He could appreciate neither Sainte Beuve nor Taine. He read them like a blind man. When he read Ruskin he had no comprehension that whatever that critic’s opinions as criticism, as stylist he is worth while. Baroja talks something like the conceited fop of an isolated village. He may be scientist gone wrong, who uses a scalpel, where his present profession calls for a pen. He makes attempt to vaccinate his readers with his peculiar virus. Baroja’s opinion of the Latin historians, Sallust, Tacitus, shows an inclination to baseness. He thinks evil persistently. In these two cases judgment and scholarship are weak. He grudges Tacitus posthumous fame. But it must be admitted he can appreciate Caesar’s _Commentaries_, and that his word of them is _juste_. It may be he does not know how to envy them. Baroja is not even pleased with the place where he was born, something regarded with affection by people in general. He wishes, plaintively, peevishly, it had been elsewhere. He wishes it had been among the mountains or else beside the sea. He is displeased it was a city where _foreign people_ come. He treats his fellow townsmen, Sarasate, with disdain. Stylists have been men of charm, kindliness. The lack of these qualities, suavity of surface, is marked in Baroja. There is seldom a sentence that gives pleasure. Yet if he disavows ability of other men we must give him credit of disavowing his own ability as frankly. That points to crabbed honor. He does not forget to say a good word about Azorin, the critic. A Yankee eye to business! But heaven forbid me from accusing him! None could have the heart to wish him a disagreeable trait with which he is not endowed. Baroja boasts he is _modern_. This is something of which he is proud. With him it has a local, countrified application, meaning that he is not emotional, that he reserves accelerated motion for his feet. He has a limited outlook. An unchanging view point. The Spaniard, no matter what his condition in life, worships the aristocratic idea, and is more or less guided by it. No race cherishes more deeply ideal of class. Baroja does have disconcerting directness. The result perhaps of constitutional disillusion, motived by dislike for what charms others. Steel-edged seeing, however, is his! It may be he is disgusted with the sham men call life. I would like to believe something akin to the pity of Dostoievsky is mainspring of his hatreds, or a sense of justice which he sees violated. And perhaps he regrets that life is becoming scientific, collective, and must suppress the individual. War we know has lost dramatic beauty. It is merely scientific slaughter. We can not guess what science will do to transform life.