Page:French Poets and Novelists.djvu/70

Rh final volume is as full and clear as in the "Voyage en Espagne."

Gautier's stories and novels belong, for the most part, to his prime; he reached his climax as a storyteller ten years ago, with "Le Capitaine Fracasse." His productions in this line are not numerous, for dramatic invention with him was evidently not abundant. As was to be supposed, the human interest in his tales is inferior to the picturesque. They remind us of those small cabinet paintings of the contemporary French school, replete with archæological details as to costume and furniture, which hang under glass in immense gilt frames and form the delight of connoisseurs. Gautier's figures are altogether pictorial; he cared for nothing and knew nothing in men and women but the epidermis. With this, indeed, he was marvellously acquainted, and he organized in its service a phraseology as puzzlingly various as the array of pots and brushes of a coiffeur. His attitude towards the human creature is, in a sublimated degree, that of a barber or tailor. He anoints and arranges and dresses it to perfection; but he deals only in stuffs and colours. His fable is often pretty enough; but one imagines it always written in what is called a studio light—on the corner of a table littered with brushes and frippery. The young woman before the