In one form or another, the issue of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes is forever recurring in French literature. Whether the various forms of literature, and in particular poetry and the drama, shall follow the models offered by classical antiquity or shall resolutely draw their inspiration from contemporary civilization, is a question that has more than once caused passionate argument and unloosed floods of eloquence. The problem rose again toward the middle of the last century. It has been customary to say that there was at that time a reaction against the romanticists (i. e. the moderns) resulting in the establishment of the Parnassian school whose spirit was largely classical. That, however, is not the whole truth. At the time when Leconte de Lisle, Ménard, and others were struggling for recognition as poets, there existed also a group which, far from condemning the romanticists as too modern, considered them not sufficiently modern, and called for a reform in French poetry through a utilization of modern industry as a source of inspiration. The contrast between this group and the Parnassians is even more striking than that between either of them and the romanticists. The chief object of this article is to show how the suggestion of a rapprochement between poetry and modern industry came to be made, and to relate the controversy which followed. The latter centered in a book little known today: Les Chants Modernes by Maxime Du Camp. The secondary object of this paper is, therefore, to place Les Chants Modernes in their true historical light.