His two volumes of critical essays, «Harmonie et Mélodie» and «Portraits et Souvenirs,» are marked by soundness of principle, broad eclecticism of taste, and a pungent, epigrammatic style. In general temper he is classical without being pedantic; that is to say, he has no superstitious awe for rules, but a profound reverence for law. The licenses of modern technique and the mental vagueness of which they are the reflection find in him a formidable foe. The thrust he gives, in the preface of «Portraits et Souvenirs,» to those amateurs who are «annoyed or disdainful if the instruments of the orchestra do not run in all directions, like poisoned rats,» is typical of his attitude and method. He is a master of innuendo and delicate sarcasm, which he always employs, however, to protect art against affectation and ignorance. In dealing with the theory that music depends for its effect on physical pleasure, he speaks derisively of the solo voice which one can «savor at one's leisure, like a sherbet.» He says of those orchestral conductors and choirmasters who always complain of difficulties that they «love above all their little habits and the calm of their existence.» Among these sparkling sentences one comes frequently also upon pieces of wisdom, sometimes expressed with rare dignity, as when he writes, «There is in music something which traverses the ear as a door, the reason as a vestibule, and which goes yet further.» A writer so highly gifted with both raillery and eloquence might do mischief were he narrow or intolerant. That Saint-Saëns is neither can be seen from a mere enumeration of some of his subjects, chosen almost at random: there are essays on The Oratorios of Bach and Händel, Jacques Offenbach, Liszt, Poetry and Music, The Nibelungen Ring and the Performances at Bayreuth, Don Giovanni, A Defense of Opéra-Comique, The Multiple Resonance of Bells, and The Wagnerian Illusion. These titles indicate a wide enough range of interest, but Saint-Saëns is furthermore a writer on subjects entirely unconnected with music. His devotion to philosophy has prompted him to publish a volume called «Problèmes et Mystères;» an antiquarian interest has found expression in his «Note sur les décors de Théâtre dans l'antiquité romaine;» and he has printed a volume of poems under the title «Rimes familières.» Finally, a comedy in one act called «La Crampe des écrivains» (a disease from which he appears never to have suffered) has been successfully produced at Paris.