one or two new
essays with, say, for subjects, Flaubert and Huysmans?

It is, you may perceive, as an essayist, a historian, an amateur
philosopher that Saltus excels, but his fiction should not be
underrated on that account. His novels indeed are half essays, just as
his essays are half novels. Even the worst of them contains charming
pages, delightful and unexpected interruptions. His series of fables
suggests a vast _Comedie Inhumaine_ but this statement must not be
regarded as dispraise: it is merely description. You will find
something of the same quality in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, but
Saltus has more grace and charm than Poe, if less intensity. After one
dip into realism ("Mr. Incoul's Misadventure") Saltus became an
incorrigible romantic. All his characters are the inventions of an
errant fancy; scarcely one of them suggests a human being, but they
are none the less creations of art. This, perhaps, was a daring
procedure in an era devoted to the exploitation in fiction of the
facts of hearth and home.... After all, however, his way may be the
better way. Personally I may say that my passion for realism is on the
wane.

In these strange tales we pass through the familiar haunts of
metropolitan life, but the creatures are amazingly unfamiliar. They
have horns and hoofs, halos and wings, or fins and tails. An esoteric
band of fabulous monsters these: harpies and vampires take tea at
Sherry's; succubi and incubbi are observed buying opal rings at
Tiffany's; fairies, angels, dwarfs, and elves, bearing branches of
asphodel, trip lightly down Waverly Place; peris, amshaspahands, aesir,
izeds, and goblins sleep at the Brevoort; seraphim and cherubim
decorate drawing rooms on Irving Place; griffons, chimeras, and
sphynxes take courses in philosophy at Harvard; willis and sylphs sing
airs from _Lucia di Lammermoor_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_; naiads and
mermaids embark on the Cunard Line; centaurs and amazons drive in the
Florentine Cascine; kobolds, gnomes, and trolls stab, shoot, and
poison one another; and a satyr meets the martichoras in Gramercy
Park. No such pictures of monstrous, diverting, sensuous existence can
be found elsewhere save in the paintings of Arnold Bocklin, Franz von
Stuck, and above all those of Gustave Moreau. If he had done nothing
else Edgar Saltus should be famous for having given New York a
mythology of its own!

_January 12, 1918._

The New Art of the Singer

"_It's the