Many English lovers of French poetry would have been sorry, though none could have been surprised, if public opinion in France had been too much agitated by the stupendous events of the War to spare a thought for one of the greatest of modern poets on the occasion of his hundredth birthday. But it was not so; on the eighteenth of October, 1918, when the fighting had approached its culminating point, and when all the fortunes of the world seemed hanging in the balance, the serenity of French criticism found room, between the bulletins of battle, for a word of reminder that the author of _Poèmes Antiques_ and _Poèmes Barbares_ was born a century before in the tropic island of La Réunion. The recognition was not very copious, nor was it universally diffused, but in no circumstances would it have been either the one or the other. Leconte de Lisle has never been, and will never be, a "popular" writer. He appeals to a select group, a limited circle, which neither expands nor contracts. His fame has never been excessive, and it will never disappear. It is modest, reserved, and durable. He was commonly described as a Creole. His father, an army surgeon--exiled by the service to what used to be called the Ile Bourbon--was a pure Breton. Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle, after several excursions to India, which left strong traces on his poetry, arrived still young in France, and ultimately settled in Paris. Thus he lived for half a century, in great simplicity and uniformity, surrounded by adoring friends, but little known to the public. In middle life he became a librarian at the Luxembourg; as old age was approaching, he found himself elected to succeed Victor Hugo at the French Academy. If he was not exactly poor, his means were strictly moderate; and the most unpleasant event of his whole life was the discovery, at the fall of the Empire, that, although his opinions were republican, he had been receiving a pension from the government of Napoleon III. Nothing could be more ridiculous than the outcry then raised against him; for he was a poet hidden in the light of thought, and no politician. It was an honour to any government, and no shame to the austerest poet, that modest public help should enable a man like Leconte de Lisle to exist without anxiety. There can hardly be said to have been any other event in this dignified and blameless career.