tragedy in scenes of blood and in stages strewn with corpses, from
that he abstains. His Florise is perhaps too long, perhaps too
learned; and certainly we are asked to believe too much when a kind
of etherealised Consuelo is set before us as the prima donna of old
Hardy's troupe:


"Mais Florise n'est pas une femme. Je suis
L'harmonieuse voix que berce vos ennuis;
Je suis la lyre aux sons divers que le poete
Fait resonner et qui sans lui serait muette -
Une comedienne enfin. Je ne suis pas
Une femme."


An actress who was not a woman had little to do in the company of
Scarron's Angelique and Mademoiselle de l'Estoile. Florise, in
short, is somewhat too allegorical and haughty a creature; while
Colombine and Nerine (Vaudeville, June 1864) are rather tricksy imps
than women of flesh and blood. M. De Banville's stage, on the
whole, is one of glitter and fantasy; yet he is too much a Greek for
the age that appreciates "la belle Helene," too much a lyric
dramatist to please the contemporaries of Sardou; he lends too much
sentiment and dainty refinement to characters as flimsy as those of
Offenbach's drama.

Like other French poets, M. De Banville has occasionally deigned to
write feuilletons and criticisms. Not many of these scattered
leaves are collected, but one volume, "La Mer de Nice" (Poulet-
Malassis et De Broise, Paris, 1861), may be read with pleasure even