When I think of Paul Verlaine I invariably recall Oscar Wilde, despite or because of the abysmal dissimilarity of the two personalities. The sincere, ingenuous, all-loving child Paul, and the thoroughly artificial, paradoxical Oscar; the typical Bohemian with the criminal-face like that of Dostoevsky, and the salon-idol, the refined and gorgeous bearer of the sun-flower. Fate had somewhat reconciled the two contrasts. Both had been "sinners," both were condemned by society and imprisoned, both had "repented"--one in _De Profundis_ where the haughty humility of the self-enamored artist stirs us with its artificial beauty; the other in the primitive-Christian--nay, Catholic--_Sagesse_: _Mon Dieu m'a dit: Mon fils, il faut m'aimer ...._ Some months ago in reviewing Edmond Lepelletier's voluminous book, (_Paul Verlaine: His Life and Work_) I remarked that the Poet of Absinthe and Violets was still awaiting his Boswell. My view has not changed after reading Wilfrid Thorley's monograph on Verlaine; but my wish for an adequate biography of the signer of _Romances sans Paroles_ has now become counterbalanced by an earnest prayer that the memory of the poet may be saved from such indelicate manipulators as Mr. Thorley. Why this respectable Englishman should have attempted to treat the life of the most wayward French poet since Villon can be explained by no other reason than that it was a case of "made to order." When a Velasquez is pierced by a fanatical suffragette the whole civilized world is roused to indignation; but when an honest philistine unceremoniously puffs his cheap smoke into the face of a dead poet there is not a single protest against that sort of vandalism. Fear of the editor's blue pencil restrains me from putting my attitude more outspokenly.