Not all of the verses by Sully-Prudhomme are as pictorial as these selections. There is an unevenness more than usual in his meditative stanzas. While his popularity waned with the years and new rivals, he was long the honored bard of France, with name linked with that of Victor Hugo in his meditative poetry. The Nobel prize stimulated new interest among world readers; more translations and critical estimates appeared--and are still being issued. Maurice Baring in a recent book of criticism, _Punch and Judy and Other Essays_, has written words of succinct analysis of this French poet: he distinguishes him as “a poet who thinks and not a thinker who merely uses poetry for recreation.” He adds, of his simple yet fastidious form, “Other poets have had a more glowing imagination; his verse is neither exuberant in colour nor rich in sonorous combinations of sound. The grace of his verse is one of outline and not of colour; his compositions are distinguished by his subtle rhythm; his verse is as if carved in ivory, his music is like that of a unison of stringed instruments.”[15] FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL Poet of Provence The prize of 1904 has been awarded, one half to: Mistral, Frédéric, born 1830, died March 25, 1914: “for reason of the fresh originality, rich genius, and true artistry in his poetry that faithfully mirrors the nature and life of the people of his native country; and also with respect to his significant activity as Provençal philologist.”[16] Three years after the first Nobel prize in literature had been awarded to Sully-Prudhomme, it came again to a writer who is ranked among French authors, although he is distinctively of Provence, Frédéric Mistral. This poet of _Mireio_, a pastoral epic, if one may use the term, and the preserver of the Provençal language from literary oblivion, shared the financial award and the honor for 1904 with Echegaray, the Spanish dramatist, who is discussed in another chapter of this book. Mistral was seventy-four years old when this recognition came to him; he lived for ten years longer, wielding influence upon world literature and receiving reverential homage in his own Provence. His home in later years was in the same quiet town of Maillane, in the Bouches-du-Rhône where he was born in 1830.