Another opens with those poets who, being born
in or about 1820, came to years of discretion in time to see the first
force of the movement spent, and found the necessity of striking out
something of a new way for themselves. Of this group three names stand
pre-eminently forward, those of Baudelaire, Banville, and Leconte de
Lisle, while some others may be mentioned beside them.

[Sidenote: Theodore de Banville.]

Theodore de Banville was born in 1820, of a good family, his father
being an officer in the navy. He began to write very early with the
_Cariatides_, and continued for fifty years to be active in prose and
poetry. M. de Banville displayed at once a remarkable mastery of rhyme
and rhythm, and it is in the exhibition of this that he chiefly
excelled. Under his auspices not merely the graceful metrical systems of
the Pleiade, but the older forms of the mediaeval poets, Ballades,
Rondeaux, Triolets, etc., were once more brought into fashion. But M. de
Banville was by no means only a clever versifier. His serious poetry
(_Cariatides_, _Stalactites_, _Odelettes_, _Les Exile's_, _Trente-six
Ballades_) is full of poetical language and sentiment, his lighter verse
(_Occidentales_, _Odes Funambulesques_) is charming, his prose is
excellent, and he was no mean hand at drama (_Gringoire_).

[Sidenote: Leconte de Lisle.]

As M. de Banville sought for poetical novelty in an elaborate
manipulation of the formal part of poetry, so M. Leconte de Lisle has
sought it in a wide range of subject. He is a great translator of Greek
verse. But in his original poems (_Poesies Antiques_, _Poesies
Barbares_, _Poemes et Poesies_) he has gone not merely to the classics
but to the East and to mediaeval times for his inspiration. A tendency
to load his verse with exotic names in unusual forms (he was one of the
first Frenchmen to adopt the fashion of spelling Greek names with a
strict transliteration) has brought, not perhaps altogether
undeservedly, the charge of affectation on M. Leconte de Lisle. But he
is a poet of no small power, not merely in outlandish subjects such as
_Le Massacre de Mona_, _Le Sommeil du Condor_, _Le Runoia_, etc., but in
much simpler work, such as the beautiful _Requies_.

[Sidenote: Charles Baudelaire.]

Charles Baudelaire had a more original talent than either of these.
Although a very careful writer, he is not studious of bizarre rhythm,
nor are his subjects for the most part outlandish. He chose, howeve