For a vivid, spirited picture of the young Bohemian Romanticist group which rallied round Hugo, a picture distinguished by its wanton self-caricature, we have only to turn to Théophile Gautier's _Les Jeunes-France_. The author intended his work to satirise Romanticism in much the same manner as _Les Précieuses Ridicules_ had satirised the literary fantasticality of an earlier period; but unfortunately _Les Jeunes-France_ is only the frolicsome effusion of a talented boy, whilst _Les Précieuses_ is a mature work of enduring value. _Les Jeunes-France_ was written almost immediately after Gautier's admission into the Romantic camp, and it, like the poetry of Petrus Borel and Philothée O'Neddy, gives us a good idea of the Bohemian camaraderie of the talented young men of the day. Gautier was the very man to write such a book; for not only then, but to the end of his life, he was the real artist--Bohemian; always more or less at variance with society and its notions of respectability; living in his youth, as painter, poet, journalist, and traveller, a Bohemian life in the general acceptation of the word, and in his later years settling down to live with his sisters and his children without a thought of marriage. Of his many liaisons, that with Ernesta Grisi, the mother of his daughters Judith and Estella, lasted longest. He was also for a long time passionately attached to her sister Carlotta. It was for Carlotta that he wrote his ballets. Though he was inconstant as a lover, he was an extremely affectionate brother and father. He gave his daughters a model education. One of his excellent ideas was to have them taught such languages as Japanese and Chinese, proficiency in which was so rare that it provided a woman who required to earn her living with the means of doing so. His daughter Judith reaped the benefit of his foresight. But the book which gives us the best, completest impression of young Gautier's inner life is not _Les Jeunes-France_, but _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, the novel which he wrote immediately after that work (1836). In _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ the champagne-froth of his youth seethes. It is a perfectly pagan and at times a perfectly indecent book--as indecent as a dialogue of Crébillon _fils_--but there is power in it; and though Swinburne exaggerates considerably when he calls it "the golden book of beauty," there is no doubt that it displays an extraordinary sense of beauty. It was an outlet for the young man's redundant vigour.