We ask one thing only, though, perhaps, in many forms: Has it given us an increased consciousness of life, or has it merely had in view one or other of those valuations whose supreme authority we reject? Is its title to the name of art merely that it is an illustration of a doctrine that has elbowed out the doctrine it illustrates, merely that it gives us a clear idea how some people live, merely that it has a skin-deep appearance of unity? Or is it a piece of conscious life, separated watchfully from the flux of living, a piece of _knowing_ carried out by the artist, which we are allowed to share? Does it give us a new possession by making us aware of something we possess. We do not ask an artist for opinions, for facts, for skill, alone. We have the right to ask for more. We ask him for ourselves; we ask him for life. “Poetry enriches the blood of the world” by the practice it affords of living consciously. Vain learning, opinion, skill, impoverish it. We ask from an artist opportunities of conscious living, which, taken as they come, multiply the possibilities of their recurrence, turn us into artists, and help us to contract the habit of being alive. 1912. ALOYSIUS BERTRAND: A ROMANTIC OF 1830 ALOYSIUS BERTRAND: A ROMANTIC OF 1830 In the preface to _Petits Poèmes en Prose_, Baudelaire makes respectful reference to a little-known book: “J’ai une petite confession à vous faire. C’est en feuilletant pour la vingtième fois au moins, le fameux _Gaspard de la Nuit_, d’Aloysius Bertrand (un livre connu de vous, de moi et de quelques-uns de nos amis, n’a-t-il pas tous les droits à être appelé fameux?), que l’idée m’est venue de tenter quelque chose d’analogue, et d’appliquer à la description de la vie moderne, ou plutot d’_une_ vie moderne et plus abstraite, le procédé qu’il avait appliqué à la peinture de la vie ancienne, si étrangement pittoresque.” He speaks of Bertrand as “mon mystérieux et brillant modèle,” though, remembering the teaching of Poe, he adds that he is ashamed to have made something so different from _Gaspard de la Nuit_, since he holds that the highest honour of a poet is to accomplish exactly what he set out to perform. A writer who wrote prose poems good enough to be read “twenty times at least” by Baudelaire, good enough to suggest an imitation, a writer but for whom the _Petits Poèmes en Prose_ would not have been written, or would have been written differently, is more than a literary curiosity. I was led to examine his book, and, presently, to find an interest in the man himself as well as in his accomplishment. M. Anatole France was good enough to direct me in my search for information. My friend, M. Champion, of the Quai Malaquais, generously put his bibliographical knowledge at my disposal. The files of forgotten magazines and newspapers and essays by Sainte-Beuve, Charles Asselineau, and M. Leon Séché combined to build in my mind a portrait