ss inspection, you can, in a sense, reconstruct for yourself an
idea of the works of Edgar Saltus. One finds therein the same
unicorns, the same fabulous monsters, the same virgins on the rocks,
the same exotic and undreamed of flora and fauna, the same mystic
paganism, the same exquisitely jewelled workmanship. One can find
further analogies in the Aubrey Beardsley of "Under the Hill," in the
elaborate stylized irony of Max Beerbohm. Surely not provincials
these, but just as surely artists.

Moreover Saltus's style may be said to possess American
characteristics. It is dashing and rapid, and as clear as the water in
Southern seas. The man has a penchant for short and nervous sentences,
but they are never jerky. They explode like so many firecrackers and
remind one of the great national holiday!... Nevertheless Edgar Saltus
should have been born in France.

His essays, whether they deal with literary criticism, history,
religion (which is almost an obsession with this writer),
devil-worship, or cooking, are pervaded by that rare quality, charm.
Somewhere he quotes a French aphorism:

_"Etre riche n'est pas l'affaire,
Toute l'affaire est de charmer,"_

which might be applied to his own work. There is a deep and beneficent
guile in the simplicity of his style, as limpid as a brook, and yet,
as over a brook, in its overtones hover a myriad of sparkling
dragon-flies and butterflies; in its depths lie a plethora of trout.
He deals with the most obstruse and abstract subjects with such ease
and grace, without for one moment laying aside the badge of authority,
that they assume a mysterious fascination to catch the eye of the
passerby. In his fictions he has sometimes cultivated a more hectic
style, but that in itself constitutes one of the bases of its
richness. Scarcely a word but evokes an image, a strange, bizarre
image, often a complication of images. He is never afraid of the
colloquial, never afraid of slang even, and he often weaves lovely
patterns with obsolete or technical words. These lines, in which
Saltus paid tribute to Gautier, he might, with equal justice, have
applied to himself: "No one could torment a fancy more delicately than
he; he had the gift of adjective; he scented a new one afar like a
truffle; and from the Morgue of the dictionary he dragged forgotten
beauties. He dowered the language of his day with every tint of dawn
and every convulsion of sunset; he invented metaphors that were wo