Villiers de l'Isle Adam

Stendhal, Mallarmé, Georges Rodenbach, Rimbaud—that stepfather of symbolism —Emil Verhaeren—who is truly an elemental and disquieting force—Paul Adam, Maeterlinck, the late Remy de Gourmont—who contributed so much to contemporary thought in the making—Francis Jammes, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Renard, Samain, Saint-Georges de Bouhelier, Jules Laforgue—and how many others, to be found in the pages of Vance Thompson's French Portraits, which valuable study dates back to the middle of the roaring nineties.

But like Baudelaire, Barbey d'Aurévilly, Villiers de L'Isle Adam, Paul Verlaine, and Huysmans, Mr. Moore is one of those sons of Mother Church who give anxious pause to his former coreligionists.

Huysmans was a friend in need to Villiers de l'Isle Adam, and frequented the eccentric company of Barbey d'Aurévilly, in whose apartment he said that Paul Bourget was apt to pop out of a closet or a cloak.

He wrote of such widely diverging talents as Maeterlinck, Mallarmé, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, and Paul Adam; of Henri de Régnier and Jules Renard; of Huysmans and Jules Laforgue; the mysticism of Francis Poictevin's style and the imagery of Saint-Pol-Roux he defined, and he displays an understanding of the first symbolist poet, Arthur Rimbaud, while disliking the personality of that abnormal youth.

His glistening phosphorescent trail is over French poetry and he is the begetter of a school:—Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Carducci, Arthur Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue, Gabriel D'Annunzio, Aubrey Beardsley, Verhaeren, and many of the youthful crew.