THEOPHILE GAUTIER.
There very recently died in Paris a man of genius whom his eulogists all made haste to proclaim a true poet. Many of them, indeed, spoke of Théophile Gautier as a great poet, and one, we remember, mentioned his last little volume, "Tableaux de Siége," as the crowning glory of the resistance to the Prussians. Gautier was indeed a poet and a strongly representative one—a 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. He has had imitators who have imitated everything but his spontaneity and his temper; and as they have therefore failed to equal him, we doubt whether the literature of our day presents so naturally
