Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821; he died there in 1867. Between these dates lies the evolution of one of the most striking personalities in French literature, and the development of an influence which affected not only the literature of the poet's own country, but that of all Europe and America. The genuineness of both personality and influence was one of the first critical issues raised after Baudelaire's advent into literature; it is still one of the main issues in all critical consideration of him. A question which involves by implication the whole relation of poetry, and of art as such, to life, is obviously one that furnishes more than literary issues, and engages other than literary interests. And thus, by easy and natural corollaries, Baudelaire has been made a subject of appeal not only to judgment, but even to conscience. At first sight, therefore, he appears surrounded either by an intricate moral maze, or by a no less troublesome confusion of contradictory theories from opposing camps rather than schools of criticism. But no author--no dead author--is more accessible, or more communicable in his way; his poems, his theories, and a goodly portion of his life, lie at the disposition of any reader who cares to know him. [Illustration: CHARLES BAUDELAIRE] The Baudelaire legend, as it is called by French critics, is one of the blooms of that romantic period of French literature which is presided over by the genius of Théophile Gautier. Indeed; it is against the golden background of Gautier's imagination that the picture of the youthful poet is best preserved for us, appearing in all the delicate and illusive radiance of the youth and beauty of legendary saints on the gilded canvases of mediaeval art. The radiant youth and beauty may be no more truthful to nature than the gilded background, but the fact of the impression sought to be conveyed is not on that account to be disbelieved.