These, I thought - these are
the things which used to give us something of a thrill.
If they no longer provide that sensation, it may well be that we have
absorbed their spirit so thoroughly into our system that we forget
whence we drew it. They have become part of ourselves. Even now, one
cannot help admiring Gautier's precision of imagery, his gift of being
quaint and yet lucid as a diamond; one pictures those crocodiles
fainting in the heat, and notes, too, whence the author of the "Sphinx"
drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so
much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for
external monotony. That trick - that full stop at the end of nearly every
fourth line - it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow
jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows
wearisome to the ear, and finally abhorrent.
Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated. He can also delve
down to deeps which the other never essayed to fathom. "Fuyez l'infini
que vous portez en vous" - a line which, in my friend's copy of the book,
had been marked on the margin with a derisive exclamation-point. (It
gave me food for thought, that exclamation-point.) But, as to substance,
he contains too many nebulosities and abstractions for my taste; a
veritable mist of them, out of which emerges - what? The figure of one
woman.
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