acknowledged the supremacy of Hugo, his own talent was of an individual order, and developed itself more or less independently. _Albertus_ alone of his poems has much of the extravagant and grotesque character which distinguished early romantic literature. The _Comedie de la mort_, the _Poesies diverses_, and still more the _Emaux et camees_, display a distinctly classical tendency--classical, that is to say, not in the party and perverted sense, but in its true acceptation. The tendency to the fantastic and horrible may be taken as best shown by Petrus Borel (1809-1859), a writer of singular power almost entirely wasted. Gerard Labrunie or de Nerval (1808-1855) adopted a manner also fantastic but more idealistic than Borel's, and distinguished himself by his Oriental travels and studies, and by his attention to popular ballads and traditions, while his style has an exquisite but unaffected strangeness hardly inferior to Gautier's. This peculiar and somewhat quintessenced style is also remarkable in the _Gaspard de la nuit_ of Louis Bertrand (1807-1841), a work of rhythmical prose almost unique in its character. One famous sonnet preserves the name of Felix Arvers (1806-1850). The two Deschamps were chiefly remarkable as translators. The next generation produced three remarkable poets, to whom may perhaps be added a fourth. Theodore de Banville (1823-1891), adopting the principles of Gautier, and combining with them a considerable satiric faculty, composed a large amount of verse, faultless in form, delicate and exquisite in shades and colours, but so entirely neutral in moral and political tone that it has found fewer admirers than it deserved. Charles Marie Rene Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), carrying out the principle of ransacking foreign literature for subjects, went to Celtic, classical or even Oriental sources for his inspiration, and despite a science in verse not much inferior to Banville's, and a far wider range and choice of subject, diffused an air of erudition, not to say pedantry, over his work which disgusted some readers, and a pessimism which displeased others, but has left poetry only inferior to that of the greatest of his countrymen. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), by his choice of unpopular subjects and the terrible truth of his analysis, revolted not a few of those who, in the words of an English critic, cannot take pleasure in the representation if they do not take pleasure in the thing represented, and who thus miss his extraordinary command of the poetical appeal in sound, in imagery and in suggestion generally. Thus, by a strange coincidence, each of the three representatives of the second Romantic generation was for a time disappointed of his due fame. A fourth poet of this time, Josephin Soulary (1815-1891), produced sonnets of rare beauty and excellence. A fifth, Louis Bouilhet (1822-1869), an intimate friend of Flaubert, pushed even farther the fancy for strange subjects, but showed powers in _Melaenis_ and other