Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/25

Rh of Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist. It is interesting to compare the first sketch with the finished picture. The earlier work is less dramatic, less convincing, less artistic, though full of a charm of its own. The whole design is transmuted into something immensely effective by the simple device of antiquating the language of him who tells the tale.

In a less degree the same thing may be remarked in the comparison of "A Dead Love," written for the Item, and "L'Amour après la Mort," contributed to the Times-Democrat.

In "The Tale of a Fan" may be traced, it seems to me, the germ of what he later expanded or meant to expand into "A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair," which has not been found.

But it is not alone the charm that clings about all that is weird and fanciful that gives value to this early work of Hearn's. It sheds rich light upon one phase of his development and forms an essential part of his biography; and it helps to furnish proof, along with much else of varying form and excellence, that he put forth a vast deal of literary effort in the years Rh