In "Les Cariatides," especially in the poems styled "En Habit
Zinzolin," M. De Banville revived old measures--the rondeau and the
"poor little triolet." These are forms of verse which it is easy to
write badly, and hard indeed to write well. They have knocked at
the door of the English muse's garden--a runaway knock. In "Les
Cariatides" they took a subordinate place, and played their pranks
in the shadow of the grave figures of mythology, or at the close of
the procession of Dionysus and his Maenads. De Banville often
recalls Keats in his choice of classical themes. "Les Exiles," a
poem of his maturity, is a French "Hyperion." "Le Triomphe de
Bacchus" reminds one of the song of the Bassarids in "Endymion" -


"So many, and so many, and so gay."


There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De
Banville, in the heart of the poet) in this verse:


"Il reve e Cama, l'amour aux cinq fleches fleuries,
Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies
La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal,
Envoie aux cinq sens les fleches du carquois fatal."


The Bacchus of Titian has none of this Oriental languor, no memories
of perfumed places where "the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails."
One cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering god
still steeped in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more vigorous