seem alive--_une rougeur colora ses joues_; others in which all seem dead--_il était au comble des ses vœux_. But this last was formed at a time when the word _comble_ was thoroughly alive and quite concrete. It is because it still contains the residue of a sensible image that its union with _vœux_ displeases us. In the preceding example the word colorer has become abstract, since the concrete verb expressing this idea is _colorier_, and goes badly with _rougeur_ and joues. I do not know just where a minute work on this part of the language, in which the fermentation is still unfinished, would lead us; but no doubt in the end it would be quite easy to demonstrate that, in the true notion of the _cliché_, incoherence has its place by the side of triteness. There would be matter in such a study for reasoned opinions that M. Albalat might render fruitful for the practice of style. VI It is to be regretted that he has dismissed the subject of periphrasis in a few lines. We expected an analysis of this curious tendency to replace by a description the word which is the sign of the thing in question. This malady, which is very ancient, since enigmas have been found on Babylonian cylinders (that of the wind very nearly in the terms employed by our children), is perhaps the very origin of all poetry. If the secret of being a bore consists of saying everything, the secret of pleasing lies in saying just enough to be, not understood even, but divined. Periphrasis, as handled by the didactic poets, is perhaps ridiculous only because of the lack of poetic power which it indicates; for there are many agreeable ways of not naming what it is desired to suggest. The true poet, master of his speech, employs only periphrases at once so new and so clear in their shadowy half-light, that any slightly sensual intelligence prefers them to the too absolute word. He wishes neither to describe, to pique the curiosity, nor to show off his learning; but, whatever he does, he employs periphrases, and it is by no means certain that all those he creates will remain fresh long. The periphrasis is a metaphor, and thus has the same life-span as a metaphor. It is far indeed from the vague and purely musical periphrases of Verlaine: _Parfois aussi le dard d'un insecte jaloux_ _Inquiétait le col des belles sous les branches,_ to the mythological enigmas of a Lebrun, who calls the silkworm "_L'amant des feuilles de Thisbé_."