A TMAGIC LIFE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LV, Issue 13929, 12 June 1909, Page 6

A TRAGIC LIFE.

Paul Verlaine, the French poet, has l>eon treated with justice more than tinged with mercy 111 a biography lateN published by M. Edmond Lepellotier. in this history of a strange genius the prison, the wine shop and the bus pit al loom pitifully large, and the confewiions of maudlin weakness and vice vie otten terrible. Yet Vorlanm, sober. «as gentle and soft, and loving abo\o the common. The biographer d< scribe* a picture, well known in I'iauce, entitled "Paul Verlaine at Home,'' which shows tho poet seutcd ut ;> i\ine shop with a glass of absinthe :it his elbow, and he says that if Paul had not often got drunk and been lodged in gaol, the materials for a Life w(.uld have been scant enough. \ ci - lame was born in 1844, and died in 18'.J6. Ho ramp of good provuu lal stock ; his tather was an army officer, hi.s mother a landed proprietress, and but for drink and raroiess habits i>.e poet might have heed 111 independent ease. He took the degree of Bachelor ot Letters, and at the outbreak of the Kranco-Priissian war he was a cleik, wild already a carouser of dreadful promise. Ho shouldered the gun ot a National, got tired, then tipsy, and went homo. Lopcllotior says tha! theie was but one "actual event" 111 Vi-r-laine's life, and that was his marriage. It ended very wretchedly in divor<o, .id' l never afterwards did VorlaHe 101 over his balance. The bad 111 him always had a very groat deal mo.c encouragement than Jie good, and ho never acquired the art of living l>v j his pen. He had visited London, ami, alter two years in a Belgian priso-i. wl'on all had turned against him, he went there auain. The iinprisonm- t had done something towards innilratirg habits of abstinence, and on his return to Km ncc he taught for a time in an errlesia.stiral college. Then lie turned farmer, and was about at. mio-(O-sful as was Artemiii Ward, and later he returned inevitably to P.mis and the "Quarter." He sank lower and lower, dragging a diseased leg fiom one drinking hell to another, . vl Lopolletier found him in a den at tho . bottom of a court, lying on the dnnp earth among a band of cut-throats. Tho harpies of the pavement descended on him whenever ho got a few francs horn a publisher. As a psychological problem Paul Verlaine will bo interesting to another generation. His bio- ' grnphor thinks that as a poet ho will ' always rank among the classic writers 1 of his country, t _ ]

Tho Melbourne Age sees a furl he: 1 lustration of the fact that Now /. Iland is no longer a land of proi i -o from tho Australian standpoint n> .1 return laid on tho table of the H< .I*. of Representatives in Melbourne 1, contly. From this it appears that < m of G4,3r4 persons of British origin d nutted to tho Commonwealth dvi 1 n: UMB, no fewer than "26,394 wont fi in Now Zealand. Tho arrivals from the United Kingdom wero 22,370. Of Hie others 3822 wont from South Afn 1, 2)42 from Canada and 2248 from ;iie South Sea Islands. Tho total mimbci of poisons who wore admitted to \ustraha from all quarters (without hi- n ' asked to pass tho dictation test) \\ »s TofiTQ. The fart that 2402 Chi nose >•><* tho Commonwonlth last jear is take; .is an indication that there is a f;i i!\ pionounood movement of Chinese « ir wards, though how it contrasts \ iM> tho flow inwards, illicit and othoiwi-e, the Customs authorities cannot d<imitolv ssty.a t v .