f Richard
Strauss, who flounders uncertainly between mud and debris and genius,
the Latin art of Saint-Saens rises up calm and ironical. His delicacy of
touch, his careful moderation, his happy grace, "which enters the soul
by a thousand little paths,"[137] bring with them the pleasures of
beautiful speech and honest thought; and we cannot but feel their charm.
Compared with the restless and troubled art of to-day, his music strikes
us by its calm, its tranquil harmonies, its velvety modulations, its
crystal clearness, its smooth and flowing style, and an elegance that
cannot be put into words. Even his classic coldness does us good by its
reaction against the exaggerations, sincere as they are, of the new
school. At times one feels oneself carried back to Mendelssohn, even to
Spontini and the school of Gluck. One seems to be travelling in a
country that one knows and loves; and yet in M. Saint-Saens' works one
does not find any direct resemblance to the works of other composers;
for with no one are reminiscences rarer than with this master who
carries all the old masters in his mind--it is his spirit that is akin
to theirs. And that is the secret of his personality and his value to
us; he brings to our artistic unrest a little of the light and sweetness
of other times. His compositions are like fragments of another world.

[Footnote 136: _Harmonie et Melodie_.]

[Footnote 137: C. Saint-Saens, _Portraits et Souvenirs_.]

"From time to time," he said, in speaking of _Don Giovanni_, "in the
sacred earth of Hellene we find a fragment, an arm, the debris of a
torso, scratched and damaged by the ravages of time; it is only the
shadow of the god that the sculptor's chisel once created; but the charm
is somehow still there, the sublime style is radiant in spite of
everything."[138]

And so with this music. It is sometimes a little pale, a little too
restrained; but in a phrase, in a few harmonies, there will shine out a
clear vision of the past.

[Footnote 138: _Portraits et Souvenirs_.]

VINCENT D'INDY

"I consider that criticism is useless, I would even say that it is
harmful.... Criticism generally means the opinion some man or other
holds about another person's work. How can that opinion help
forward the growth of art? It is interesting to know the ideas,
even the erroneous ideas, of geniuses and men of great talent, such
as Goethe, Schumann, Wagner, Sainte-Beuve, and Michelet, w