SOURCE: "Paul Verlaine," in Verlaine: A Study in Parallels, University of Toronto Press, 1969, pp. 228-40.

In the following essay, Carter surveys Verlaine 's career.

Had anyone present at the funeral been asked why he admired the dead man, he would probably have answered that Verlaine carried on the work of Baudelaire, added new themes and techniques to French poetry, and freed it from the shackles of tradition. Such was his reputation during his last years. . . .

If we view these opinions nowadays with a rather sceptical eye it is not because they are false, but because they imply a kind of progress: that after Verlaine, and through him, French verse would be better than ever. Eighty years have passed, and such has not been the case. The exact reverse is closer to the truth: Verlaine, with [Arthur] Rimbaud and [Stéphane] Mallarmé, was the last great French poet. There...