BENTON. "Midsummer Invitation" was first published some twenty years ago. In its present form it was revived for publication in THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY. For a study of Mr. Benton's poetry see Vol. II, No. 3. ANDREWS. This sonnet on Matthew Arnold appeared in The Century for July, 1888. MARSTON. Philip Bourke Marston was a great admirer of Hayne, and without doubt the feeling was reciprocated. This sonnet first appeared in the New York Independent of October 21, 1886. EDMONDS. "When June Shall Come Again," a sonnet on the death of Emily Pfeiffer, was first published in the Women's Penny Paper of London. "Under the Aspens,” is the name of one of Mrs. Pfeiffer's works, and it was in a hammock under the aspens of Mayfield that she wrote during the summer months. GOODALE. Miss Goodale's tribute to Walt Whitman was published in Lippincott's Magazine, April, 1886. WILSON. This excellent sonnet on Stevenson was originally published in The Critic, and republished in Crandall's "Representative Sonnets by American Poets." TENNYSON. The text of "A Song" is taken from a cablegram to the New York World. For the three stanzas the Review is said to have paid the Laureate more than $10 per word. DELETOMBE. This poem was inspired by reading Mr. Allen's poem in the October (1890) number of THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY. THE EDITOR'S TABLE. FOR engravings in this number of THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY the Publisher wishes to acknowledge the courtesy of Jacob Leonard & Son, Albany, N. Y.; Matthews, Northrup & Co., Buffalo, N. Y.; The Globe Lithographing and Printing Co., Chicago, Ill.; The Art Alliance, Buffalo, N. Y., and Funk & Wagnalls, New York, N. Y. FOR Copyright poems and other selections the Publisher returns thanks to Roberts Brothers; Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; Charles Scribner's Sons; Estes & Lauriat; G. P. Putnam's Sons; Funk & Wagnalls; Charles Wells Moulton; Lucian Hervey Kent; William Burt Harlow; Cassell & Co.; Harper & Brothers, and J. B. Lippincott Co. FRANCIS SALTUS SALTUS. A STUDY OF HIS POETRY. I. N the 25th of June, 1889, at the age of thirty strangely gifted souls, whose story becomes the wonder of succeeding generations, though the people among whom they live, and from whose presence they go out to the land of shadows, give little heed to their existence, or to their work. Francis Saltus Saltus, dying in the flush of manhood, with the best working years of life unlived, left behind him a mass of literary and musical performance, that simply because of its extent, is wonderful. But it is not the amount alone that makes it worthy of note. In the variety of matter, in the originality of thought, in the curious and vivid imagination that it evinces, the work of Francis Saltus will stand out as an evidence that our literature has produced a phenomenon. The variety of his work is as astonishing as its vastness; covering poetry, both serious and comic, biography, musical composition and literature, romance, literary and general criticism, correspondence and other journalistic work, humorous articles and books on all subjects. He was not content to use one language, but luxuriated in many, and was proficient in each. To fully understand the man, and to reach a proper conception of the motives which actuated his work, would require that daily intercourse which Boswell held with Johnson, and this no man outside of his own family had; but some idea of his gifts, and his methods, and his achievements may be won from a glance along his life. He began writing at an early date, winning school honors with a readiness that made competition with him useless, and when under sixteen years of age, turned a Spanish legend of mingled beauty and disgust, into poetry that made its revolting and lovely features more pronounced and striking than they are in the original tongue. Sent abroad to finish his education, he became a linguist of rare excellence, speaking and writing the leading languages of Europe and the East, and acquiring a knowledge of many of the patois that cling to these; remnants of a speech that exists only in remote mountain hamlets and unsought places. The ease with which he mastered the learned languages, and the equal facility with which he gathered a knowledge of the tongue of the semi-civilized peoples of western Asia and northern Africa, was marvelous, and these were not useful for travel alone, but in his hands became vehicles for thought and literary effort. The rapidity with which he worked, and his varied linguistic attainments, can be best shown in telling of his "Life of Donizetti." This book, certainly the most complete musical biography extant, and a work of love and loyalty such as usually measures the accomplishment of a life, was composed in English, and translated into French, Italian and German by the author. When it is considered that the manuscript will make seven hundred printed pages, the labor this caused is, to say the least, amazing, and the achievement one to be wondered at. That such a work, whose composition involved much travel, a large expenditure of money, and a correspondence that became gigantic in its proportions, should remain unpublished in the native land of its author, is not a gratifying mark of American literary enterprise. Unfortunately, in the fire that consumed a great warehouse in New York, the French, German and Italian translations were destroyed, otherwise the Italian and German editions would be in print, as propositions looking to this result were under consideration by the author at the time of his death. He did not live to complete the new translations, but so thoroughly were the Italians convinced of the strength and usefulness of his work, that he received from them the freedom of the city of Bergamo, and was enrolled a member of the society that commemorates the life and glorious achievements of the great composer whose biography he wrote. Fortunately, a type copy of the English version of this work had been made, and was not stored with the translations and original, so that this monument of American scholarship still exists. But while giving much time to musical biography and studies, as this "Life of Donizetti" and monographs on Rossini, Bellini, "The Kings of Song," and humorous articles concerning the plots of operas, and the lives of famous composers, and much musical criticism, shows Saltus was not idle in poetry. It has been related that he began writing poetry at an early age. His first volume, "Honey and Gall,” was published in 1873, and was the result of work done before he was twenty. Fugitive, serious and humorous poems from his pen were common from that time till his death, but save a pamphlet of humorous sonnets on the plots of famous operas, published under his pen name of "Cupid Jones," no other collection of his verse was published. Since his death, two volumes, "Shadows and Ideals," and "The Witch of En-dor, and Other Poems," have appeared. There still remains unpublished two volumes of miscellaneous poetry, one volume of sonnets, two volumes of French poems, one volume of poems in other foreign languages, a | volume of children's poetry, and two volumes of humorous and comic verse, and a large number of poems written on events and occasions of passing interest. Beside these, there was destroyed in the fire mentioned, a poem entitled "Nijni Novgorod," giving a graphic picture of the great fair in that city, interspersed with many Russian and Oriental legends clinging to this vast gathering, enough to make a large volume, and miscellaneous poems sufficient to make a book equal in size to those published since his death. Francis Saltus was early a contributor of European correspondence to several papers, and his letters were widely quoted. He has contributed general articles, criticisms and editorials to many journals, and his work in this direction would make several respectable-sized books. In connection with this branch of his literary achievement, though different, and showing the versatility of his mind, may be mentioned his humorous writings. He was prolific in those witty and humorous dialogues that brighten our daily and weekly press, often writing from fifty to one hundred in a day. More than ten thousand of these were published, and a large number still remain in manuscript. Besides these, he wrote crazy histories of the United States, France, Rome, England and Germany, a comic Robinson Crusoe, a comic cook book and a comic Bible, with numerous witty and humorous sketches on people, incidents and events. Saltus was also a writer of short stories of much power, in the same vein as those of Theophile Gautier and Edgar Allan Poe, but differing from them in thought and manner of treatment. Here his originality and imagination revel, and his study in Paris, and his intimate acquaintance with the best French literature, has given his stories the verve and finish of those models of concise romance. There are enough of these sketches and stories to fill several books, and it is keeping within bounds to say that his literary work, if carefully collected, would make more than fifty printed volumes. And this was not all of his work. He was a musical composer of great force and beauty, and was equally prolific in this branch of art. Two grand operas, one on "Marie Stuart," the other on "Joan-of-Arc," are among his remains in this line, and he composed both librettos and music. He also composed several short and comic operas, and more than two thousand fugitive pieces, all of which have merit, some being veritable gems of melody. Several of his fugitive pieces, composed during his residence in Paris, became very popular there, and were claimed by people whose genius was unequal to such work. In improvisation Saltus was unrivaled. He could sit down to the piano and compose and play melodies that would move the soul with their strange harmony and power, and this without pre 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. REPASTS. 1. WITHIN a garret where all fire is dead, II. A fair young mother, happy and elate, 111. Across the way, a gouty nabob dines IV. On a frail raft, beneath a scorching sky, ANANKÉ. 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, 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, unending 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, 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, "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, Thy harsher beauties by old minstrels sung, When tamed to deeper calm, were sweet enough 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." " 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 A marvel of passionate chastity and pride. 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: For answer I seek the woman whom I prize; A MEETING. "THERE is no God," I arrogantly cried; 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,” |