here they remain--those
early volumes, which seemed to us all so full of exquisite little
masterpieces. Why is it that nobody, except a few elderly persons, any
longer delights in them? The notices which Sully-Prudhomme's death
awakened in the Paris Press were either stamped with the mark of old
contemporary affection, or else, when they were not abusive, were as
frigid as the tomb itself. "Ses tendresses sucrees, sirupeuses, sont
vaines en effet," said a critic of importance! Indeed, it would appear
so; and where are the laurels of yester-year?

To those who were young when Sully-Prudhomme entered into his
immortality it seems impossible to realise that the glory has already
departed. Gaston Paris celebrated "the penetrating sincerity and the
exquisite expression of feeling" which distinguished Sully-Prudhomme
above all other poets. He was the bard of the inner life, sincere and
dignified, full of melancholy reverie. A great critic compared _La Vote
Lactic_ and _Les Stalactites_ with the far-off sound of bells heard down
some lovely valley in a golden afternoon. Yet the images and the
language were precise; Sully-Prudhomme was a mathematician, and if he
was reproached with anything like a fault, it was that his style was
slightly geometrical. It would be otiose to collect any more tributes to
his genius, as it appeared to all Frenchmen, cultivated or
semi-cultivated, about the year 1880. With an analysis of
Sully-Prudhomme's poetry I am not here concerned, but with the question
of why it is that such an authority as Remy de Gourmont could, in 1907,
without awakening any protest among persons under fifty say that it was
a "sort of social crime" to impose such balderdash as the verse of
Sully-Prudhomme on the public.

It is not needful to quote other living critics, who may think such
prolongation of their severities ungraceful. But a single contrast will
suffice. When, in 1881, Sully-Prudhomme was elected to the French
Academy, expert opinion throughout the Press was unanimous in admitting
that this was an honour deservedly given to the best lyric poet of the
age. In 1906, when a literary journal sent out this question, "Who is
the poet you love best?" and was answered by more than two hundred
writers of verse, the diversity of opinion was indeed excessive; such
poets as Sainte-Beuve, as Brizeux, as Rodenbach, received votes, all the
great masters received many. But Sully-Prudhomme, alone, received not
one vote. A new