Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/221

Rh satisfaction only in itself, even though it be on the edge of the abyss.

And there are traces of pleasant dilettanteism, of purposeless irony, of facile journalism, of sportive surface literature. Remy de Gourmont wrote so much—and not always of his own free will or for his own pleasure—that one naturally finds passages which do not rest on thought, improvisations without structure. But if one follows the main brie of his thought, even in his fantastic deviations, even in the weary efforts of piece-work, one can trace a penetrating certainty, a thread woven of eagerly disinterested meditation, a sad and personal profundity under a surface so clear that there seems to be no substance beneath, a passionate pursuit of truth amid a nomadism that has the look of vagabondage. And such traits may well lead us to regard Remy de Gourmont as one of the greatest soldiers and heroes of pure thought.

Amid the battles, death has interrupted, but has not killed, his work. The best spirits of Europe have watched it, and must continue it.

Facts for those who want them. He was born in Normandy, in the Castle of La Motte at Bazoches-en-Houlme (Orne), on the fourth of