rate not good for the Philistine himself, while it may tend to force his opponent into Bohemian ways and habits which he might very well avoid. But that it has done good to literature there can be no doubt. With very few exceptions, the service of the English literary man is rendered more or less half-heartedly. He is a journalist, a politician, a man of the world, a historian, a dramatist first, and a man of letters afterwards. He wants to influence public opinion, to get into good society, to establish his family comfortably, to do everything, in short, rather than live in companionship with the Muses, and with a few of the elect of their worshippers. Sometimes, no doubt, he achieves all these ends more or less completely; sometimes he fails very completely indeed. In the latter case the art which he has cultivated only with a half devotion naturally does not do much for him at the last. There is a story of a French man of letters who expired, and had apparently deliberately

This

purposed to expire, while correcting a proof. The person concerned was something of a coxcomb, and his taste in selecting that particular branch of literary employment was certainly peculiar. But there was something not altogether inappropriate in the assertion of devotion to the employment to which he had given himself up.

The spirit of Congreve's famous speech to Voltaire has never, at least since Voltaire's time, commended itself to men of letters across the Channel. With us literature has, until very recently, hardly been even a profession, still less an art having a recognized guild and brotherhood of cultivators. It would be considered an affectation, and a hardly pardonable affection in any one who had not produced capital works in some popular department of literature, to take the name of a man of letters at all. There may, I have said, be a good many reasons against, as well as for, the definite constitution and herding together of a body of gens de lettres. But it certainly has one result which cannot

be denied. It leads to the display of much greater merit of the purely literary kind in the discharge of merely miscellaneous literary work. The French journalist, novelist, dramatist, may be and often is a man of far less education and information than his English compeer, but at least he does not often produce such slovenly and formless work. Also it has another good result which has been sufficiently indicated already in this review of the memorials of a great man of letters. It gives the littérateur all the essentials of a religion, the fellowfeeling, the cardinal doctrines, the prescribed hatreds which go to make up a regular cult. It is an excellent thing to have a religion of any kind, and particularly excellent when the relish of miscellaneous good things is fading, and pleasure, if it has to be found at all, must be sought in quiet occupations and in the performance of daily tasks. The game of the hunter of adjectives never becomes scarce, and his interest and energy in the quest never desert him.Fortnightly Review.