28 JULY 1928, Page 25

We have a most excellent biography of Charles Baudelaire, by

M. Francois Porche (Wishart, 10s. 6d.), distinguished alike for its humanity and lack of bias. We are shown the man Baudelaire as he really was, with his sadism and tenderness, his fury and lethargy, his squalor and fastidiousness, and the flowering of that hope which sprang so readily from decay. M. Francois Poreite spares us, and Baudelaire, nothing in this story of a wretched life. The poet was always miserable. In 1861 he wrote, " 0 my dear mother, is there still time for us to be happy ? " However, in 1863 "he knew a moment's pleasure," because of a laudatory article that Swinbume wrote about him in the Spectator. The translation is well done by Mr. John Mavin.