One recognises more sincerity in this hymn to all poets, from Orpheus to Heine, than in "Les Baisers de Pierre"--a clever imitation of De Musset's stories in verse. Love of art and of the masters of art, a passion for the figures of old mythology, which had returned again after their exile in 1830, gaiety, and a revival of the dexterity of Villon and Marot,--these things are the characteristics of M. De Banville's genius, and all these were displayed in "Les Cariatides." Already, too, his preoccupation with the lighter and more fantastic sort of theatrical amusements shows itself in lines like these: "De son lit a baldaquin Le soleil de son beau globe Avait l'air d'un arlequin Etalant sa garde-robe; "Et sa soeur au front changeant Mademoiselle la Lune Avec ses grands yeux d'argent Regardait la terre brune." The verse about "the sun in bed," unconsciously Miltonic, is in a vein of bad taste which has always had seductions for M. De Banville. He mars a fine later poem on Roncevaux and Roland by a similar absurdity. The angel Michael is made to stride down the steps of heaven four at a time, and M. De Banville fancies that this sort of thing is like the simplicity of the ages of faith. In "Les Cariatides," especially in the poems styled "En Habit Zinzolin," M. De Banville revived old measures--the _rondeau_ and the "poor little triolet." These are forms of verse which it is easy to write badly, and hard indeed to write well. They have knocked at the door of the English muse's garden--a runaway knock. In "Les Cariatides" they took a subordinate place, and played their pranks in the shadow of the grave figures of mythology, or at the close of the procession of Dionysus and his Maenads. De Banville often recalls Keats in his choice of classical themes. "Les Exiles," a poem of his maturity, is a French "Hyperion." "Le Triomphe de Bacchus" reminds one of the song of the Bassarids in "Endymion"-- "So many, and so many, and so gay." There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De Banville, in the heart of the poet) in this verse: "Il reve a Cama, l'amour aux cinq fleches fleuries, Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal, Envoie aux cinq sens les fleches du carquois fatal."