vious thought or study. That he should possess these gifts is not strange. His mother was a superb and enthusiastic musician, and his paternal grandmother a woman of much poetic talent and accomplishment.

This, in brief, is the record of a life's work that ended just at the beginning of manhood's prime, just as the mind's mature prospect was opening. That the ultimate achievement would have been different had life gone on; that many of the thoughts and methods followed, would have been changed, is shown by the experience of literary minds in the past. As life did not go on, the result of his poetic accomplishment must be judged from what he left, and the poetical work of Francis Saltus already in print, measures more, both in variety and extent, than that which the world reaped from many longer lives.

II.

There are three volumes of poems bearing the name of Francis S. Saltus, "Honey and Gall," published in 1873, and "Shadows and Ideals," and "The Witch of En-dor, and Other Poems," published in 1890. Of "Honey and Gall," but little need be said. It was a strange volume, and for a youth of twenty a wonderful book, full of originality, highly imaginative, but marred by a pessimism, and at times by a grotesqueness, that showed a faulty conception of manhood and nature. It evidenced a poetic talent of high order, and gave promise of work that could win attention, and command respectful consideration.

This was accomplished when "Shadows and Ideals" was published in the June of 1890, and was further demonstrated by the appearance of "The Witch of En-dor, and Other Poems," six months later. These two books place the poetic work of Francis Saltus fairly before the world, and on them a judgment of his manner, his thought, his power and his accomplishment, can be founded.

The one thought that prevails when reading these volumes, is, what a superb imagination,-what a wonderful command of language. When these, and the great erudition evidenced by both books have had their sway, another thought follows, a wish that the soul which could imagine such things, and invest the imaginings with such a glory of language color, could have been won from the train of thought which fills them with a vague distrust of manhood and the things the world holds sacred. To condemn, simply because the work is not of the quality that best meets one's idea of poetic excellence, is unjust. The thing to consider, is, does the work of Saltus evince poetic talent? Has it the ring, the fire, the imagination, the fancy,

that should appear in poetry? Is it inventive? Does it clothe striking thoughts in appropriate language? The answer to all of these questions must be yes. Back of the answer arises a protest. What has manhood done to this life, that the genius ruling it should forever condemn man and his ambitions? What great wrong has the soft hand of woman inflicted, that no vision of pure feminine loveliness shines from the pages? What fault of nature filled this soul with a morbid pessimism, which turned her beauty to ashes, took from flower, and grass, and tree their color and fragrance, and left only the waste places of the world as an inspiration?

These are questions that cannot be answered, save as the work of the man answers them; and in this one finds a chaos of contradictions, a mingling of glorious and abhorrent thought, a rush of melodious language ending in a climax of horror. This quality can be best shown by the two short poems that follow, taken from "Shadows and Ideals," both wonderful pieces of original and concentrated picturing.

A TREE is blooming in some distant grove,
A mammoth oak whose branches pierce the sky,
Peopled with birds, where agile squirrels rove,
Where owlets hoot and where the eagles die.
A maid is seated in a dreary room,

Her drearier thoughts are far, ah! far away,
While, with a heart immersed in utter gloom,
She weaves a cerement till the close of day.
Fair flowers are sleeping in the frozen ground,
Until spring beckons them with signs unseen
To aid the glory of new nature crowned,
And, starlike, light the meadows' dewy green.
A block of marble in a quarry lies,

Inert, unfeeling in its silent sleep,
While o'er it, roaring thro' the sombre skies,

The wintry winds their doleful vigils keep.

From that same tree my coffin will be wrought,
Kind hands will place those flowers upon my head,
The maiden's work will be the shroud I sought,

The marble block will hold me with the dead.

The ruling passion here is death,-death and suffering. In the first poem, the poet and the shipwrecked sailors color the thought that follows its

reading. In ". Ananké," a peculiarly strong and
striking bit of work, it is death,-cold, silent, unend-
ing death, that looms through the melodious echoes
of the poem.
So, too, in that notable poem,
"Across the Steppes," whose local color, action
and imagery is so strong, so rapid and varied, that
one sees the flashing snow, partakes of the feast,
and listens to the steaming samovar, after making
the guest say of the host's patron saint,—

"Her hair is golden as the sun-kissed wheat,
Her eyes are like the Volga's matchless blue
Those holy lips hold pardon ever new,

I long to throw my sins before her feet."

The poet makes the guest steal the image of the saint, and die, the prey of wolves.

The quotations, so far, have been from "Shadows and Ideals," and the book will furnish the remaining matter of this section.

It is the motive, and not the poetry, of these pieces that is condemned. Robert Browning was a great soul, and a true poet, but his work is frequently vague and imperfect, and often useless because of these faults, which stand out all the more prominently, because he could and did write poems that flamed with noble thoughts and glorious pictures, uttered in simple and comprehensible language. Francis Saltus, while seemingly filled with an ever-changing phantasy of horror, could and did write poems of rare beauty and sweetness. Having taken issue with the inspiration of much of his work, it does not follow that this work is not poetry, and poetry of a high order. It is poetry, vivid, absorbing, powerful, with a splendor of imagery and diction that is wonderful. And the themes chosen, the treatment followed, are original and varied. In metre and form, too, Saltus is a master, and his sonnets are pictures that tingle with life, or burn with color, while his thought is clearcut, flowing and passionate, as the theme demands.

Having shown what appears to be the great fault in the poetry of Saltus, those qualities which stamp it as work of a high order, in fact, as work born of genius, come up for example and consideration. Perhaps the most pronounced of these is the vivid local coloring with which he imbues his poems; the power of assimilation which his mind shows, in its treatment of widely different scenes and subjects. Saltus is a Frenchman by the Seine, a Spaniard in

Seville and Grenada, a Russian on the Steppes. This gives much of his work a peculiar charm, that makes one forget the underlying thought.

In "Shadows and Ideals," the most ambitious poems are, "The Cloud," which opens the book, telling the story of a fleecy mass of vapor, born

"When light first dawned upon the startled earth,"

to wing for centuries from clime to clime

'Drifting from mountains of eternal ice

To balmy islands redolent with spice,

varied pictures showing its wanderings till the "pure and spotless form of Christ" passed through it "on the way to meet his God.”

An "In Memoriam" of Henry W. Longfellow, closing with this stanza,—

"Thou art gone to join the countless host of shadows, But thy sweetness will triumphantly remain, Like the perfume of the violets on the meadows, Made refreshing by the ripple of a rain!" "Across the Steppes," before spoken of; "A Farewell," the most tender and appreciative of Saltus' poems on women; "The Cross Speaks,” a story of the cedar of Lebanon, forming that instrument of Christ's sacrifice; and "Rivals," a poem wherein the two giant peaks of the world, KunchinJunga, which,

"Majestic and sublime in icy splendor,"

towers over the Himalayas, and Chimborazo, that—

"Of mighty storms and blighting winds prolific," rises amid the Andes, vaunt their power and grandeur. The wide divergence of these themes, and their adaptability to poetic treatment, allows of many changes in metre and pictures, and while they are no stronger than many shorter poems, they show the author's skill in form and effect better.

Saltus was impregnated with the French spirit, and subjects from that fair land are scattered thickly through the pages of "Shadows and Ideals." "Ravaillac," "The Forest of Fontainebleau," Dumas' famous "Musketeers," "The Carp at St. Germain," 'Austerlitz," Paris, its catacombs, streets and associations, these, and many more, find place and picture in his work; while Napoleon, the First Napoleon, was a worshiped hero, and Bernadotte a scorn and a reproach.

From his love for music, from his travels, and from his linguistic accomplishments, sprang many poems, one of these being a series of sonnets to languages, Latin, Italian, Anglo-Saxon, Spanish, Greek and French. The one to Anglo-Saxon is quoted to show their texture and spirit.

ANGLO-SAXON.

HIGH SOUNDING, terse and energetic tongue, Like boreal winds, impetous and rough; There rings in thee the manly, haughty stuff That suits a brawny chest, a Harald's lung.

Thy harsher beauties by old minstrels sung,

When tamed to deeper calm, were sweet enough
To please the robust Saxons, brave and bluff,
Who mouthed thy consonants when thou wast young.
But when thy short, sharp words fall on my ears
From tutored lips, their rich and powerful sound
Clangs like steel rapiers smiting brazen shields.
I picture up a revel of hostile spears,
And hear King Arthur to his foes around,

Trumpet defiant words on battle-fields.

One attribute of the poems of Saltus forces itself upon the mind with the reading of each different piece, and that is his ability to impress a line with the memory-haunting power which recalls the complete sonnet or poem to the thought. Turn where you will, these lines stand out, winning full perusal for the setting that holds them. This is the mark of the true artist, the evidence of something greater than talent, and when one finds these scattered thick on every page, he feels that he is in the presence of genius. Take a few examples of these gathered at random, gloomy, flower-fretted, gemlike, or horror-fraught, and this power becomes plain.

A snake of lightning writhes along the sky."

Balmy with grain and the soft southern breeze."

"The drowsy wood seemed desolately dead."

"One perfect night, when June lay wrapped in bloom."
"Vast, virgin solitudes of polar snow."
"Her gold-black glances glitter like a bee."
"And kiss all hell upon his perfect lips."

The picturesque power of Saltus is strongly exemplified in his sonnets, a class of poems in which he reveled, and in whose composition he showed a readiness and facility that made many of those he wrote veritable gems of genre. That these should show a great variety of thought, picture and passion, was inevitable, considering the life from which they sprang. One that has been frequently quoted, and whose motive and inspiration has been often imitated, is the following:

THE BAYADERE.

NEAR Strange, weird temples, where the Ganges' tide
Bathes domed Lahore, I watched, by spice-trees fanned
Her agile form in some quaint saraband,

A marvel of passionate chastity and pride.
Nude to the loins, superb and leopard-eyed,
With fragrant roses in her jeweled hand,
Before some Kaat-drunk Rajah, mute and grand,
Her flexile body bends, her white feet glide.
The dull kinoors throb one monotonous tune,
And wail with zeal as in a hasheesh trance;
Her scintillant eyes in vague, ecstatic charm
Burn like black stars below the Orient moon,

While the suave, dreamy languor of the dance, Lulls the grim, drowsy cobra on her arm.

The sonnets of Saltus are, in many instances, the most optimistic of his serious work; and still, the melancholy that pervades so many of his poems clings to them as a whole, dominates them, and gives them that vague unrest which means nothing, if it does not mean discontent with, and distrust of man and nature.

It was said in the beginning of this glance through "Shadows and Ideals," that in some instances the work was a "chaos of contradictions." This shows that the author was not thoroughly convinced of the truth of certain philosophic points, though he uses and upholds them in most cases. Occasionally, however, he refutes his own statements, not only by inference, and choice of subject and treatment, but by argument and demonstration. The following extracts will show what is meant by this statement:

PROOF.

THE world shrieks "atheist" in my face, and cries:
"How canst thou the eternal God aggrieve?
Why doubt? He made the earth, the stars, the skies,
And thy vile dust! Yet thou wilt not believe."

For answer I seek the woman whom I prize;
One who can rule me by her slightest nod,
And as I gaze in her calm, treacherous eyes,
Convinced, I sigh, "There can not be a God!"

A MEETING.

"THERE is no God," I arrogantly cried;
God is a myth, a fable, a disgrace!
Why in His boundless spaces does He hide,
Where are His might eternal and His pride?
Where"-then I suddenly met him face to face!

If there is one thing that, more than another, proves the existence of a Creator, and demonstrates the soul's immortality, it is the fact that men write poems, novels, plays and learned essays, which they hope will win eternal fame-write them, even though many of the last, and some of all, are arguments to prove the falsity of that they aim to achieve.

III.

"The Witch of En-dor, and Other Poems," is the most ambitious of the poetical work of Francis Saltus. The book may be divided into two parts, the first containing a series of stories founded on Biblical subjects,—“The Witch of En-dor,” “Abraham,” "Cain," "Potiphar's Wife," "Samson and Delilah," "Judas,' ""Moses on Sinai," and "Lazarus," with sonnets and shorter pieces between; and the last, two dramatic poems on "Bel-shar-uzzur,”

and "Lot's Wife," with an unfinished work on Carthage.

It was said that the poems were founded on Biblical subjects, but it does not follow that they conform to the usual versions clinging to the names mentioned. This would not give the author that play and scope he wished. Here it is that the imagination of Saltus luxuriates. It was because he saw that in these subjects lay vast chances for new theories, that he chose them. There were old legends of incidents pertaining to them; he would change these, and give new and different interpretations of the characters. This method may be briefly summed up in telling his story of "The Witch of En-dor," the titular poem of the book. | It begins

"I, Shumma, radiant with all woman's graces
And bloom of summers had the rooted wish,
To be beloved of Saul."

"And on my couch, adorned in shesh and scarlet,
I dreamed of him in exquisite unrest;
While love had dove-like nestled in my breast,
And purified the soul of me, a harlot.

For I had seen him in imperious manner
Marshal his armored followers, and go
To scourge the insolence of the nation's foe,
And o'er Philistine dead wave Israel's banner.

"Erect, a tower of strength, in vigor peerless, Taller than all the people by his side,

I saw him through his populous cities ride, In virile splendor, arrogant and fearless.

"And love invaded all my rosy beauty,

While trembling, and enraptured, and enslaved,
Mute at his royal feet I humbly craved
One look of love as largess and as booty.

"In amorous ways" Shumma tries to win Saul's regard, but fails, even though she was, as she says

"More beauteous, love enraptured,

Than his dusk wives, and slaves, and dancing girls." and revered him for "his prowess, and the glory of all his deeds." So after dreams, in which she sees him go forth

and

"To the drear foeful ravines of the North."

"Swift hurrying steeds, and labyrinths of spears," she wins, by bribery, her wish that Saul should come to her in a damp, and noisesome, and filthy cave, thinking she is one of the banished witches. There she appears before him

"Wrinkled, in fetid rags made foul by art."

but under these

"Swathed in soft satin to my trembling knees." and after filling "with miasmal herbs, a cauldron vast," she burned these, mingled with "nephetic drugs, and venoms dire."

"Then by swift, dexterous tricks and transpositions,
Before his credulous eyes I made pass by
Majestic shapes, like those of gods on high,
Grim, hollow ghosts and woeful apparitions!"

When Saul falls terrified before these visions, and the words they utter, she has him borne to a welllit, luxurious chamber, and makes a feast for him, flinging off her disguise to appear to his returning senses in all her superb loveliness. Her beauty conquers his love, and then follows a time of passion, from which Saul goes forth at daybreak, after culling "the drowsy promise of her breath,” to the day of Gilboa,

"To perish grandly in the battle's din,

While I in calm serenity lay dreaming."

This summary will show how the poet's imagination makes havoc with the familiar story. And this is the course followed in the remaining poems of the series. Abraham is made to desire Isaac's death because of hunger in the desert to which his weakness had sent Hagar and Ishmael, and to be kept from the murder which he tells the boy is God's wish, by the discovery of the ram. Cain, because God smites his dear ones with sickness that he can not alleviate, determines to rid the world of all living things, and thus destroy suffering. The ghost of Potiphar's wife is made to seek Joseph's tomb, there to supplicate for affection, and to be hailed thence by the voice of her obdurate enslaver. Samson wrecks his vengeance on Delilah in the destruction of the Philistine temple, this story keeping closer to the original than either of the others. Judas betrays Christ because of Divine command, and love for Mary Magdalene, who 'consenting first to his importunities, when he has fulfilled his divinely imposed mission, repudiates him because of her affection for the Savior, and leaves him miserable. "Moses on Sinai" is the story of a woman, who is deprived of her golden bracelets by Aaron's command, to help form the calf, and when she can not show the lost treasure to the lover who had given them, loses his affection. She then invokes the power of Moses, and a bloody holocaust follows her seeking the prophet on Sinai. “Lazarus" gives the story of the brother of Mary and Martha, after his resurrection, the point being that death ends all.

Of the shorter poems, "Extermination" tells of the crucifixion of the last man who

"Dared to believe in God."

"Misrepresentation" is a powerful piece, telling of the Savior's mortality and death, as other men die, for save in so much as all men are, He was not divine. "A Soul's Soliloquy" is the condemnation of its earthly abiding place by a spirit. "Accusation" tells of the meeting of Christ with a devil He

has cast out, and gives the prophecy of this evil one, and "Ad Summum Deum is a protest against the sufferings of mortality, which, if He is supreme, are the result and wish of the Creator and ruler of man. The variety of description, of thought, of deduction, that has been wrought into these narratives, can scarcely be conceived. Saltus makes the most of the opportunities offered, and some of his thoughts are startling in their audacity. Yet often their seeming impiety is rendered harmless by the poet himself, as in "Lazarus," where he attempts to show that the soul ends with death's coming, by resurrecting a soul in the enjoyment of its full power. Again, after making Christ a man only, in other poems he endows him with powers that belong to Divinity alone. What may be termed the atheistical thought of Saltus, is, therefore, nullified by his own work, and this being the case, needs no condemnation. It remains, then, to call attention to the leading characteristics of these poems.

Outside of the imagination shown, and the gorgeousness of language that colors all of his poems, the most prominent feature is their voluptuous quality, and their richness in sensual beauty, not bestial or disgusting, but strongly animal, as shown in the following description of Mary Magdalene:

"Her loosened tresses in their uncurbed splendor,
A stream of gold like ripe and wavy wheat,
Fell o'er her bosom palpitant and tender
To kiss her sandaled feet.”

It is the lack of the spirituelle element that you note in these poems: of fierce animal passion, love, hate, blood-thirstiness, there is no lack.

Passing to the work called dramatic, a new region opens; vistas of color resonant with sound, running off from leading ideas centering about the names "Bel-shar-uzzar," "Lot's Wife" and "Carthage." The most striking feature of this group of poems, is the erudition evinced in their construction and handling; their leading power gathers in a few dramatic scenes, that make one regret that Saltus did not bestow more time on these, and give less to the songs and choruses that overshadow them. The latter are marvels of versification, and bewildering chronicles of names and attributes, but in many cases, it is a beauty of language alone that gives them attraction.

In the fragment on "Carthage," there are two scenes and eleven songs and choruses. All are melodious and picturesque, and full of local color, but it is in the two scenes that the most dramatic interest lies. The first tells of the death of Adherbal, a general condemned for the loss of a battle in Sicily. He passes a night in debauch,

And when the dawn, with its sweet pulse of light,
Had throbbed through darkness to a perfect day,

He was led forth, and nailed unto a cross.
Now, in the horde that compassed him about
Was an old warrior, who had warred in Spain
When young Adherbal first sniffed blood on fields,
And in the panic of a battle's heart

He, crushed and trampled on by yelling hosts,
Lay striken down and was about to die,
When lo! Adherbal, witnessing his plight,
Charged on the assailers, and with mighty blows
Saved the poor man and vanquished on that day.
And the old soldier's mind was full of this.
He saw again the swift, tumultuous scene
Pass in his eyes, and there his Savior hung,
Nailed to a cross to linger in the sun,

The prey of birds, and all his soul rebelled,
And when the throngs were busy at the sight,
He crouched and poised a javelin in his hand,
And with unerring speed above the heads
Of all the multitude it shrilly whirred
Deep to the tortured bosom of the chief,
Who cried aloud: "Bel bless thee, friend!" and died,
And all the cheated people turned in wrath,
And tore the soldier's body into shreds."

The second scene, depicting the crucifixion of one hundred lions in honor of the moon, is more tragic and intense, and shows how cruel those old days were, in a manner vivid with the fire of a spirit, pagan to the core.

66

Bel-shar-uzzur," founded on the closing scene of Babylon's splendor, when the words of fire shone on the wall of the king's palace, is the most extended piece of poetical work left by Saltus, filling nearly one hundred printed pages. Here, again, the local coloring is strong and absorbing, and the scenes glitter with all the pomp and savagery of the years when man's soul held little spiritual love, and no pity.

The story of this poem is slight, but the filling-in shows a vast amount of study, reading of old histories, and thorough research in the field opened by the deciphering of the unearthed inscriptions of this long-dead empire.

First comes a description of the city and its people, scenes of voluptuousness and slaughter, the impalement of a Jew who had dared to desecrate some god's brazen image, mingled with the songs of courtesans and soldiers, and the choruses sung by priests and prisoners. Then a young girl, daughter of a warrior, and named Alca, who is just budding into womanhood, appears. She is beloved by Ammarac, a soldier, to whom her love is pledged, and who is

"Strong as a god and humble as a dove."

A law of the god Beltis, made it imperative that Alca should pass a night in the temple, and that the man who first threw a piece of money in her lap when the gates were opened in the morning, could claim the enjoyment of her beauty for an hour. Ammarac tells her to have no fear, as he will be ready, but Tammac, his rival, bribes the high priest