cured for their author the approbation and
friendship of Alfred de Vigny and Jules Janin. Henceforward Banville's life
was steadily devoted to literary production and criticism. He printed other
volumes of verse, among which the _Odes funambulesques_ (Alencon, 1857)
received unstinted praise from Victor Hugo, to whom they were dedicated.
Later, several of his comedies in verse were produced at the Theatre
Francais and on other stages; and from 1853 onwards a stream of prose
flowed from his industrious pen, including studies of Parisian manners,
sketches of well-known persons (_Camees parisiennes_, &c.), and a series of
tales (_Contes bourgeois_, _Contes heroiques_, &c.), most of which were
republished in his collected works (1875-1878). He also wrote freely for
reviews, and acted as dramatic critic for more than one newspaper.
Throughout a life spent mainly in Paris, Banville's genial character and
cultivated mind won him the friendship of the chief men of letters of his
time. He was also intimate with Frederick-Lemaitre and other famous actors.
In 1858 he was decorated with the legion of honour, and was promoted to be
an officer of the order in 1886. He died in Paris on the 15th of March
1891, having just completed his sixty-eighth year. Banville's claim to
remembrance rests mainly on his poetry. His plays are written with
distinction and refinement, but are deficient in dramatic power; his
stories, though marked by fertility of invention, are as a rule
conventional and unreal. Most of his prose, indeed, in substance if not in
manner, is that of a journalist. His lyrics, however, rank high. A careful
and loving student of the finest models, he did even more than his greater
and somewhat older comrades, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset and Theophile
Gautier, to free French poetry from the fetters of metre and mannerism in
which it had limped from the days of Malherbe. In the _Odes funambulesques_
and elsewhere he revived with perfect grace and understanding the _rondeau_
and the _villanelle_, and like Victor Hugo in _Les Orientales_, wrote
_pantoums_ (pantuns) after the Malay fashion. He published in 1872 a _Petit
traite de versification francaise_ in exposition of his metrical methods.
He was a master of delicate satire, and used with much effect the difficult
humour of sheer bathos, happily adapted by him from some of the early
folk-songs. He has somewhat rashly been compared to Heine, whom he
profoundly admired; but if he