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Like, yet differing ever

As triple hues of light,
Diverse while yet they sever,
But, joining, turned to white;
Or, as three bell-tones, chiming,
Divergent till they meet,
Blent in harmonious timing,
Grow into concord sweet.

Would you know the dwelling
Where those sisters dwell ?—
Ah! that would be telling,
And I never tell.
But, in breezy weather,

At the morning's rise,

I meet them on the heather
With bees and butterflies:

And when shadeless moonlight

Fills the aureat air
In the glorious June light

Of midsummer fair,

I see them in cool grotto

By bubbling fountain brims, Like sylvan group that Watteau With wondrous pencil limns:

And when autumn daylight
Fades from out the sky,
Like fays beneath the pale light
Their flitting forms I spy.
Then, as those forms and faces
Through the gloaming move,
I dream of Christian graces—
Of FAITH and HOPE and LOVE.

JOHN FRANCIS WALLER.

A PARISIAN PAGAN.

Ar the time when Victor Hugo was young, literature in France seems to have begun an era that will long remain remarkable for its energy in throwing off ancient shackles, its high vitality, and bright artistic effect. New slides are being inserted now in the magic lantern of the Parisian Bohemia; and the old romantic figures are fading in a soft dissolving viewall save Victor Hugo, who refuses to be effaced.

Freedom, too, is not so rare an exotic nowadays as it was in Paris at the beginning of the period of which we have spoken. The mind may move now with less constraint and in a larger air. The works that were the life drops of the struggling advocates of the outspeaking minority of the Romantiques are now become almost classics. Paris prints them in the most exquisite typography on papier de Hollande or "Whatman," and they are sold at prices such as are only obtained in England through the neoteric offices of a circulating library. Paris is as artistic in the external clothing of the choice productions of her sons as were those bright spirits who first gave birth to the ideas in their exquisite poetic raiment.

The living Victor Hugo naturally towers over the fading phantoms who once were in such loving brotherhood with him. He has not brooked to remain in any Grubstreet, however æsthetic, but has stood up eminent in la haute politique, has pitted himself against a

dynasty, and, having been an exilefor principle, is now wearing the crown of honour without fear in his own land.

But, in spite of the magnitude of the shadow of Victor Hugo, we cannot forget Théophile Gautier, poet, critic, and pagan. It may seem paradoxical to style a man pagan who clung ever to a city. But Paris was Gautier's village; the joy of Paris was his joy; and, if her life had any simplicity, it was his too. Those who would study French literature of his period cannot dispense with his aid. Be the monstrous humours and mystical grand absurdities of Balzac the subject of consideration, Gautier has depicted them with sympathetic appreciation, and yet with so perfect a faithfulness, that not one ridiculous or pathetic element is omitted. With him for our guide, we feel indeed as if we were eye-witnesses of actual life; bystanders, and not mere students at second-hand. Be it a morbid poet, like Baudelaire, concerning whom we would learn, Gautier has penetrated the soul of his weaknesses, and, with a hand like a woman's, brings his nature into our view, gently, so as not to wrong or hurt him. Are we inquisitive with regard to Gérard de Nerval's. languors, or Madame de Girardin's playfulness, or Henri Murger's eccentric pauperism, or concerning the plots of the chief dramatists of France, or the songs of her chief poets?-Gautier will be found to have treated of them all with the

preciseness of a Sainte-Beuve, and with a mother's insight and sympathy.

Gautier is at the best and highest level of his nature in criticism. In that branch of literature, which he persistently followed, although his poetical nature at times rebelled, he is always true and sincere; and his deficiency in moral sense does not affect him so injuriously there as in writings which necessitate his throwing more of himself into his work. In criticism he is a mirror that by some magic means is a spectrum as well, and divides the qualities of those whom it reflects, by hair breadths into the most exquisite of nuances.

Gautier is also a rare and refined poet, a cultivated writer of travels, and a gifted author of novels and novelettes. As in his criticism he is most serious and at his best, so in romance he is most brilliant and at his worst.

The news of his death, which took place nearly six years ago, on the 23rd of October, 1872, touched with affectionate regret many who bore the utmost objection to a large part of his writings. But the variety and charm of his artistic conceptions, and the exquisite finish of his style, had insensibly attracted them, while the gentleness of his criticism of his fellows, and his tender Greek-like ways, disarmed the harshness of judgment upon his moral deficiencies and the injuriousness of his literary influence.

Théophile Gautier was born at Tarbes, a few miles north of the Pyrenees. Three dates of his birth are given by one of his biographers -1808 as the really correct one; 1814 as the date usually stated, and presumably under Gautier's inspiration; and 1811 as the date which at length he came to avow as the correct one, renouncing 1814, which would have made him

fifteen only at the memorable date of the appearance of Victor Hugo's drama of "Hernani." It was the representation of this play that occasioned so fierce a strife between the old classicists and the young Romantiques, amongst the latter of which Gautier enthusiastically ranged himself, raising a more vigorous voice and shaking a more powerful fist than appertain to a boy of fifteen. Gautier came to Paris very young with his parents, and completed his studies at the Collége Charlemagne, where he met with Gérard de Nerval, afterwards a fellow-worker of his. At school the boy worked but little. Greek and Latin seemed to him to be superfluities in modern education; but, on the other hand, instead of performing his college exercises, he was wont to betake himself to the study of the older writers of France, and to employ himself in tracing out the sources and strength of the language. was a great boy, strong and sensuous, enjoying a full supply of health and vitality, of which the due effect was produced in his after-life, in enabling his constitution to react from the peculiar morbidness which affects so many French poets of his time. A poet he became "by accident," it is said. Carelessly neglecting his studies at the "Charlemagne," he was wont to repair to the museums to study plastic art, and there would spend hours in gazing in fascination upon certain paintings, and in swoons of admiration of certain statues. His critics appear to have forgotten that while from such contemplations might be derived a poetic as well as an artistic stimulus, neither faculty could be thence derived.

He

The youth soon began to attend an art school; and when the literary and artistic revolution to which we have already referred

began to announce itself, he enrolled himself as an intrepid partisan amongst the ranks of the party of revolt, and burned with the utmost ardour to make himself celebrated among them. But we are told, by the ill-natured critic known as Eugène de Mirecourt, he found it easy enough to arrange violent colours, but a very different matter to transport them adroitly to his canvas. So he said to himself, "Painting with the pen is more easy than with the brush ;" and painting with the pen is the métier to which he has ever since adhered. His sketches, romances, poems— even his biographies are preeminently word-paintings. He is a true artist in all his work, and endowed with marvellous knowledge and command of colour, form, and pictorial effect. We notice these powers especially when he re-tells old classical stories. Modern versions of these are generally in verse, as there is no novelty to make the matter attractive, and the composer must depend only on the charm of the style. Gautier's written pictures, however, are exquisite prose poems; every word bears its due colour to his canvas, every sentence has its due effect and relation to the whole. Those who would object to copying M. Gautier in his morals, his creed, or the matter of his poems and stories, might do well to bestow some careful study upon his manner. French storytellers, as a rule, have a more finished, if not more forcible, style than English, and Gautier, as far as regards that perfection of form and completeness, is one of the kings of French romancists and poets. As to the matter of his stories, all responsible critics are very properly careful to warn off young minds from their perusal; in this they but follow M. Gautier himself, who, in one

of his earlier productions, composes and applies to himself, and delights in applying to those literary friends who are after his own heart, the lines:

J'en previens les mères de famille, Ce que j'écris n'est pas pour les petites filles,

Dont on coupe le pain en tartines-mes

vers

Sont des vers de jeune homme.

The first critic to whom Gautier seriously submitted his poems was Sainte-Beuve. This was just half a century ago. It is quite possible that the decorous critic might not have agreed with all the sentiments expressed, though he was about that time something of an advocate of romanticism; but the strong mediæval language which the youth had learned from Ronsard, Marot, Sainte-Gelais, Malherbe, and other sixteenth-century minstrels and writers, immediately arrested his attention. He was charmed with the young man who had based his verse upon such sound traditions of language, and turn, and rhyme. "Bravo!" said he; "that is substantial poetry. Here is a man who carves in granite, and not in smoke." And he promised to introduce him the next day to Victor Hugo, who was then the leader of the Romantiques. came about Gautier's adherence to the new school, as an apostle of whose doctrines his enormous fists, as we have said, were of much service in inspiring meddling classicists with awe. These days were quite as uproarious as the days which we may remember better of the production of "Rabagas" in Paris. The excitement in the latter case was political, in the former it was literary and artistic only; but the ideas involved in the contest went, perhaps, as deep into the lives of the combatants as any political feeling could penetrate. From the time we have

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