There is an abundance of 'epical ennui' in _le Sang de la Coupe_ and _les Stalactites_; but the 'Nous n'irons plus au bois' and the charming epigram in which the poet paints a processional frieze of Hellenic virgins are high-water marks of verse. But, indeed, if Pierrot and Columbine were all the race, and the footlights might only change places with the sun, then were M. de Banville by way of being a Shakespeare. DOBSON Method and Effect. His style has distinction, elegance, urbanity, precision, an exquisite clarity. Of its kind it is as nearly as possible perfect. You think of Horace as you read; and you think of those among our own eighteenth century poets to whom Horace was an inspiration and an example. The epithet is usually so just that it seems to have come into being with the noun it qualifies; the metaphor is mostly so appropriate that it leaves you in doubt as to whether it suggested the poem or the poem suggested it; the verb is never in excess of the idea it would convey; the effect of it all is that 'something has here got itself uttered,' and for good. Could anything, for instance, be better, or less laboriously said, than this poet's remonstrance _To an Intrusive Butterfly_? The thing is instinct with delicate observation, so aptly and closely expressed as to seem natural and living as the facts observed: 'I watch you through the garden walks, I watch you _float_ between The _avenues_ of dahlia stalks, And _flicker_ on the green; You _hover_ round the garden seat, You _mount_, you _waver_. . . * * * * * Across the room _in loops of flight_ I watch you wayward go; * * * * * Before the bust you flaunt and flit-- * * * * * You _pause_, you _poise_, you _circle up_ Among my old Japan.'