This, then, is what I read in the so excessively obscure and unintelligible _L'Après-Midi d'un Faune_; and, accompanied as it is with a perfect suavity of language and melody of rhythm, I know not what more a poem of eight pages could be expected to give. It supplies a simple and direct impression of physical beauty, of harmony, of colour; it is exceedingly mellifluous, when once the ear understands that the poet, instead of being the slave of the alexandrine, weaves his variations round it like a musical composer. Unfortunately, _L'Après-Midi_ was written fifteen years ago, and his theories have grown upon M. Mallarmé as his have on Mr. George Meredith. In the new collection of _Vers et Prose_ I miss some pieces which I used to admire--in particular, surely, _Placet_, and the delightful poem called _Le Guignon_. Perhaps these were too lucid for the worshippers. In return, we have certain allegories which are terribly abstruse, and some subfusc sonnets. I have read the following, called _Le Tombeau d'Edgard Poe_, over and over and over. I am very stupid, but I cannot tell what it _says_. In a certain vague and vitreous way I think I perceive what it _means_; and we are aided now by its being punctuated, which was not the case in the original form in which I met with it. But, "O my Brothers, ye the Workers," is it not still a little difficult? _Tel qu'en Lui-même enfin l'éternité le change,_ _Le Poëte suscite avec un glaive nu_ _Son siècle épouvanté de n'avoir pas connu_ _Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix étrange!_ _Eux, comme un vil sursaut d'hydre oyant jadis l'ange_ _Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu_ _Proclamèrent très haut le sortilège bu_ _Dans le flot sans honneur de quelque noir mélange._ _Du sol et de la nue hostiles, ô grief!_ _Si notre idée avec ne sculpte un bas-relief_ _Dont la tombe de Poe éblouissante s'orne_ _Calme bloc ici-bas chu d'un désastre obscur_ _Que ce granit du moins montre à jamais sa borne_ _Aux noirs vols du Blasphème épars dans le futur._ Of the prose of M. Mallarmé, I can here speak but briefly. He has not published very much of it; and it is all polished and cadenced like his verse, with strange transposed adjectives and exotic nouns fantastically employed. It is even more distinctly to be seen in his prose than in his verse that he descends directly from Baudelaire, and in the former that streak of Lamartine that marks his poems is lacking.