at WT ete ich • sody and the glorification of industry and traffic. But I. Verhaeren is various to the verge of confusion; he can even be restful, as in Les Visages de la Vie' and Les Heures d'après-midi.' He has said of himself: Fendity is the most certain quality of M. Verhaeren, Those destiny is perhaps to be the earliest of a series d'international poets. Symbolism is most faithfully represented by M. VieléGriffin. The temperament we may discern through his evocations of the seasons and their pomp, and through the narratives which resume his vision of an ideal world, is delicate, wistful, and fastidious; and the virginal figures upon which he prefers to gaze seem all to symbolise the expectancy of candid souls before the marvel of life and the secret of death. His verse is limpid and melodious even where most its scheme escapes or disconcerts us. The laisse and not the line is apparently the principle of coherence in his poetry. Walt Whitman, whom he formerly presented to the French public in translation, has been supposed to have suggested his broken rhythms. We cannot for our part see any resemblance between the two systems, of which one is surely licable by a mere deficiency and much reading of the le; but it is probably not fanciful to discover the mical influence of a great English poet in such strophes that these from M. Vielé-Griffin's last book of lyrics-' Au L-which it would be worse than useless to read as sylabic French verse, though, by a curious feat of equivocation, they are not absolutely rebellious to ordinary olo intima that rt of t in Wa d alu 7 faci ghos an ris measure: 'Son temple est vaste et morose; La vague roule et s'effondre, Of other symbolists, M. Gustave Kahn-the poet of strange Asian incantations-seems to have deserted poetry; the symbolism of M. Moréas was always provisional; and M. Henri de Regnier's has found, in such emblems as time has appropriated, a sufficient reflection of his personality. M. Moréas has the adaptability of his race. He began with a series of experiments of which the most promising were plainly inspired by medieval lyrics and romances. He has since been seized by an enthusiasm for the sixteenth century, which has borne the most delicate and luscious fruit in a very distinguished elegiac poetry-so distinguished that no one, without reluctance, would class Les Stances' among pastiches. His limpid and stately paraphrase of the 'Iphigenia in Aulis' ought also to be mentioned. M. de Regnier in his most rebellious days had visibly an ideal of definite form before him, and displayed a real gift of structure; and in his later works he has tended more and more to a conformity which is yet emancipated from the terror of hiatus and the lingering superstition of a merely apparent medial cæsura, and does not scruple to intercalate a rare and discreet assonance among his rimes. More and more clearly M. de Regnier, in La Cité des Eaux-a volume dedicated to the regretful and still majestic charm of Versailles-and in his latest poems, 'La Sandale Ailée, shows himself the depository, for the moment, of the great manner in French poetry. Do not the following stanzas justify this praise? 'Je vous aime en ces lieux dont vous êtes la gloire, Et dont le souvenir sera dans ma mémoire Que vous ayez été La douceur de ces jours que votre doux visage A vus fuir un à un Avec leur clair soleil ou leur tiède nuage, Car c'est vous dont la voix, le rire ou le silence Cette mer calme et ce beau ciel auxquels je pense C'est là que vous marchez lentement sur le sable, Et sachant qu'il n'est rien qui soit plus désirable Vous vous baissez, malgré les pointes importunes Et près d'eux vous cueillez l'œillet mauve des dunes These are by no means all the living poets over whose work, if space did not fail us, it would be a pleasure to Inger. There are men still young whose early achieveat is rich in the promise of a poetry less distracted by enflicting ideals of expression, less nebulous, and not less personal than that which characterised the end of the ineteenth century. MM. Francis Jammes, Paul Fort, Fernand Gregh, Charles Guérin, are accomplished writers of verse who are not content to be echoes, and who have profited by a period of audacious and uncertain gropings. M. Paul Fort has even opened limitless horizons with his 'Ballades françaises,' which he calls 'prose poems '--with some perversity, since his instrument is simply the verse of a scholar cunning enough to reproduce, without losing his real spontaneity, the very irregularities of that popular poetry in which the French provinces have always been so rich. But what has been said here may suffice to give an impression of the vitality which the poetical spirit mainains in the France of to-day. The English reader who sires to explore the inexhaustible variety of its protations will turn for guidance to the treasury of Walch, and discover for himself which of the newer pets are best worth a leisurely perusal. Our own object to recommend this modern French poetry more ecially to those of our countrymen who still imagine the French people and the French tongue too literal or to precise or too artificial or too work-a-day to excel in the higher reaches of the art, and who have hitherto been satisfied to repeat those stale and inconsiderate commonplaces on the subject, which are at once the pretext and the illustration of an undeserved neglect. F. Y. ECCLES. Art. 7.-EARLY FLEMISH PAINTERS. 1. Hubert and John van Eyck, their life and work. By W. H. James Weale. London: Lane, 1908. 2. Exposition de tableaux flamands des 14°, 15°, et 16° siècles; Catalogue critique précédé d'une introduction sur l'identité de certains maîtres anonymes. By Georges H. de Loo. Bruges Desclée, de Brouwer et Cie, 1902. 3. Meisterwerke der niederländischen Malerei des xv. und xvi. Jahrhunderts auf der Ausstellung zu Brügge, 1902. By Max J. Friedländer. Munich: Bruckmann, 1903. 4. Gerard David und seine Schule. By Eberhard von Bodenhausen. Munich: Bruckmann, 1905. THE study and appreciation of the works of artists who painted during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in the Low Countries has made a notable advance in these latter days. At no time, it is true, were lovers of art blind to the merits of the best pictures of the school; but lovers of art were few, and their admiration for 'Primitives,' as it is now the fashion to call them, was, to say the least, lukewarm. It was not till after the middle of the nineteenth century that serious study, as it is now understood, began to be given to the works and records of the painters we are discussing. Vague admiration and the repetition of ill-founded legends then slowly gave place to sound research. Here and there a student actually explored archives and discovered wonderful things. The account-books of the Dukes of Burgundy were read; the surviving records of some of the guilds were consulted; the archives of churches and towns began to give up their secrets. The payments to named painters for works still existing, and with certainty to be identified, laid the foundation for actual knowledge of authorship. It became possible to identify the work of a given painter by the style that could be proved to be his. Thus genuine works could be isolated out of the mass of false or random ascriptions. Among the hard-working students to whose labours present-day art-lovers owe so much, none has been more meritorious than Mr W. H. James Weale. Resident at Bruges, he devoted his spare time to reading the archives of the place and examining all the early Flemish pictures ets. ting, chive and of en t isers on! he could discover. Already in 1859 he had published an archæological guide-book to Belgium. From 1863 to 1876 he issued at regular intervals 'Le Beffroi,' a magazine which is a mine of discoveries relating to Flemish art and artists. He it was who recreated Gerard David, and did much to disengage Memling from confused obscurity. That in 1908 he should still be able to issue the monumental work on the brothers Van Eyck, cited at the head of this article, is matter for very warm congratulation to the last survivor of the pioneers. The chronological bibliography of the Van Eycks, appended to the work in question, will enable any interested person to see at a glance who were the other workers in the same feld, and the nature and date of their discoveries. The first stage of the investigation may be considered to have been summed up in the second edition of Crowe and Caralcaselle's comprehensive work, published in 1872, the first serious English work on the subject.' Towards the end of the nineteenth century research in the direction we are considering enlisted the energies of many competent scholars; and by this time the great aid rendered by photography began to make itself felt. Among those who, besides carefully studying the actual pictures, and making themselves acquainted with every written record accessible to them, have used photographic ords to best advantage, Dr Friedländer of Berlin and Dr Hulin of Ghent are in the highest degree deserving of mention. At the present day they stand easily first amongst men of their generation as authorities upon the ly Flemish school. Though, as is characteristic of the modern student, neither of them has as yet produced any prehensive work on the subject, both have at various affected the whole area of their study by illuming articles or papers on points of large significance. The exhibition of Flemish works of art of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries held at Bruges in 12 gave a new impetus to the study. Other exhibitions of great though minor importance have folloved-notably one at the Guildhall of London in 1906, and the Golden Fleece' Exhibition at Bruges in the following year. The publication of reproductions of pictures, manuscripts, and other works of art of the school has gone on apace, so that now a very large mass ation ssible tyle th could ptions labou een mo sident archit picture |