nt from the consideration of fiscal reform, he must have
spent it in triumphing over the fate of M. Sully-Prudhomme. In the month
of September 1906 this poet closed, after a protracted agony, "that long
disease, his life." He had compelled respect by his courage in the face
of hopeless pain, and, one might suppose, some gratitude by the
abundance of his benefactions. His career was more than blameless, it
was singularly exemplary. Half-blind, half-paralysed, for a long time
very poor, pious without fanaticism, patient, laborious, devoted to his
friends, he seems to have been one of those extraordinary beings whose
fortitude in the face of affliction knows no abatement. It would be
ridiculous to quote any of these virtues as a reason for admiring the
poetry of Sully-Prudhomme. I mention them merely to show that there was
nothing in his personal temperament to arouse hatred or in his personal
conditions to excuse envy. Nothing to account for the, doubtless,
entirely sincere detestation which his poetry seemed to awaken in all
"the best minds" directly he was dead.

As every one knows, from about 1870 to 1890, Sully-Prudhomme was,
without a rival, the favourite living poet of the French. Victor Hugo
was there, of course, until 1885--and posthumously until much later--but
he was a god, and the object of idolatry. All who loved human poetry,
the poetry of sweetness and light, took Sully-Prudhomme to their heart
of hearts. The _Stances et Poemes_ of 1865 had perhaps the warmest
welcome that ever the work of a new poet had in France. Theophile
Gautier instantly pounced upon _Le Vase Brise_ (since too-famous) and
introduced it to a thousand school-girls. Sainte-Beuve, though grown old
and languid, waked up to celebrate the psychology and the music of this
new poetry, so delicate, fresh and transparent. An unknown beauty of
extreme refinement seemed to have been created in it, a beauty made up
of lucidity, pathos and sobriety. Readers who are now approaching
seventy will not forget with what emotion they listened, for instance,
to that dialogue between the long-dead father and the newly-buried son,
which closes:--

"J' ai laisse ma soeur et ma mere
Et les beaux livres que j' ai lus;
Vous n'avez pas de bru, mon pere,
On m'a blesse, je n'aime plus."

"De tes aieux compte le nombre,
Va baiser leurs fronts inconnus,
Et viens faire ton lit dans l'ombre
A cote des derniers venus.

"Ne pleure