IN a recently-published volume, Anatole France: critique littéraire,1 Mlle. Annette Antoniu gives a very closely-documented and, in the main, trustworthy, account of the intellectual and critical development of the great novelist. This work, however, confines itself to the consideration of Anatole France's pronouncements in his works of criticism and is, by the very nature of its subject, somewhat diffuse in its treatment. It may, therefore, be of some interest to study France's attitude towards poetry and poets as expressed in his novels and short-stories, in his volumes of essays and in his reminiscences of childhood, as well as in his conversations with some of the numerous “literary reporters” who, during the past decade, have been basking in the glory of the deceased master. Such an examination is of importance in view of the many bitter attacks that have been leveled at France by critics who are not content with attempting to expose what they consider to be the dangers inherent in his skepticism, and have left no stone unturned in the effort to prove that, both as man and as thinker, he was totally devoid of the moral sense. Thus, for example, in his Historie du Parnasse,2 M. Maurice Souriau would have us believe that France dealt treacherously by his erstwhile comrades, the Parnassians, and, more especially, by their principal leader, Leconte de Lisle.