As every one knows, from about 1870 to 1890, Sully-Prudhomme was, without a rival, the favourite living poet of the French. Victor Hugo was there, of course, until 1885--and posthumously until much later--but he was a god, and the object of idolatry. All who loved human poetry, the poetry of sweetness and light, took Sully-Prudhomme to their heart of hearts. The _Stances et Poèmes_ of 1865 had perhaps the warmest welcome that ever the work of a new poet had in France. Théophile Gautier instantly pounced upon _Le Vase Brisé_ (since too-famous) and introduced it to a thousand school-girls. Sainte-Beuve, though grown old and languid, waked up to celebrate the psychology and the music of this new poetry, so delicate, fresh and transparent. An unknown beauty of extreme refinement seemed to have been created in it, a beauty made up of lucidity, pathos and sobriety. Readers who are now approaching seventy will not forget with what emotion they listened, for instance, to that dialogue between the long-dead father and the newly-buried son, which closes:-- "J' ai laissé ma sœur et ma mère Et les beaux livres que j' ai lus; Vous n'avez pas de bru, mon père, On m'a blesse, je n'aime plus." "De tes aïeux compte le nombre, Va baiser leurs fronts inconnus, Et viens faire ton lit dans l'ombre A côté des derniers venus. "Ne pleure pas, dors dans l'argile En espérant le grand reveit." "O père, qu'il est difficile De ne plus penser au soleil!" This body of verse, to which was presently added fresh collections--_Les Epreuves_ (1886), _Les Vaines Tendresses_ (1875), _Le Prisme_ (1886),--was welcomed by the elder Sanhedrim, and still more vociferously and unanimously by the younger priesthood of criticism. It pleased the superfine amateurs of poetry, it was accepted with enthusiasm by the thousands who enjoy without analysing their enjoyment. In 1880, to have questioned that Sully-Prudhomme was a very noble poet would have been like challenging Tennyson in 1870, or Cowley in 1660. Jules Lemaître claimed that he was the greatest artist in symbols that France had ever produced. Brunetière, so seldom moved by modern literature, celebrated with ardour the author of _Les Vaines Tendresses_ as having succeeded better than any other writer who had ever lived in translating into perfect language the dawn and the twilight of emotion. That Gaston Paris and M. Anatole France competed in lofty praise of the lyrics of Sully-Prudhomme, is perhaps less remarkable than that Paul Verlaine, whom all the younger schools still look upon as their apostle and guide, declared, in reviewing _Les Ecuries d'Augias_, that the force of style of Sully-Prudhomme was excelled only by the beauty of his detail. It is needless to multiply examples of the unanimous praise given by the divers schools of criticism to Sully-Prudhomme up to about 1890. His was, perhaps, the least contested literary glory of France.