perial Purple"[21] marks the high-tide of Saltus's peculiar genius.
The emperors of imperial decadent Rome are led by the chains of art
behind the chariot wheels of the poet: Julius Caesar, whom Cato called
"that woman," Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, the wicked Agrippina, for
whom Agnes Repplier named her cat, Claudius, Nero, Hadrian, Vespasian,
down to the incredible Heliogabolus. Saltus, who has given us many
vivid details concerning the lives of his predecessors, seemingly
falters at this dread name, but only seemingly. More can be found
about this extraordinary and perverse emperor in Lombard's "L'Agonie"
and in Franz Blei's "The Powder Puff," but, although Saltus is brief,
he evokes an atmosphere and a picture in a few short paragraphs. The
sheer lyric quality of this book has remained unsurpassed by this
author. Indeed it is rare in all literature. Page after page that
Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, or J. K. Huysmans might have been glad to
sign might be set before you. The man writes with invention, with sap,
with urge. Our eyes are not clogged with foot-notes and references. It
is plain that our author has delved in the "Scriptores Historiae
Augustae," that he has read Lampridius, Suetonius, and the others, but
he does not strive to make us aware of it. The historical form has at
last found a poet to render it supportable. Blood runs across the
pages; gore and booty are the principal themes; and yet Beauty struts
supreme through the horror. The author's sympathy is his password, a
sympathy which he occasionally exposes, for he is not above pinning
his heart to his sleeve, as, for example, when he says, "In spite of
Augustus's boast, the city was not by any means of marble. It was
filled with crooked little streets, with the atrocities of the
Tarquins, with houses unsightly and perilous, with the moss and dust
of ages; it compared with Alexandria as London compares with Paris; it
had a splendour of its own, but a splendour that could be heightened."
Here is a picture of squalid Rome: "In the subura, where at night
women sat in high chairs, ogling the passer with painted eyes, there
was still plenty of brick; tall tenements, soiled linen, the odor of
Whitechapel and St. Giles. The streets were noisy with match-pedlars,
with vendors of cake and tripe and coke; there were touts there too,
altars to unimportant divinities, lying Jews who dealt in old clothes,
in obscene pictures and unmentionable wares; at the crossings th