" It
is because he was a poet, not a mere craftsman, that Villon was and
remains the king, the absolute master, of ballad-land." About the
rondeau, M. De Banville avers that it possesses "nimble movement,
speed, grace, lightness of touch, and, as it were, an ancient
fragrance of the soil, that must charm all who love our country and
our country's poetry, in its every age." As for the villanelle, M.
De Banville declares that it is the fairest jewel in the casket of
the muse Erato; while the chant royal is a kind of fossil poem, a
relic of an age when kings and allegories flourished. "The kings
and the gods are dead," like Pan; or at least we no longer find them
able, by touch royal or divine, to reanimate the magnificent chant
royal.
This is M. De Banville's apology in pro lyra sua, that light lyre of
many tones, in whose jingle the eternal note of modern sadness is
heard so rarely. If he has a lesson to teach English versifiers,
surely it is a lesson of gaiety. They are only too fond of rue and
rosemary, and now and then prefer the cypress to the bay. M. De
Banville's muse is content to wear roses in her locks, and perhaps
may retain, for many years, a laurel leaf from the ancient laurel
tree which once sheltered the poet at Turbia.
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK
The Greek language is being ousted from education, here, in France,
and in America. The speech of the earliest democracies is not
democratic enough for modern anarchy.
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