Yet another flight of poets may be grouped as those specially representing the last quarter of the century and (whether Parnassian, Symbolist or what not) the latest development of French poetry. Verlaine and Mallarme already mentioned were in a manner the leaders of these. Perhaps something of the influence of Whitman may be detected in the irregular verses of Gustave Kahn (b. 1859), Francis Viele Griffin, actually an American by birth (b. 1864), Stuart Merrill, of like origin, and Paul Fort (b. 1872). But the whole tendency of the period has been to relax the stringency of French prosody. Albert Samain (1859-1900), a musical versifier enough; Jean Moreas (1856-1910) who began with a volume called _Les Syrtes_ in 1884; Laurent Tailhade (b. 1854) and others are more or less Symbolist, and contributed to the Symbolist periodical (one of many such since the beginning of the Romantic movement which would almost require an article to themselves), the _Mercure de France_. An older man than many of these, M. Jean Richepin (b. 1849), made for a time considerable noise with poetical work of a colour older even than his age, and harking back somewhat to the Jeune-France and "Bousingot" type of early Romanticism--_La Chanson des gueux_, _Les Blasphemes_, &c. Other writers of note are M. Paul Deroulede (b. 1846), a violently nationalist poet; M. Maurice Bouchor (b. 1864), who started his serious and respectable work with _Les Symboles_ in 1888; while M. Henri de Regnier, born in the same year, has received very high praise for work from _Lendemains_ in 1886 and other volumes up to _Les Jeux rustiques et divins_ (1897) and _Les Medailles d'argile_ (1900). The truth, however, perhaps is that this extraordinary abundance of verse (for we have not mentioned a quarter of the names which present themselves, or a twentieth part of those who figure in M. Mendes's catalogue for the last half-century) reminds the literary historian somewhat too much of similar phenomena in other times. There is undoubtedly a great diffusion of poetical dexterity, and not perhaps a small one of poetical spirit, but it requires the settling, clarifying and distinguishing effects of time to separate the poet from the minor poet. Still more perhaps must we look to time to decide whether the _vers libre_ as it is called--that is to say, the verse freed from the minute traditions of the elder prosody, admitting hiatus, neglecting to a greater or less extent _caesura_, and sometimes relying upon mere rhythm to the neglect of strict metre altogether--can hold its ground. It has as yet been practised by no poet at all approaching the first class, except Verlaine, and not by him in its extremer forms. And the whole history of prosody and poetry teaches us that though similar changes often come in as it were unperceived, they scarcely ever take root in the language unless a great poet adopts them. Or rather it should perhaps be said that when they are going to take root in the