Maeterlinck is the best known of these modern Belgian writers, for many of his plays have been well translated into English, and some have been produced with great success in this country. He wrote at first in Flemish, but soon changed to French. I admire his symbolic and allegorical language, so mysterious and full of charm. It is said of his earlier poems that "they require a key and are not literature but algebra." Maeterlinck "has the happy faculty of making people think they think." Apropos of this mysticism of Maeterlinck's I may give the bon mot of a witty Frenchman in regard to the Jeune Ecole Belge. He said that their ambition was to write obscurely, and if the first writing seemed easy to understand, they would scratch it out, and try again. At the second attempt, if no one could understand it but the writer--that was still too simple. If the public could not understand the third, nor the writer himself, it was quite perfect. Maurice Maeterlinck was born on August 29, 1862. As a boy, he lived at Oostacker, in Flanders, and was sent to the College of Sainte Barbe, a Jesuit school, where he studied for seven years. Among his friends in this college was Jean Grégoire le Roi, who later became a well-known poet. Even in those days Maeterlinck contributed to a literary review, and like Verhaeren, he studied for the bar. At the age of twenty-four he went to Paris, where he continued his friendship with le Roi. Maeterlinck had a thin, harsh voice, which was much against him as a lawyer, and he soon gave up that profession and turned his entire attention to literature. He is short, stocky, Flemish in appearance, but is a dreamer, shy, solitary, and moody. [Illustration: MAURICE MAETERLINCK.] In 1889, his first book of poems, "Serres Chaudes," was published. After this he returned to Oostacker, and when he was not writing tended his bees, which have always interested him. In reading his earlier poems, I find they are principally concerned with souls, hothouses, and hospitals. Some of them have a strange prophetic note, and are also good examples of his style.[9] [9] Translated by Edward Thomas. This is an extract from "The Soul": "And lo, it seems I am with my mother, Crossing a field of battle. They are burying a brother-in-arms at noon, While the sentinels are snatching a meal." The same strain is found in this bit from "The Hospital": "All the lovely green rushes of the banks are in flames And a boat full of wounded men is tossing in the moonlight! All the king's daughters are out in a boat in the storm! And the princesses are dying in a field of hemlock!" Here is another passage. Does it not make one wonder what its meaning can be?