way; he has not time to go round, and no respect for trespass-boards, and so he becomes the enfant terrible of literature, playing pranks (as in that sonnet of the Vowels), knocking down barriers for the mere amusement of the thing, getting all the possible advantage of his barbarisms in mind and conduct. And so, in life, he is first of all conspicuous as a disorderly liver, a revolter against morals as against prosody, though we may imagine that, in his heart, morals meant as little to him, one way or the other, as prosody. Later on, his revolt seems to be against civilisation itself, as he disappears into the deserts of Africa. And it is, if you like, a revolt against civilisation, but the revolt is instinctive, a need of the organism; it is not doctrinal, cynical, a conviction, a sentiment.
Always, as he says révant univers fantastiques, he is conscious of the danger as well as the ecstasy of that divine imitation; for he says: "My life will always be too vast to be given up wholly to force and beauty." J'attends Dieu avec gourmandise, he cries, in a fine rapture; and then, sadly enough: "I have created all the feasts, all the triumphs, all the
