Nevertheless Gautier did a great and a good work by labouring with unexampled energy to free art from unwarrantable claims, and by developing it in as characteristic a manner as it lay in his power to do. Though this was not enough for art, it was enough for one man to have done. It cannot, however, be said that Gautier's talent was appreciated as it deserved during his lifetime; the artistic circles formed his public; merely literary people, not to speak of the reading world at large, did not understand him. How often have I myself heard from the lips of French scientific men the foolish assertion that Gautier wrote his books out of dictionaries, without caring for anything but the sound of his words and their singularity. This want of understanding is to a certain degree explained by the fact that, in the mind of the general public, Gautier the journalist had gradually supplanted Gautier the poet. As early as 1836 the man who had told the journalists such bitter truths had joined their ranks to earn his daily bread; and his connection with the press lasted until his death--thirty-six years. His facility in writing was of great advantage to him, and the tasks he accomplished as art and dramatic critic were herculean. According to his own and Bergerat's calculations, which must, however, be exaggerated, his works, if all his articles were collected, would fill three hundred volumes. He wrote for Girardin's paper, _La Presse_, for nineteen years, and afterwards, under the Empire, chiefly in the _Moniteur officiel_. His dramatic criticism, which he undertook unwillingly, is only valuable for its fine style. As an art critic he confined himself more and more, as time went on, to describing pictures, an art in which he was unapproachable. Weariness of his profession, disinclination to make enemies, compassion for beginners and the untalented, good-nature and indifference in equally large proportions, made him more and more indulgent. At last he praised everything and everyone with the same serene impassibility and in the same distinguished, ornate style. The general public knew him only as an art and literary critic. But upon authors, both of poetry and prose, his influence was great. Paul de Saint-Victor, with his excellent prose, Leconte de Lisle, the most unemotional of modern poets, Baudelaire, the "Satanic" lyric poet, and the whole group of young poets who during the Second Empire formed themselves into a school under the name of "Les Parnassiens," are direct descendants of Théophile Gautier. Saint-Victor inherited his sense of form and colour, his devotion to plastic art, Leconte de Lisle his perfect comprehension of foreign civilisations and his Oriental serenity, Baudelaire his partiality for abnormal feelings and passions, and the Parnassians his faultless metre and rhyme.