Pio Baroja’s _Juventud Egolatria_ (read in Spanish. I have not seen the English version), shows a man who has genius for going wrong. After reading it, one does not have increased respect for his head or his heart. It is too bad to be able to enjoy few things, in any department of art, life. Envy, hatred, have eaten like rust. One might perhaps guess him to be victim of some concealed, incurable physical ill which blasts life. In addition to individual hatreds, he is generous enough to share those of the rest of the world. He remarks: “_Respecto a la hostilidad que Nietzsche siente por la teatrocracia de Wagner, la comparto._” In regard to _hostility_ I fancy Baroja would always be generous enough to say _la comparto_, I share it. His mind is peculiar in its reaction to ideas. But his modesty we admit. I noticed a line in which he confesses the opposite of what Loti happens to say in his last book, _Prime Jeunesse_. “_No la quiero conservar: que corra, que se pierda. Siempre he tenido entusiasmo por lo que huye._” (I do not care to preserve anything: let it hasten away, let it be lost. Always I have felt enthusiasm for that which was fleeting.) Loti declared he had devoted life to preventing anything from perishing, _even memory_. In Baroja there is visible joy in destruction. With it, insensibility to beauty. A nature harsh, dry, cold. He is narrow, dogmatic. He steps nimbly in a little circle where everywhere are marks of poverty. He is not grandly gloomy, tragic, like Leopardi, nor can he, like the Italian, create impeccable art. He suffers from lack of sympathy, vision. He has neither the generosity nor expansive spirit that permits him to enjoy, admire, learn. There is something about the book which is crabbed, petty. In addition, words do not come fluently. He is what Germans call _wortkarg_. His critical ability is slight. He recalls faintly now Leopardi, Dostoievsky, as to constant inclemency of mental weather. They, however, were moved by genius. He hates splendor, the fury of great spirits with which he has little in common. They make him feel small, cold, old. He accuses Balzac of stupidity, delirium. That very likely is the way the mountain looks to the mouse. Victor Hugo is rhetoric, vulgarity. No wonder he was dazed by Hugo’s vocabulary! He can not admire the prose of Flaubert. He is like a person who having lived in darkness, has dwarfed eyes unable to respond to light. Again he seems a naughty boy who stands in middle of the street for purpose of spattering passers-by with mud, taking account neither of age, infancy, his interest being to bespatter. What he writes of Dostoievsky is rather brilliant. That is seldom ascribed to Baroja. He says (translating as I quote): “In the spiritual fauna of the Twentieth Century he will be something like the Diplodocus.” He is perhaps an uncatalogueable monster, but a monster of genius not easily to be equalled or imitated.