The Hound:

In the second paragraph of the story, Lovecraft speaks much of poets and artists. The symbolists were a French literary clique at the end of the 19th century (the generation that predated HPL) who reacted to the naturalism and realism schools with impressionism, and many were poets who experimented with free verse.

pre-Raphaelites founded by Dante Rossetti in 1848. These artists took the medieval detail work and exhumed it and recast it into even more precise detail.

The two were quite opposite except that they exagerated their themes.

Decadents were alos late 19th century authors who emphasized the macabre. They followed the ideals of the symbolists and used Baudelaire as their muse.

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who translated his hero - Poe - into French. HPL mentions Baudelaire again in Herbert West:Reanimator. He admired the "Flowers of Evil" poem by B.

B. was quoted by HPL to Wilfred Talman, "...have you ever tasted young children's brains? They're delightful and taste exactly like walnuts."

Extracted from notes in More Annotated Lovecraft, Joshi & Cannon, Dell, 1999.