French Portraits

e of Emile Verhaeren, in the fervid prose of Georges Eekhoud, there broods this vague melancholy,? the perfume of dead lavender and faded flowers. With all this the old robust manner is not dead. This Verhaeren is a Berserker of verse. This Eekhoud has a grip of steel on life. In this renascence the painters led the way. From the viewpoint of literature, Belgium was a desert before 1880. Camille Lemonnier, to be sure, had written three or four of his wonderful novels,? " Un Coin de Village," " Les Charniers," " Un Male"; but he was as one crying in the night. In the year I have mentioned there came up to Brussels (from Louvain and Ghent and Bruges and many an Old World town) a band of young men, who carried the flag of la jeune Bel- gique. They were defiantly young. They wore amaranthine waistcoats and flying scarves. Theyhad theories,? art for art, art for the beautiful. They founded a review. They fought for their ideas. They attacked the enemy,? this indifferent and dense public that is always the enemy of young poets. They were cruel, unjust, cynical, as only very young men can be. They entered literature like a band of Sioux. All this was well enough in its way, and was, indeed, inevitable. Belgian literature had become a dull trade for dull gazetteers and duller professors. Had this young Sibyl appeared without contortions, no one would have believed in her inspiration. Among the founders of the new review were Max Waller and Iwan Gilkin. The former di...