his true character, and accuses the reader of being not a whit better:—
"Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!"
He purposes, he says, on his way (the way of all humanity) down to absolute Hell, to pass in review a few of the horrors he sees on his path. His way lies—
"Parmi les chacals, les panthères, les lices,
Les singes, les scorpions, les vautours, Ies serpents,
Les monstres glapissants, hurlants, grognants, rampants
Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices!"
And of all these monsters the most infernal is—L'Ennui! The very next poem sweetly chronicles the birth of the Poet, whose mother, affrighted and blaspheming, stretches her hands to God, crying: "Cursed be that night of fleeting pleasure, when my womb conceived my punishment!" In the next poem the poet is compared to the albatross, splendid on the wing, but almost unable to walk; and the comparison strikes me as very applicable to this poet himself, only that his whole book is a waddling, unwieldy, and unsuccessful attempt to begin a flight. In a number of short lyrics he talks of poetry, music, and life, without affording us much edification (save in a really powerful picture called "Don Juan in Hell") till he begins to sing, not the delights of the flesh, but the morbid feelings of satiety. Accustomed to the Swinburnian female, we at once recognise her here in the original, as the serpent that dances, the cat that scratches and cries, and the large-limbed sterile creature who never conceives. She "bites," of course:—
"Pour exercer les dents à ce jeu singulier,
Il se faut chaque jour un cœur au râtelier!"
