There very recently died in Paris a man of genius whom his eulogists all made haste to proclaim a true poet. Gautier was indeed a poet and a strongly representative oneโa French poet in his limitations even more than in his gifts; and he remains an interesting example of how, even when the former are surprisingly great, a happy application of the latter may produce the most delightful works.
Completeness on his own scale is to our mind the idea he most instantly suggests. Such as his finished task now presents him, he is almost sole of his kind. His great merit was that he understood himself so perfectly and handled himself so skilfully. Even more than Alfred de Musset with whom the speech had a shade of mock-modesty he might have said that, if his glass was not large, at least it was all his own glass.
As an artist, he never knew an hour's weakness or failed to strike the note that should truly render his idea. He was, indeed, of literary artists the most accomplished. There are a host of reasons why we should not compare Gautier with such a poet as Browning ; and yet there are several why we should.
If we do so, with all proper reservations, we may wonder whether we are the richer, or, at all events, the better entertained, as a poet's readers should before all things be, by the clear, undiluted strain of Gautier's minor key, or by the vast, grossly commingled volume of utterance of the author of " Men and Women. But if there are sermons in stones, there are profitable reflections to be made even on Theophile Gautier; notably this oneโthat a man's supreme use in the world is to master his intellectual instrument and play it in perfection.
There is, perhaps, scant apparent logic in treating a closed career more tenderly than an open one; but we suspect it belongs to the finer essence of good criticism to do so, and, at any rate, we find our judgment of the author of the " Voyage en Espagne " and the " Capitaine Fracasse " turning altogether to unprotesting kindness.
