birds, the meditative and indifferent regard of cattle, and the deprecating aloofness and inspection of sheep? 1907. LEON CLADEL I hope that the life of Leon Cladel by his daughter Judith, which Lemerre has brought out in a pleasant volume, will do something for the fame of one of the most original writers of our time. Cladel had the good fortune to be recognised in his lifetime by those whose approval mattered most, beginning with Baudelaire, who discovered him before he had printed his first book, and helped to teach him the craft of letters. But so exceptional an artist could never be popular, though he worked in living stuff and put the whole savour of his countryside into his tragic and passionate stories. A peasant, who writes about peasants and poor people, with a curiosity of style which not only packs his vocabulary with difficult words, old or local, and with unheard of rhythms, chosen to give voice to some never yet articulated emotion, but which drives him into oddities of printing, of punctuation, of the very shape of his accents! A page of Cladel has a certain visible uncouthness, and at first this seems in keeping with his matter; but the uncouthness, when you look into it, turns out to be itself a refinement, and what has seemed a confused whirl, an improvisation, to be the result really of reiterated labour, whose whole aim has been to bring the spontaneity of the first impulse back into the laboriously finished work. In this just, sensitive, and admirable book, written by one who has inherited a not less passionate curiosity about life, but with more patience in waiting upon it, watching it, noting its surprises, we have a simple and sufficient commentary upon the books and upon the man. The narrative has warmth and reserve, and is at once tender and clear-sighted. _J'entrevois nettement_, she says with truth, _combien seront precieux pour les futurs historiens de la litterature du xix^e siecle, les memoires traces au contact immediat de l'artiste, exposes de ses faits et gestes particuliers, de ses origines, de la germination de ses croyances et de son talent; ses critiques a venir y trouveront de_ _solides materiaux, ses admirateurs un aliment a leur piete et les philosophes un des aspects de l'Ame francaise._ The man is shown to us, _les elans de cette ame toujours grondante et fulgurante comme une forge, et les nuances de ce fievreux visage d'apotre, brun, fin et sinueux_, and we see the inevitable growth, out of the hard soil of Quercy and out of the fertilising contact of Paris and Baudelaire, of this whole literature, these books no less astonishing than their titles: _Ompdrailles-le-Tombeau-des-Lutteurs_, _Celui de la Croix-aux-Boeufs_, _La Fete Votive de Saint-Bartholomee-Porte-Glaive_. The very titles are an excitement. I can remember how mysterious and alluring they used to seem to me when I first saw them on the cover of what was perhaps his best book, _Les Va-Nu-Pieds_.