rries us by means of the careless expenditure of many
passages of somewhat ribald beauty, along with him, captive to his
pervasive charm. We are constantly reminded, in endless, almost
wearisome, imagery, of gold and purple, foreign languages, esoteric
philosophies, foods the names of which strike the ear as graciously
as they themselves might strike the tongue. From Huysmans he has
learned the formula for ravishing all our senses. Words are often used
for their own sakes to call up images, colour flits across every page,
across, indeed, every line. We taste, we smell, we see. There is the
pomp and circumstance of the Roman Catholic ritual in these pages, the
Roman Catholic ritual well supplied with mythical monsters, singing
flowers, and blooming women. Strange scarlet and mulberry threads form
the woof of these tapestries, threads pulled with great labour from
all the art of the past. There is, in much of his work, an
undercurrent of subtle sensuous erotic poison; in one of her stories
Edna Kenton tells us that _chartreuse jaune_ and bananas form such a
poison. There is a suggestion of _chartreuse jaune_ and bananas in
much of the work of Edgar Saltus.

He is constantly obsessed by the mysteries of love and death, the
veils of Isis, the secrets of Moses. While others were delving in the
American soil his soul sped afar; he is not even a cosmopolitan; he is
a Greek, a Brahmin, a worshipper of Ishtar. There is a prodigious and
prodigal display of genius in his work, savannahs of epigrams, forests
of ideas, phrases enough to fill the ocean.[4] There is enough
material in the romances of Edgar Saltus to furnish all the cinema
companies in America with scenarios for a twelve-month.

Early in the Eighties a writer in "The Argus" referred to him as "the
prose laureate of pessimism." His philosophy may be summed up in a few
phrases: Nothing matters, Whatever will be is, Everything is possible,
and Since we live today let us make the best of it and live in Paris.
And through all the _opera_ of Saltus, through the rapes and murders,
the religious, philosophical, and social discussions, rings
Cherubino's still unanswered question, _Che cosa e amor?_ like a
persistent refrain.

After having said so much it seems unnecessary to add that I strongly
advise the reader to go out and buy all the books of Edgar Saltus he
can find (and to find many will require patience and dexterity, as
most of them are out of print). To further aid