of mental disease in which states of excitement and depression follow each other in regular succession. The period of excitement coincides with the irresistible impulses to misdeeds and blasphemous language; that of dejection with the paroxysms of contrition and piety. The circulaires belong to the worst species of the degenerate. They are drunkards, obscene, vicious, and thievish. They are also in particular incapable of any lasting, uniform occupation, since it is obvious that in such a condition of mental depression they cannot accomplish any work which demands strength and attention. The circulaires are, by the nature of their affliction, condemned to be vagabonds or thieves, unless they belong to rich families. In normally constituted society there is no place for them. Verlaine has been a vagabond the whole of his life. He has loafed about all the highways of France, and roamed as well through Belgium and England. Since his release from prison he has spent most of his time in Paris, where, however, he has no residence, but resorts to the hospitals under the pretext of rheumatism, which for that matter he may easily have contracted during the nights which, as a tramp, he has spent under the open sky. The administration winks at his doings, and grants him food and shelter gratis, out of regard for his poetical capacity. Conformably with the constant tendency of the human mind to beautify what cannot be altered, he persuades himself that his vagrancy, which was forced upon him by his organic vice, is a glorious and enviable condition; he prizes it as something beautiful, artistic, and sublime, and looks upon vagabonds with especial tenderness. Speaking of them he says (Grotesques): 'Leur jambes pour toutes montures, 'Le sage, indigné, les harangue; We find in every lunatic and imbecile the conviction that the rational minds who discern and judge him are 'blockheads.' '... Dans leurs prunelles Rit et pleure-fastidieux L'amour des choses éternelles, Des vieux morts et des anciens dieux ! 'Donc, allez, vagabonds sans trêves, Le long des gouffres et des grèves, Sous l'œil fermé des paradis ! E. Marandon de Montyel, 'De la Criminalité et de la Dégénérescence,' Archives de l'Anthropologie criminelle, Mai, 1892, p. 287. 'La nature à l'homme s'allie Qui vous fait marcher le front haut.' In another poem (Autre) he calls to his chosen mates: 'Allons, frères, bons vieux voleurs, Doux vagabonds Filous en fleur Mes chers, mes bons, 'Fumons philosophiquement, Promenons nous Paisiblement : Rien faire est doux.' As one vagabond feels himself attracted by other vagabonds, so does one deranged mind feel drawn to others. Verlaine has the greatest admiration for King Louis II. of Bavaria, that unhappy madman in whom intelligence was extinct long before death, in whom only the most abominable impulses of foul beasts of the most degraded kind had survived the perishing of the human functions of his disordered brain. He apostrophizes him thus: 'Roi, le seul vrai Roi de ce siècle, salut, Sire, 'De cette Science assassin de l'Oraison Et du Chant et de l'Art et de toute la Lyre, Et le martyr de la Raison selon la Foi. . . ! Two points are noticeable in Verlaine's mode of expression. First, we have the frequent recurrence of the same word, of the same turn of phrase, that chewing the cud, or rabáchage (repetition), which we have learnt to know as the marks of intellectual debility. In almost every one of his poems single lines and hemistiches are repeated, sometimes unaltered, and often the same word appears instead of one which rhymes. Were I to quote all the passages of this kind, I should have to transcribe nearly all his poems. I will therefore give only a few specimens, and those in the original, so that their peculiarity will be fully apparent to the reader. In the Crépuscule du soir mystique the lines, 'Le souvenir avec le crépuscule,' and 'Dahlia, lys, tulipe et renoncules,' are twice repeated without any internal necessity. In the poem Promenade sentimentale the adjective blême (wan) pursues the poet in the manner of an obsession or 'onomatomania,' and he applies it to water-lilies and waves ('wan waves'). The Nuit du Walpurgis classique begins thus: 'Un rythmique sabbat, rythmique, extrêmement Rythmique.'... In the Sérénade the first two lines are repeated verbatim as the fourth and eighth. Similarly in Ariettes oubliées, VIII.: 'Dans l'interminable 'Comme des nuées 'Le ciel est de cuivre, Sans lueur aucune. 'Corneille poussive, Et vous, les loups maigres, Par ces bises aigres Quoi donc vous arrive? 'Dans l'interminable Ennui de la plaine, La neige incertaine The Chevaux de bois begins thus: 'Tournez, tournez, bons chevaux de bois, In a truly charming piece in Sagesse he says: 'Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit, Si bleu, si caline! Un arbre, par dessus le toit 'La cloche, dans le ciel qu'on voit, Un oiseau, sur l'arbre qu'on voit, In the passage in Amour, 'Les innombrables des champs . . . les and 'gens' sound somewhat alike. fleurs des champs, les fleurs fleurs des gens,' 'champs' Here the imbecile repetition of similar sounds suggests a senseless pun to the poet, and as for this stanza in Pierrot gamin: 'Ce n'est pas Pierrot en herbe it is the language of nurses to babies, who do not care to make sense, but only to twitter to the child in tones which give him pleasure. The closing lines of the poem Mains point to a complete ideational standstill, to mechanical mumbling: 'Ah! si ce sont des mains de rêve, Tant mieux, ou tant pis, ou tant mieux.'* The second peculiarity of Verlaine's style is the other mark of mental debility, viz., the combination of completely disconnected nouns and adjectives, which suggest each other, either through a senseless meandering by way of associated ideas, or through a similarity of sound. We have already found some examples of this in the extracts cited above. In these we find the 'enormous and tender Middle Ages' and the 'brand which thunders.' Verlaine writes also of 'feet which glide with a pure and wide movement,' of ' a narrow and vast affection,' of 'a slow landscape,' of 'a slack liqueur' (jus flasque'), 'a gilded perfume,' a 'condensed' or 'terse contour' ('galbe succinct'), etc. The Symbolists admire this form of imbecility, as the research for rare and precious epithets' (la recherche de l'epithète rare et précieuse). Verlaine has a clear consciousness of the vagueness of his thoughts, and in a very remarkable poem from the psychological point of view, Art poétique, in which he attempts to give a theory of his lyric creation, he raises nebulosity to the dignity of a fundamental method: 'De la musique avant toute chose Et pour cela préfère l'Impair Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air, The two verbs 'fèse' and 'pose' are juxtaposed merely on account of their similarity of sound. Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point Choisir les mots sans quelque méprise ; Ah! if these are dream hands, So much the better, or so much the worse, or so much the better. + Virgil's 'lentus,' when applied to aspects of nature, conveys a very different meaning. 'C'est des beaux yeux derrière des voiles, Le rêve au rêve et la flûte au cor (This stanza is completely delirious; it places 'nuance' and 'colour' in opposition, as though the latter were not contained in the former. The idea of which the weak brain of Verlaine had an inkling, but could not bring to a complete conception, is probably that he prefers subdued and mixed tints, which lie on the margin of several colours, to the full intense colour itself.) It cannot be denied that this poetical method in the hands of Verlaine often yields extraordinarily beautiful results. There are few poems in French literature which can rival the Chanson d'Automne: Even if literally translated, there remains something of the melancholy magic of the lines, which in French are richly rhythmical and full of music. Avant que tu ne t'en ailles (p. 99) and Il pleure dans mon cœur (p. 116) may also be called pearls among French lyrics. This is because the methods of a highly emotional, but intellectually incapable, dreamer suffice for poetry which deals exclusively with moods, but this is the inexorable limit of his power. Let the true meaning of mood be always present with |