trnE POSTHUMOUS VERLADTE. "F EROCE et doux,"—in these words Paul Verlaine

once described his own character, and while he was always anxious, with the indiscretion of autobiography, to proclaim his ferocity, his verses still attested the serenity of the artist. But the folly of his friends, added to his own extravagance, persisted in creating a misunderstanding ; for twenty years the man has been confused with the poet ; and his posthumous book, " Invectives" (Paris : Vanier), is not altogether designed to correct a false impression.

In the first place, the book must be judged not as poetry, but as a confidence. Written in a loose, familiar style, it is essentially prosaic, and reveals merely the bitter, if justified, hatreds of the man. To appreciate its acridity one must recall the poet's sinister career. Born with an exquisite talent for verse—a talent which neither poverty nor misfortune has impaired—Verlaine was also born into a modern, logical world with the careless habit of the gipsy. He found it perpetually impossible to square his temper with his surround- ings; his books were an example and a delight to a whole generation, but he remains the feckless beggar of the Middle

Ages. Though he gave far more than his contemporaries could repay, ins lifts was a long experience of poverty and neglect ; and, worse than all, the ungenerous curiosity of his friends, combined with his own imperturbable candour, con- vinced the ignorant that he was a monster, to whom all the vices were familiar. Thus he wandered from cafe to cafe, from hospital to hospital, the greatest poet in France; and his poverty is another proof that genius can hardly be translated into bread-and-butter.

He was denounced for a scoundrel by those who knew the habit of his life better than his poems, and the truth is, he was but a child or a savage. And being child or savage, he was always a gentleman. Petulant, capricious, irregular, he preserved amid his inevitable squalor a strange and simple refinement, which the literary tourist could never appreciate. To the end he retained a boyish faith in the near approach of wealth. "I am popular in England and America," he once said, "and that means I shall make money." Of course the money never was made, but the eternal hopefulness was its own reward. During the last days of his life, says rumour, he was occupied in covering the squalid furniture of his squalid room with gold-paint, and there is a terrible pathos in the vague hope of aggrandisement which prompted this amiable diversion. That such a man should be misunder- stood was inevitable, and yet Verlaine committed no crime, save one which he expiated in prison, to justify the monstrous aspersion which moralist and sentimentalist have cast upon his character.

To the ignorant his name is a synonym for impropriety,

but, if you put aside a single volume—" Parallelement "- there is not one of his works which could offer the slightest affront to a proper modesty. And where in modern literature shall you find a daintier set of impressions than "Romances sans Paroles," a more delicate expression of love than "La Bonne Chanson," or a nobler piece of devotion than "Sagesse" ? That he resented the misa.ppreciation, in which his own reck- lessness had helped to involve him, there was no proof until to-day. But in his " Invectives " he makes clear his own sensitiveness, and attacks all those who have patronised his poetry and defamed his life. The book is packed with material of offence, and perhaps it would have been better to publish it before death had made reparation impossible. None the less, it completes the character of the poet, and shows that for all his simplicity he fiercely resented the infamy of his enemies and the lamentable indiscretion of his pretended friends. Among the victims of his invective are journalists, critics, doctors, magistrates, and anarchists. His hatred of professional literature is dignified in its sincerity. "I hate," says he, "all that savours of literature." And thereon he relates how a reporter called upon him at the hospital, in the midst of bitter remedies, cruel operations, miseries of every kind, and condescended to cut him in two, praising the poet and denouncing the man as a sale bête.

Rentre, imbecile," writes Verlaine in a passage of real indignation :—

" Rentre, imbjcile, ton estime pour mos Evros, Mais ton mepris pour moi m'indiffere, 6tant vil.

Garde, imWeile, ton estime pour sues livres."

So, on another page, he contemns glory, "with its right to hunger, black poverty, and vermin."

His personal dislikes are based, one and all, upon injured vanity. He is indignant that M. Moreas should insult his talent, and he attacks him with a fierceness which the victim did not merit. Time was when M. Moreas was among the devout, but the craving came upon him to found a school of his own, that craving which is epidemic on the Boulevard St. Michel, and instantly Verlaine was out of fashion, and the " Ecole romane "sprang into being. However, M. Moreas is as forgotten as his school ; twenty other fads have driven his into obscurity ; and it was not worth while to perpetuate Verlaine's denunciation. M. Rod, on the other hand, incurred the poet's just wrath by dichotomising him, by setting off the horrible vaurien against the bon 6crivain, and the "fop," compared to whom Brummel was rate, has two very pretty " invectives " to himself. Nor are the reproaches undeserved, since the snobbery which would blame Verlaine because his clothes were in tatters and his aspect laid, is unworthy criticism or intelligence. But the prettiest squabble, to which the book has given rise, is inevitably picked with a journalist ; and M. Fouquier, a ehronigueur whose orthography Verlaine suspects, has already

urged that no bust nor statue should be set up in the poet's honour on account of the insult offered to him !

Strangely enough, slipped in amidst the abuse of pub- lishers, critics, and magistrates, are half a dozen poems of pure patriotism. And these in themselves will be recognised as " invectives " by those who have followed the tortuous move- ment of modern French literature. For the last ten years poetry and anarchy have been inextricably confused, until the middle-class mind might have believed that the writing of verses and the throwing of bombs were one and the same action.. Now, no poet has suffered so bitterly from this lamentable confusion as Verlaine. He has been surrounded by a mob of illiterate youths, for whom literature was a pastime, and the throwing of bombs a beau geste. These illiterates have

proclaimed themselves everywhere the friends and patrons of the poet, and have involved him, obliquely, in complicity with crime. And now he comes forth with a denunciation of all those who love anarchy, and for whom anti-patriotism is a constant pose. We quote the passage that follows, not for any beauty of style or phrase, but for a piece of sound sense.. which in France is too often ignored :—

" Te deteste l'artisterie

Qui se moque de la Patric:, Et du grand vieux nom de Francais, Et j'abomine l'Anarehie Voulant, front vide et main rougie, Tom peuples freres—et l'orgie ! Sans antra forme de preees."

Chauvinism may be tiresome enough, but a contempt of your country is far more dangerous both to yourself and to others than the most wilful self-conceit; and it is well that Verlaine should record his antipathy to the friends of Emile Henry, who have publicly declared themselves his friends and disciples.

"Invectives," in brief, will not affect the reputation of Verlaine the poet. It is rather a pamphlet than a work of art. Moreover, it is marred by grave faults of taste and temper. But now it is plain that Verlaine from the first felt and resented the constant aspersions that were cast upon his. character. He did not, as the foolish man believed, pocket the insult with a silent shrug.