This false simplicity can be
quite subtle. It is compounded of worship of trees and birds and
contemporary poets in about equal proportions; it is sicklied over at
times with a quite perceptible varnish of modernity, and at other times
with what looks to be technical skill, but generally proves to be a
fairly clumsy reminiscence of somebody else's technical skill. The
negative qualities of this _simplesse_ are, however, the most obvious;
the poems imbued with it are devoid of any emotional significance
whatever. If they have an idea it leaves you with the queer feeling that
it is not an idea at all, that it has been defaced, worn smooth by the
rippling of innumerable minds. Then, spread in a luminous haze over
these compounded elements, is a fundamental right-mindedness; you feel,
somehow, that they might have been very wicked, and yet they are very
good. There is nothing disturbing about them; _ils peuvent etre mis dans
toutes les mains_; they are kind, generous, even noble. They sympathise
with animate and inanimate nature.
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