30 NOVEMBER 1918, Page 23

Colour Studies in Paris. By Arthur Symons. (Chapman and Hall.

7s. 6d. net.)—These sketches of the literary Bohemia of Paris twenty years ago seem to belong to a very remote past. War-worn Paris evokes very different emotions nowadays. We like best the short chapters on Paul Verlaine and his remarkable but disconcerting poetry, which in its temper has a curious affinity to Mr. Thomas Hardy's verse. Verlaine, by the way, was a native of Metz, and for all his cynicism was as patriotic a Frenchman as his fellow-Messina. Mr. Symons gives a facsimile of Verlaine's notable little poem on Fountain Court, Temple, which was addressed to the author. It reminds us that Verlaine spent some time in England, and drew poetic inspiration from subjects so forbidding as, for example, Manchester on a wet winter night.