entails, and which is inherent in the nature of both. A man of a plastic and artistic temperament like Gautier, who could not have satisfied the demands made of poetry in the name of morality without sacrificing his special talent, was peculiarly fitted to enforce this truth. His special gift is the reproducing of sensuous impressions in words. He was the first to show in the grand style that the doctrine propounded in Lessing's _Laokoon_ is not the whole truth, for he has described much that Lessing regarded as indescribable. There was nothing for which Gautier lacked words--the beauty of a woman, the appearance of a town, nay, the taste of a dish, or the sound of a voice--he was equal to them all. "Since we have him," said Sainte-Beuve once, "the word _inexpressible_ no longer exists in the French language." He had the usual Romantic-Classic aversion for new words, but he enriched modern French with a store of fifteenth and sixteenth century words which had undeservedly fallen into disuse, and with a host of accurately suggestive technical expressions. French dictionaries were his favourite reading. Undoubtedly his was a mind entirely concentrated upon externals; but great intensity and much artistic fervour go to the making of such externality as Gautier's. It was certainly not the aim of his art to touch feeling hearts; but even Goethe had moods in which he wrote: "Ach, die zärtlichen Herzen! Ein Pfuscher vermag sie zu rühren; Sei es mein einziges Glück, dich zu berühren, Natur!" _Le Capitaine Fracasse_, a novel which Gautier planned in his youth, but did not write until well on in life, gives the best idea of his prose. We see its personages as we see people in real life--their figures, their dress, their movements, their background of buildings or landscape. The book begins with a chapter entitled _Le Château de la Misère_, which contains a description of the evening meal of a company of strolling players, which they are taking in one of the rooms of an impecunious young baron's dilapidated castle, a building of Louis XIII's time, by the light of two huge wooden stage candelabra, pasted over with gilt paper. It is a description which reminds us of the famous Rembrandt in Dresden known as "The Wedding of Esther." We see the light modelling the faces, and the shadows creeping up the walls. There is not a single emotional word in it, but such a subtle feeling of melancholy pervades the whole that we quite understand how Gautier said to Feydeau, who found him writing it: "It is an exact description of my state of mind."