23 FEBRUARY 1951, Page 30

Confessions of a Poet. By Paul Verlaine. (Thames & Hudson.

los. 6d.)

Confessions of a Poet is disappointing in that although it tells us much concerning Verlaine's childhood and schooldays, fir+ marriage to Mathilde, and his experience the revolutionary Commune, it closes with the entrance of Rimbaud—a signal advent in its author's life. Mr. Peter Quenneli. who contributes a graceful but not mit• standing introduction, speaks of Verlaine :14 a satyr, a Marsyas of French poety. Per- haps he might be better described—with hi.; strange combination of naiveté and sophisti- cation—as a kind of metropolitan Pan. Joanna Richardson's translation, if not quite close enough to the French, makes for easy' and natural reading