Theophile Gautier (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Theophile Gautier Large proportion of them who, like T heophzle are polygraphes. Our ancestors mo; e briefly termed them hacks, and, sznce Dr. Johnson, or, at least, since Southey, there has been no hack so' distinguished as The'ophile. His Pegasus was early broken into harness, and his biographer, M Maxime du Camp, like himself, is constantly regretting this bondage. Perhaps too many laments are uttered over this misfortune like other men, T he'ophile Gautier did what he could, and what it was in him to do. He was a poet, indeed, and we are asked to believe that, had the State aided him with an adequate pension, his place as a poet would have been higher, his poetic work greater in bulk, and nobler in quality. But this may well be doubted. The man of letters in Gautier was stronger than the poet had it notbeen so, probably he would have given himself more freely and with a stricter loyalty to the Muse. A writer in whom the poet is supreme, a writer like Wordsworth, or Tennyson, will take poverty for his bride, disdaining the seductions of labour which is easier and better paid. To both of these Englishmen fortune proved kind, after years of self-denial. A s a rule, at least in England, the poet has been a man of leisure, or if, like Burns, he lived by the labour of his hands, he wrote poetry in his hours of freedom, without hope of practical reward. The circumstances of his life and his necessities made Gautier a jour nalist very probably (or rather, certainly) he did not even possess the pittance on which Words worth and Tennyson cultivated verse with an exclusive devotion. But we feel a conviction that, if Gautier had been more ardently and essentially a poet, he, too, would have found or made a way by which he might devote himself to this art. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.