him in the matter I
have prepared a short catalogue and with his permission I will guide
him gently through this new land. I have also added a list of
publishers, together with the dates of publication, although I cannot,
in some instances, vouch for their having been the original imprints.
It may be noted that almost all his books have been reprinted in
England.[5]

"Balzac,"[6] signed Edgar Evertson Saltus (for a time he used his full
name) is such good literary criticism and such good personal biography
that one wishes the author had tried the form again. He did not save
in his prefaces to his translations, his essay on Victor Hugo, and his
short study of Oscar Wilde. In its miniature way, for the book is
slight, "Balzac" is as good of its kind as James Huneker's "Chopin,"
Auguste Ehrhard's "Fanny Elssler," and Frank Harris's "Oscar Wilde."
In style it is superior to any of these. It is a very pretty
performance for a debut and if it is out of print, as I think it is,
some enterprising publisher should serve it to the public in a new
edition. The two most interesting chapters, largely anecdotal but
continuously illuminating, are entitled "The Vagaries of Genius,"
wherein one may find an infinitude of details concerning the manner
in which Balzac worked, and "The Chase for Gold," but tucked in
somewhere else is a charming digression about realism in fiction and
the bibliography should still be of use to students. Saltus tells us
that Balzac took all his characters' names from life, frequently from
signs which he observed on the street. In this respect Saltus
certainly has not followed him; in another he has been more imitative:
I refer to the Balzacian trick of carrying people from one book to
another.

"The Philosophy of Disenchantment"[7] is an ingratiating account of
the pessimism of Schopenhauer, a philosophy with which it would seem,
Saltus is fully in accord. Two-thirds of the book is allotted to
Schopenhauer, but the remainder is devoted to an exposition of the
teachings of von Hartmann and a final essay, "Is Life an Affliction?"
which query the author seems to answer in the affirmative. One of the
best-known of the Saltus books, "The Philosophy of Disenchantment" is
written in a clear, translucent style without the iridescence which
decorates his later _opera_.

"After-Dinner Stories from Balzac, done into English by Myndart
Verelst (obviously E. S.) with an introduction by Edgar Saltus"[8]
contains four