268
in peaks; the word is used in the French colonies. 21. VARANGUE, a kind of porch, cf. verandah.
LE MANCHY. A manchy is a kind of sedan-chair, or litter.
217. LE FRAIS MATIN DORAIT. 28. LETCHIS, a tropical plant.
218. TRE FILA D'ORO. The words of the title, which is Italian, are found in the final line of each stanza, trois fils d'or.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.
1821-1867.
His was a perverse nature, endowed with rare gifts which he persistently abused. Pure physical sensation supplied a large part of the material for his poetry, and among the senses it was especially the one that has the remotest association with ideas that he drew upon most constantly--the sense of smell. In his desperate search for new and strange sensations he went the round of violent and exhausting dissipations, and as his senses flagged he spurred them with all sorts of stimulants. Meanwhile he observed himself curiously ; the result in his poems is an impression of peculiarly wilful depravity. They reflect his physical and mental experience, are always without sobriety, often lacking in sanity. The title, les Fleurs du mal, is both appropriate and suggestive; they invite no epithets so much as "unhealthy" and "unwholesome."
He was extremely fond of Edgar A. Poe, and translated his works.
Works: les Fleurs du mal_, 1857, new edition, 1861; Oeuvres posthumes_, 1887.
For reference : Gautier, _Portraits et souvenirs littéraires_; E. Crépet, _Oeuvres posthumes et correspondance inédite de Ch. Baudelaire, précédées d'une étude biographique_, 1887; Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine, 1883, F. Brunetière in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Sept. 1st, 1892; Henry James, _French Poets and Novelists_, London, 1884; George Saintsbury, Miscellaneous Essays, London, 1892.
The poems given here are all from les Fleurs du mal.
221. 19. BOUCHER; Fran&cced