The Gay Science
Dallas also contributed to the "Daily News," the "Saturday Review (London)," the "Pall Mall Gazette," and the "World". For about a year and a half, in 1868-69, he was editor of "Once a Week." In 1866 he produced two volumes of a projected four-volume work named "The Gay Science," a title borrowed from Provençal troubadours. It was an attempt to discover the source in the constitution of the human mind of the pleasure afforded by poetry. The subject was, however, too abstruse for the general reader, and the book did not meet with the attention which it deserved.