ural
selection and the survival of the fittest, and bathybius, which was then
all the fashion; so I promptly devoted myself to De Gu['e]rin.

I had already found great pleasure in the "Journal" of his sister
Eug['e]nie. The "Journal" ought never to be allowed to go out of fashion,
and probably it is only out of fashion in those circles which Mr.
Mencken so scorns, that devote themselves to imitations of Marie
Bashkirtseff or Sarah McLean. I had begun to enjoy the flavour of the
calm life of Eug['e]nie at La Cayla when I found it necessary, in order to
understand the allusions, to plunge again into the journals, letters,
and poems of Maurice de Gu['e]rin. Thus it happened that I had fallen upon
"Le Centaure" first. It is very short, as everybody knows. It was to me
the most appealing poem I had ever read.

Keats's Greece seems somehow to be a Greece too full of modern colour,
too unclassical. This was a mistake, of course, due to the fact that all
my Greek reading had been filtered through professors and textbooks; and
all my Greek seeing had been centred on pale white statues. It did not
occur to me then--at least I did not know it--that the great Greek
statues were not colourless, and that at Delphi there were statues that
glowed with the hues of life. Strange to say, though "Le Centaure"
seemed to me to be Greek in the classical sense, yet it palpitated with
human emotion. Who that has read it can forget the simplicity of the
opening? Says the Centaur:

I received my birth in the fastnesses of these mountains. As the
stream of this valley of which the primitive drops run from the
rocks which weep in a deep grotto, the first moment of my life fell
among the darkness of a secluded place in which the silence was not
troubled. When our mothers come near the time of their deliverance,
they flee towards the caverns, and in the depth of the most remote,
in the darkest of shadows, their children are born without a moan
and the fruits of their womb are as silent as themselves. Their
strong milk enables us to overcome without weakness or a doubtful
struggle the first difficulties of life; however, we go out from
our caves later than you from your cradles. It is understood among
us that we must hide and envelope the first moments of existence as
days filled by the gods. My growth followed its course almost among
the shadows where I was born. The depth of my