The vie de Bolienie of Paris has been celebrated successfully
in various novels and in at least two languages, but when
one of Bohemia's chief ornaments, M. Carco, sets down his recollections of actual poets, painters and ehansonniers- Prom Montmartre to the Latin Quarter (Cayme Press, 12s. 6d.) —and these are translated by Madeleine Boyd (quite com- petently) into English, the result is something like cham- pagne poured out the day before. In such a case one is prone to suspect that it never was very good champagne. As M. Carco says himself, " Those jokes were enough to amuse us because we were so young at that time that very little sufficed to do so." Much more interesting than his jokes are passages touched with the usual tragedy. The book begins with a study of Utrillo, whom many people consider a great artist ; it ends with one of Modigliani, con- cerning whose greatness there is now scarcely any doubt in Paris. But Modigliani died in misery, and if we are to credit M. Carco, Utrillo has not come much better off. They have paid terribly, not for being artists, but for being the type of artists that Bohemia cultivates.
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