"Il règne, il végète Effroyant zéro; Sur lui se projette L'ombre du bourreau. "Son trône est une tombe, Et sur le pavé Quelque chose en tombe Qu'on n'a point lavé." But how to get the first line of the last stanza into five syllables I cannot think. If ever I meet with the volume again I will look it out and see how that _rude dompteur de syllables_ managed it. But stay, _son trône est la tombe_; that makes the verse, and the generalisation would be in the "line" of Hugo. Hugo--how impossible it is to speak of French literature without referring to him. Let these, however, be concluding words that he thought he could by saying everything, and, saying everything twenty times over, for ever render impossible the rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth--one verse is better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is better than the word, but the truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor even a single bad line, so not having time to read all, the future will read none. What immortality would be gained by the destruction of one half of his magnificent works, what oblivion is secured by the publication of these posthumous volumes. To return to the Leconte de Lisle. See his "Discours de Réception." Is it possible to imagine anything more absurdly arid? Rhetoric of this sort, "_des vers d'or sur une éclume d'airain_" and such sententious platitudes as this (speaking of the realists), "_Les épidémies de cette nature passent, et le génie demeure_."