Posies Choisies. Par Henri Fauvel. (Alphonse Lemerre, Paris. 3 francs.)—Readers
of the interesting preface to Poisies Choisies, which is the work of M. Armand Geste, will note that the verse of Doctor Henri Fauvel is warmly appreciated by his brother-poets. Messieurs Jules Lemaltre and Frederic Plessis have eulogised him in the Revue Blew and the Monde Poetique, and the late M. Jules Tallier has done likewise in La Cloche Illustree. The present is scarcely an age of medical bards, although Oliver Wendell Holmes may be cited as one who will go down to posterity. Dr. J. Addington Symonds, whose memory is still green in the West of England, stated at a meeting of the British Medical Association held at Bristol in 1863 that formerly if a medical man was suspected of an ode or a sonnet the jeopardy was extreme, but that of recent years public opinion had changed for the better. Bat, as a rule, circumstances militate against the combination of the lyre and the lancet. M. Geste thus expresses his sun- prize that Henri Fauvel should have found time to become a poet :—.• Just think ! Hospital surgeon, emigration medical officer_ senior doctor to the fire-brigade, summoned by telephone day and night, never getting unbroken rest, how has he found time to be a poet, to dream dreams and reveal them in har- monious, limpid verse? But a poet, ay, and a good poet, too, he is, in spite of every contending difficulty." M. Fauvel is justly applauded for his sincerity, morality, and purity. It is perhaps a fault that as a whole the verse of this Norman poet is more suggestive of the rigours of winter than the summer beauties of the country of his birth. A strong tinge of melancholy is mani- fest in such poems as " Tristesse " and "Lied," and still more so in a realistic sonnet to M. Eugene Torquet, which commences
thus :— " Rien n'est triste comme l'hiver. La neige par flacons tournoie."
But this mournful vein does not run through the entire collec- tion. Some love poems are exempt from it; and so are some graceful lines on the "Gavotte," referring to its having been danced by Madame Recamier, and by Marie Antoinette at Trianon. M. Fauvel has introduced into this volume his verse preface to a prose translation of "Maud" which he published more than ten years ago. The absolute sincerity of his admira- tion of the late Laureate is beyond question. After stating that there are many English poets keenly alive to the mystery of life, and instancing Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, and Browning, he speaks of Tennyson as "le plus haul, le plus pur, et le plus inspir6," and as one whose whole soul is the splendour of truth. Beadda:-
II
eat dour, tumnd le ccenr eat las et la penses Par trop d'impressions contraires traversee, Qnand, veule,Tame hisite et no sent plus le prix De is gloire et des grands poemes entrepris, 11 est dour, il eat donx, pour foyer sit chimere, De prendre on de ces dieux, Virgile, Dante, Homere On Tennyson, et, travaillant jusqu'au matin, De rechauffer son Arne it leur esprit lointain."
There is a dignity about M. Fauvel's verse which, coupled as it is with the outcome of a vivid imagination, should recommend this volume to readers of French poetry.
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