volume contained a selection from the countless verses which the
poet produced between his sixteenth and his nineteenth year.
Whatever other merits the songs of minors may possess, they have
seldom that of permitting themselves to be read. "Les Cariatides"
are exceptional here. They are, above all things, readable. "On
peut les lire e peu de frais," M. De Banville says himself. He
admits that his lighter works, the poems called (in England) vers de
societe, are a sort of intellectual cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin
said, in the later days of the Empire, that there were too many
cigarettes in the air. Their stale perfume clings to the literature
of that time, as the odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of
Dorat, the designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period.
There is more than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his
lifelong devotion to letters and to great men of letters--
Shakespeare, Moliere, Homer, Victor Hugo. These are his gods; the
memory of them is his muse. His enthusiasm is worthy of one who,
though born too late to see and know the noble wildness of 1830, yet
lives on the recollections, and is strengthened by the example, of
that revival of letters. Whatever one may say of the renouveau, of
romanticism, with its affectations, the young men of 1830 were
sincere in their devotion to liberty, to poetry, to knowledge. One
can hardly find a more brilliant and touching belief in these great
causes than that of Edgar Quinet, as displayed in the letters of his
youth. De Banville fell on more evil times.

When "Les Cariatides" was published poets had begun to keep an eye
on the Bourse, and artists dabbled in finance. The new volume of
song in the sordid age was a November primrose, and not unlike the
flower of Spring. There was a singular freshness and hopefulness in
the verse, a wonderful "certitude dans l'expression lyrique," as