f feeling quite
beyond the reach of the particular figure that preoccupies him at the
moment. He has done all this and done it as no one else in Europe
could have done it. But in the last resort it does not seem as though
his reputation would rest either upon his poetry or his prose poetry
or even perhaps upon his "masks," as he calls them, of personal
appreciation.

It rather seems as though his best work--putting "A Night in the
Luxembourg" aside--were to be found in that long series of
psychological studies which he entitles "Promenades Litteraires,"
"Promenades Philosophiques" and "Epilogues." If we add to these
the volumes called "La culture des Idees," "Le chemin de Velours,"
and "Le Probleme du style" we have a body of philosophical
analysis and speculation the value of which it would be impossible
to overrate in the present condition of European thought.

What we have offered to us in these illuminating essays is nothing
less than an inestimable mass of interpretative suggestion, dealing
with every kind of topic under the sun and throwing light upon
every species of open question and every degree of human mystery.

When one endeavours to distil from all this erudite mass of
criticism--of "criticism of life" in the true sense of that phrase--the
fundamental and quintessential aspects of thought, one finds the
attempt a much easier one than might be expected from the variety,
and in many cases from the occasional and transitory nature, of the
subjects discussed. It is this particular tone and temper of mind
diffused at large through a discussion of so immense a variety of
topics that in the last resort one feels is the man's real contribution to
the art of living upon the earth. And when in pursuing the
transformations of his protean intelligence through one critical
metamorphosis after another we finally catch him in his native and
original form, it is this form, with the features of the real Remy de
Gourmont, which will remain in our mind when many of its
incidental embodiments have ceased to interest us.

The man in his essential quality is precisely what our generation and
our race requires as its antipodal corrective. He is the precise
opposite of everything most characteristic of our puritan-souled and
commercial-minded Democracy. He is all that we are not--and we
are all that he is not.

For an average mind evolved by our system and subjected to our
influence--the mind and influence of modern English