and with such force and intelligence that he secured instant attention and wide recognition as a critic of ideas and convictions. During the remaining sixteen years of his life Poe supported himself chiefly by editorial and journalistic work; he had inventiveness and skill in adapting to public taste the various publications with which he was connected; but he was by interest and qualification a critic of contemporary English and American literature. He lacked the spiritual insight which has made the great critics not only the custodians of the literary tradition, but the interpreters of literary art; he had neither the breadth of view of Goethe, the grasp of philosophical principles of Coleridge (of whom he was, in a sense, a pupil), nor the clear intelligence of Arnold. He was, however, a thinker with a marked aptitude for analysis, and a lover of general principles, often abstract and somewhat artificial in application, but essentially sound; he had a very keen sense of form; his knowledge was extensive, although not always accurate; and he was not averse to controversy. He was out of sympathy with the vigorous literary movement which was fast taking on large proportions in Boston; and al though he spent a good deal of time in New York, the superficiality of the later Knickerbocker school was always distaste ful to him.

The time was ripe for frank and disinterested criticism, and Poe not only recognized the opportunity but regarded himself as having definite reformatory work to do. He was a born lover of beauty, and of art for its own sake, without reference to anything beyond or beneath the immediate impression produced; and he was, therefore, well adapted to the task of judging a generation whose limited intelligence and uncertain taste in matters of workmanship made it the dupe or the victim of the cheap, the meretricious and pretentious in contemporary writing. His collected reviews and critical articles fill three volumes in the edition of his works edited with such scholarly thoroughness and literary judgment by Mr. Stedman and Professor Woodberry, and these selections present only a part of his work in this field; for Poe was a voluminous writer, in spite of the vicissitudes of his career. Much of his critical writing was

of slight value; none of it is likely to survive by reason of its intrinsic interest; for Poe was creative and masterful only when his imagination was in play. But his critical work absorbed a large part of his time, it attracted wide attention among his contemporaries, and it filled an important place in the literary development of the country.

Poe was now twenty-seven, and his wife not yet fourteen. "The Messenger was making rapid gains in influence and circulation; the Southern press was singing the praises of the young poet and critic, and the cooler judgment of the North recognized his genius; there seemed to be solid foundation for future growth and work; but at the end of eighteen months the successful young editor had resigned his position on the "Messenger" and was trying to gain a foothold in New York. Although an indefatigable worker, with a keen sense of the business aspects of editorial work and a skillful advertiser of his own successes, Poe was of a temperament which became restive under recurring duties and the necessity of observing times and seasons; there were, moreover, occasional excesses which mercilessly drained his vitality. In many respects Poe was better placed at Richmond, in charge of the leading literary journal of the South, among people who were warmly attached to him, in a section which recognized his leadership and gave him unstinted admiration, than at any other time in his troubled and wandering life. His genius placed him on an easy equality with the rising group of New England writers; he was bred under other conditions and was the exponent of a different conception of the literary art; to the didactic tendency of New England he opposed the love of beauty for its own sake; and he had uncommon skill as a controversialist. He was in a position to organize the literary forces outside of New England and to co-operate in an expression of the spiritual life of the country which would have been measurably inclusive. Unfortunately, he was the victim of his temperament, and, like all men of his class, was unable to give his work organic direction and completeness. His influence was to be very great, but it was to lie in other directions; the quality of leadership was denied him.

Poe reached New York when the financial panic of 1837 was at its height; established literary enterprises were in distress, and new ventures were abandoned. "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" appeared in the summer of 1838, but brought neither reputation nor material returns. It contains passages which nobody but Poe could have written; it also contains passages which no one but Poe would have permitted himself to writepassages so revolting in detail and so nauseating that they violate the most rudimentary artistic instinct. The little family was living meantime by the aid of Mrs. Clemm's tireless and measureless devotion to her daughter and her daughter's husband. Among all women who have

given their lives to art through vicarious sacrifice, Mrs. Clemm holds a foremost place. Her faith matched her patience, and her patience attained a kind of epical dignity in her uncomplaining and beautiful ministry. Poe had the refuge of his dreams, his fame, and the joy which is never denied the man of creative mind, however hard his conditions; Mrs. Clemm fought the sordid and inglorious fight with poverty day by day and gave no sign.

although the books contained some of the most original work in modern literature. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia" Poe touched the high-water mark of creative and artistic skill; in sheer force of imagination fashioning a form which is at the same time sharp in outline and yet shading off everywhere into mystery, these masterpieces hold a place by themselves. In both these pieces a torch is held aloft in the gloom, and serves both to throw certain forms and figures into bold relief and to intensify the blackness of the darkness in which they are finally engulfed. Poe is seen here dealing with abnormal characters and incidents under conditions which seem to interpret and to vizualize strar.ge

In the autumn of the same year the poet was trying to find work in Philadelphia. To this period belong two of his most characteristic pieces: the impressive and nobly imaginative prose sketch "Silence," and the poem which afterwards found its true setting in "The Fall of the House of Usher." The Haunted Palace" has all the mystery and magic of the poet's genius at its best; but there lies at its heart a lesson so tragic that it must be a conclusive answer to those who hold that Poe's gift was wholly detached from moral insight. In 1839 two volumes of stories and sketches appeared, made up largely of reprints. The sale was small,

and mysterious experiences, excluding with marvelous skill all distracting sound or disturbing light, and silently creating in the imagination of his reader a theater for the somber tragedy of smitten, wandering, or lost souls. In "William Wilson," which appeared in the same collection of tales, there is

the same quality of imagination, working, not in a region of phantasy, but in that of moral perversion and degeneration, with a psychologic insight which is more searching and striking in its working out than that which Stevenson brought to bear on the same problem in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." In this original and impressive tale he was on Hawthorne's ground, but the methods of the two great romancers had almost nothing in common. These stories are often classed with "The Raven" and "The Bells;" they belong, rather, in the perfection of their form and the depth of their conception, with " Israfel " and " The City in the Sea."

During the residence in Philadelphia appeared the first of those stories of rati

ocination which exhibit another side of

his mind and which have been the prolific ancestors of a host of more or less successful ventures in the field of detectivestory writing. "The Murders of the Rue Morgue" belongs in the same group with "The Mystery of Marie Roget," "The Purloined Letter," and "The Gold Bug," tales which are on a much lower level of imagination than "Ligeia" and its kindred. pieces, and the interest of which depends rather on pure inventiveness than on creative power. They appeal to curiosity, and are skillful rather than original. "The Descent into the Maelstrom," which belongs to this period, is a masterpiece of swift, impressive, and absorbing narrative; while "The Masque of the Red Death" is a study in color which has an intensity out of all proportion to its incidents. In all these stories Poe was demonstrating the soundness of the principle that a writer "having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, . . . combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. . . . In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.”

Poe was now the editor of "Graham's Magazine," which had made a notable success within a very short time, and was living in more comfort and apparent security than at any earlier period, when the great sorrow of his life suddenly overtook him. His delicate young wife, still hardly more than a girl, ruptured a bloodvessel while singing, hung for a long time between life and death, and was never again well. Poe's devotion had a passionate intensity; he hung over the sickbed in an agony of apprehension, and was stretched for long years on the rack of anxiety and uncertainty. Under this ter rible strain his character yielded at its weakest point.

Six years ago [he wrote at a later period], a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever, and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of the year the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same scene. . . . Then again, again, and even once again, at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death; and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desper

ate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive-nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank-God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity.

There is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of this statement; and from this time Poe's power of concentration grew weaker. He who would venture to pronounce judgment on such a career as Poe's, in the sense of determining the moral responsibility of the victim, and striking the balance between the force of temptation in inheritance, temperament, physique, and conditions, and the power of resistance, must be either supremely rash or blindly ignorant; no such judg ment is possible or necessary. It is equally futile to attempt to minimize the weight of the facts, or to deny their reaction on his productive power. Absolute veracity is a fundamental duty in all portraitures or estimates of men of gerius; for the law under which all men live nowhere works its will more unmistakably than in the case of men of superior quality of mind. The relation of character to genius is not solely a matter of morals; it is quite as obviously a matter of psychology. To affirm that conduct and creativeness have no vital connection with one another is to confuse the facts of psychology as well as to conceal those of moral history. Artistic power is often strikingly put forth without regard to sanity of life; but genius is never completely expressed and its largest results harvested save by those who conform to the conditions of productiveness. In the last analysis, as Goethe saw so clearly, the artist is conditioned on the man; and the source of the limitations of a man's art will be found, as a rule, in his character and life. Entire frankness, therefore, is the prime duty of the biographer and critic; the facts must have their full weight. But only the bigot will attempt to adjust the moral balance and determine the moral responsibility.

The editorship of "Graham's " was soon lost, with the usual accompaniment of contradictory statements regarding the cause. In 1844, with very few dollars in hand, Poe was venturing "a hazard of new fortunes" in New York. The conditions would have

disheartened a man less hopeful and dar ing. It was almost impossible to live by writing, and Poe seemed incapable of keeping editorial positions after he secured them.

on

Early in 1845 The Raven" was published; ;; Ulalume and The Bells appeared later. With these poems the With these poems the measure of Poe's poetic expression was complete; and no American poems are so widely known. "The Raven" is probably known by more people than any other piece of verse yet written this continent. In these poems Poe's technical skill is almost unsurpassed; he seems to have a magical command of sound; he knows by instinct and uses by intelligence the subtle resources of melody that lie in the open vowels; he produces the most striking effects by his masterly use of refrain and repetend. But the quality of Poe's genius must be sought elsewhere; for there is a note of artificiality in each of these pieces of verse; they are marvelous pieces of construction, and melody seems to issue from the heart of them; but they have no spiritual root, and no deep artistic necessity fashioned them.

In New York Poe found large opportunities for work, but, with the exception of The Bells," he wrote little which added to his reputation or to American literature. He attacked Longfellow as a plagiarist, and failed to support the accusation; he reprinted, with changes more or less important, many of his earlier pieces; he was guilty in several instances of that exaggeration of the importance of insignificant contemporary writers which he had courageously condemned in others; and he was steadily sinking deeper into the morass which was finally to engulf him. His collected poems were published in New York under the title "The Raven, and Other Poems." The revisions which appear in this volume are important, because they form the definitive text of his work in verse. In the preface there is a very frank confession of the obvious limitations of his poetic achievement in comparison with his genius: "Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making at any time any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been, not a purpose, but a

passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must not-they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind." The note of sincerity is clear in the first statement; the note of insincerity is equally clear in the closing statements:

The cottage at Fordham, on the outskirts of New York, was overshadowed by the approaching death of Virginia and by the declining health of Poe himself; the ravages of care, the strain of overwork, and the disintegrating force of liquor and drugs, were rapidly destroying his nervous system. The young wife, upon whom he lavished the purest and noblest passion of his life, died in January, 1847; Poe went through a long illness, and was tenderly cared for by friends. He recovered, wrote "Eureka: A Prose Poem," in which is revealed the marvelous inventiveness of his mind, and his singular lack of real philosophical insight and grasp of principles; published "The Bells;" delivered an occasional lecture; completed "The Domain of Arnheim," one of his most characteristic tales of fantasy, and passed through at least one personal experience which made clear the inroads of weakness upon his will and intelligence. As the end approached a deep despondency settled upon him.

In June, 1850, he started on a journey to Richmond. In Philadelphia he had a severe attack of delirium tremens, from which he recovered sufficiently to complete his journey and to find pleasure during a three months' stay in the hospitable capital of Virginia among friends who were glad to show him every honor. Late in September he started to return to New York. An uncertainty which is not likely to be dispelled rests on the history of the next few days; the few and tragic facts are that, on Wednesday afternoon of the following week, he was recognized in a drinking-place in Baltimore by a printer, who reported the fact to Dr. Snodgrass. The latter promptly had Poe taken to a hospital, where he was received in an unconscious condition, and there on the following Sunday he died. "Lord, help. my poor soul," was his last appeal to the mercy of God and the charity of men.

Poe made his most definite impression upon his own contemporaries by his criticism; there is evidence that he