His mind is so comprehensive that he has written books on
philosophy, on the theatre, on classical painting,[124] as well as
scientific essays,[125] volumes of verse, and even plays.[126]

[Footnote 124: C. Saint-Saens, _Note sur les decors de theatre dans
l'antiquite romaine_, 1880, where he discusses the mural paintings of
Pompeii.]

[Footnote 125: Lecture on the Phenomena of Mirages, given to the
Astronomical Society of France in 1905.]

[Footnote 126: C. Saint-Saens, _La Crampe des Ecrivains_, a comedy in
one act, 1892.]

He has been able to take up all sorts of things, I will not say with
equal skill, but with discernment and undeniable ability. He shows a
type of mind rare among artists and, above all, among musicians. The two
principles that he enunciates and himself follows out are: "Keep free
from all exaggeration" and "Preserve the soundness of your mind's
health."[127] They are certainly not the principles of a Beethoven or a
Wagner, and it would be rather difficult to find a noted musician of the
last century who had applied them. They tell us, without need of
comment, what is distinctive about M. Saint-Saens, and what is defective
in him. He is not troubled by any sort of passion. Nothing disturbs the
clearness of his reason. "He has no prejudices; he takes no
side"[128]--one might add, not even his own, since he is not afraid to
change his views--"he does not pose as a reformer of anything"; he is
altogether independent, perhaps almost too much so. He seems sometimes
as if he did not know what to do with his liberty. Goethe would have
said, I think, that he needed a little more of the devil in him.

[Footnote 127: _Harmonie et Melodie_.]

[Footnote 128: Charles Gounod, _Memoires d'un Artiste_.]

His most characteristic mental trait seems to be a languid melancholy,
which has its source in a rather bitter feeling of the futility of
life;[129] and this is accompanied by fits of weariness which are not
altogether healthy, followed by capricious moods and nervous gaiety, and
a freakish liking for burlesque and mimicry. It is his eager, restless
spirit that makes him rush about the world writing Breton and Auvergnian
rhapsodies, Persian songs, Algerian suites, Portuguese barcarolles,
Danish, Russian, or Arabian caprices, souvenirs of Italy, African
fantasias, and Egyptian concertos; and, in the same way, he roams
through the ages, writing Greek tragedies, dance music of the sixteenth
and seventeenth ce