Poe Legend

( Originally Published 1922 )

[An Unconventional Version]

A COMPLIMENT which mediocrity often pays to genius, is to indict it. So there is an indictment against Edgar Allan Poe, with a bill of particulars, the effect of which is to make him out the chief Horrible Example of our literary history.

Most of his critics admit that he was a genius and deny that he was a respectable per-son.

A considerable number deny his respectability with warmth, and coldly concede to him a certain measure of poetical talent.

A few embittered ones deny that he was either respectable or a genius.

No one has ever contended for him that he was both a genius and respectable. I do not make this claim, as I should not wish to appear too original; and, besides, I am content with the fact of his genius, and care nothing for the question of respectability. Or, yes, I do care something for it, if by respectability is meant that prudent regard for self which would have prevented the suicide of Poe. I'm sure if he were living to-day, he would never think of drinking himself to death. His work would be better paid, for one thing,—supposing that he could get past the magazine editors,—and then we have learned a little how to drink—the art was crude and brutal in Poe's day. Perhaps this is the only respect in which we, the children of a later generation, are better artists than he.

It is true that some eminent living poets are quite successful in keeping sober, and they are even more successful in writing poetry which is not so good as Poe's!

In brief, conventionality bids fair to kill off the poet and place him at no distant date in the category of extinct species.

True poetry is something awful, mysterious, as beautiful and terrible as the lightning's leap in the collied heaven, charming the eye with dread and rousing the soul to a quick sense of the Power behind the mechanism of nature ! Now it is difficult to associate this idea with a type of poet that offers no food for wonder and leaves us no ground for illusions.

No doubt many a respectable poet would pitch the proprieties to Hell, if he could be sure that by so doing he would land beside Villon and Burns and Byron and Poe. But that is a large "if", and in our day it is almost as hard to live the old life of the poet as to recapture his careless lyric rapture and the secret of his wild genius.

Indeed, if we may believe the Philistines of the hour, the personality of the poet is no longer much in question; seeing that he is reduced or, if you please, elevated to a perfectly respectable type; offers no shocking singularities of character or conduct; is often arrayed as the lilies and bidden to discourse platitudes be-fore young ladies' seminaries; and has modest hopes of being one day decorated as a Doctor Litterarum.

But look you, there are some amongst us who will fight until their eyelids can no longer wag, against this caricature of the Poet. Human nature, too, is opposed to it, and the heresy is not written in the Holy Book of Genius. I do not contend that literature must be a species of Newgate Calendar, a history of tragedies, errors and defeats: that were to overdarken the picture. But I shall venture to hold suspect the man who comes smiling and sleek and prosperous before me, in the awful name of Poet; with no signs upon him of agony and wrestling, and no visible wounds from the embraces of his God.

THE tradition of Poe's drunkenness, or to speak scientifically, dipsomania, hangs on so persistently that many people can think of him only in connection with that still unforgotten melodrama, "Ten Nights in a Barroom". As a boy I used to fancy that he was cut out for the leading part in it. And in fact I saw a play not long ago—in the provinces, of course—in which the author of "The Raven" was shown drunk in every act and working up to a brilliant climax of the "horrors". . .

When I try to summon before my mind's eye the figure of Poe, the man in his habit as he lived, his daily walks and associates, the picture is at once broken up by an irruption of red and angry faces—old John Allan, Burton the Comedian (who could be so tragically in ear-nest, and so damned virtuous with a poor poet), White, Griswold, Wilmer, Graham, Briggs, the sweet singer of "Ben Bolt", and others of the queer literati of that day. Each and all declare in staccato, with positive forefinger raised, "We tell you the man was drunk!" Then Absalom Willis appears, bowing daintily, and says in mild deprecation, "No, I would not precisely say drunk—but do me the honor to read my article on the subject in the `Home Journal'." The saintly Longfellow, evoked from the shades, seems to add, "Not merely drunk, but malignant". And a host of forgotten poet-asters looming dimly in the background, take up the Psalmist's words and make a refrain of them—"Not merely drunk, but malignant!"

Since this is what we get, in lieu of biography, by those who have taken the life of Poe, it is no wonder that the obscure dramatist seizes on the same stuff for his purpose, de-grading the most famous of our poets to the level of a barroom hero. Whether or not it is possible at this late day to separate the fame of Poe from the foul legend of drunkenness and sodden dissipation that has gathered about it, I would not venture to say; but very sure am I that no one has yet attempted the feat. Even the mild and half-apologetic Dr. Woodberry is gravely interested in the number, extent and variety of Poe's drunks. Let me not forget one honorable exception, Edmund Clarence Stedman, who has taken his brother poet, "as he was and for what he was". I do not, how-ever, include Mr. Stedman with the biographers of Poe—he stands rather at the head of those who have sought to interpret his genius and to safeguard his literary legacy. And though (I think) he brought no great love to the task—Poe is hardly a subject to inspire love —he has done it fairly and well.

I may here observe, parenthetically, that in a very kind letter addressed to the author, Mr. Stedman demurs at the suggestion that he brought no great love to his critical labors in behalf of Poe—labors that have unquestionably raised the poet's literary status in the view of many, and have as certainly cleared away a mass of prejudice, evil report and misunderstanding attached to his personal character and reputation. But all I mean to convey is, that Mr. Stedman's splendid work was done, as it appears to me, less for the love of Poe than for the love of letters. In saying this I imply not the slightest reproach: Poe is a man to be pitied, praised, admired, regretted; or, if you please, to be hated, envied, blamed, and condemned. But love—such love, say, as Lamb inspired in his friends and still inspires in his readers—is not for the lonely singer of "Israfel".

I agree with Poe's biographers that he got drunk often, but I am only sorry that he never got any fun out of it—the man was essentially unhumorous. I should be glad to hold a brief for Poe's drunkenness, if his tippling ever yielded him any solace; or, better still, if it ever inspired him to any genuine literary effort. We know well that some great poets have success-fully wooed the Muse in their cups, but you can take my word for it, they were cold sober when they worked the thing out. It is true Emerson says (after Milton) that the poet who is to see visions of the gods should drink only water out of a wooden bowl; but Emerson belonged to the unjoyous race of New England Brahmins, who were surprisingly like the snow-men children make, in that they lacked natural heat and rude passions. We may not forget that a poet who stands for all time as an ideal type of sanity and genius—the always contemporary Quintus Horatius Flaccus—has in many places guaranteed mediocrity to the abstaining bard.

So there was the best poetical warrant for Poe's drinking, if he could only have got any good out of it. But he couldn't and didn't; he was merely, at times frequent enough to justify his enemies, an ordinary dipsomaniac, craving the madness of alcohol; mirthless, darkly sullen, quite insane, though perhaps physically harmless; hardly conscious of his own identity. Of the genial god Bacchus, who rewards his true devotees with jollity and mirth, with forgetfulness of care and the golden promise of fortune, who makes poets of dull men and gods of poets—of this splendid and beneficent deity, Poe knew nothing. That spell from which Horace drew his most charming visions; which inspired Burns with courage to sing amid the hopeless poverty of his lot; which kindled the genius of Byron and allured the fancy of Heine, like his own Lorelei; which is three-fourths of Béranger and one-half of Moore—to Poe meant only madness, the sordid kind from which men turn away with horror and disgust, and which too often leads to the clinic and the potter's field. The kindly spirit of wine, that for a brief time at least works an inspiring change in every man, enlarging the sympathies, softening the heart, prompting new and generous impulses, opening the soul shut up to self to the greater claims and interests of humanity, was, in the case of Poe, turned into a malefic genie, intent only upon the lowest forms of animal gratification, and reckless of any and every ill wrought to body and soul.

In other words—for I must not write a conventional essay—Poe was the kind of man that never should have touched the cup. For there are some men—oh, yes, I know it !—to whom the mildest wine ever distilled from grapes kissed by the sun in laughing valleys, is deadly poison, fatal as that draught brewed of old by the Colchian enchantress. And of these was poor Edgar Poe.

Neither were there for him those negative but still pleasing virtues which are sometimes credited to a worshiper of the great god Bacchus—perhaps they are mostly fictitious, but this is a fraud at which Virtue herself may connive. I am very sure no one ever called Poe a "good fellow" for all the whiskey he drank; and his biographers also make the same omission. The drunkenness of Burns calls up the laughing genius of a hundred matchless ballads, the dance, the fair, and the hot love that followed close upon; calls up the epic riot of beg-gars in the alehouse of Poosie Nancy—and we see the whole vivid life of Burns was of a piece with his poetry. To wish him less drunken or more sober (if you prefer it) is to wish him less a poet.

Not so with Poe, as I have already shown. He got nothing from drink, in the way of literary inspiration, though some of his critics think he did, and, being themselves both sober and dull, appear to doubt whether anything so gotten is legitimate. I hate to lay irreverent hands on the popular belief that "The Raven" was composed during or just following a crisis of drunken delirium—the poem is too elaborately artificial for that,—and has not Poe told us how he wrote it, in a confession which, more clearly than all the labored disparagement of his biographers, explains the vanity, the weakness and the fatal lack of humor in his make-up? I do not find any suggestions of drink or "dope" in the samples of his prose which I dislike, such as a few of his "Old World Romances". If there be any "dope" in this stuff, it is, in my opinion, the natural dope of faculties when driven against their will to attempt things beyond the writer's province or power. And there is also the "dope" of what could be, at times, a fearfully bad style. But I am not writing a literary essay.

I conclude, then, that in the case of Edgar Allan Poe, drink has no extenuating circumstances, though many might be pleaded for the poet himself. It made enemies for him of those who wanted to be his friends (if you will only believe them) ; it lost him his money—deuced little of it ever he had; it helped to break his health, and it gave him no valuable literary inspiration. Some solace, I would gladly think, it yielded him, and mayhap (who knows?) there was a blessed nepenthe in the peace it brought him at last when, after babbling a while on his cot in that Baltimore hospital, there came to him the only dreamless sleep he ever knew.

ALL his life long Poe dreamed of having a magazine of his own, and never got his desire. He was always writing to his friends and possible patrons about this one darling dream; but nothing came of it. The nearest he ever got to his wish was when he succeeded in drawing into his plan one T. C. Clarke, a Philadelphia publisher. Clarke had money, and he put up a certain amount toward the starting of the "Penn", as the magazine was to be called. Some initial steps were taken, and the moment seems to have been the most sanguine in Poe's long battle with adversity. He was full of enthusiasm and wrote to many friends, detailing his literary hopes and projects in connection with the new magazine. Then suddenly, and rather unaccountably, everything was dropped. It seems likely that Clarke took cold in his money—at any rate, the "Penn" died a-borning. Poe had gone far enough to incur a large-sized debt to Clarke :—he left in the latter's hand a manuscript as security, which, we may suppose, did not raise the temperature of that gentleman's finances.

Then the planning and the letter-writing and the making of prospectuses, with other architectural projects of the Spanish variety, went on and continued to the end of the chapter—good God! how pathetic and yet how grimly humorous it all is to one who has carried the same cross, and knows every inch of that Cal-vary! Poe was at least spared the struggle which comes after possession; but I am aware that this is no consolation to the man who is dying to make his fight.

Yet once again the chance fluttered into his hands, when he bought the "Broadway Journal" from a man named Bisco with a note of fifty dollars endorsed by Horace Greeley. Not long afterward Horace had the pleasure of paying the note, and he remained to the end a strong believer in Poe's imaginative gifts. About the same time that the philosopher parted with his money, Poe gave up his brief possession of the "Journal". But still he went on in the old hopeless, hopeful way, dreaming of that blessed magazine, which he had now decided to call the "Stylus" instead of the "Penn". And a name only it remained to the last.

From these and many similar facts in the life of Poe his biographers to a man conclude that he had no business ability. I am not so sure—I am only sure that he never had the money. In fact, Poe was never able to raise more than one hundred dollars at any one time in his whole life—once when he borrowed that sum to get married (and the sneerers say, forgot to repay it), and again when he won a like amount with a prize story. Yes, he got a judgment of something over two hundred dollars against his savage foe, Thomas Dunn English,* but I am not aware that it was ever satisfied—think of Poe suing a man for literary libel! His usual salary was ten dollars a week—Burton, the tragic Comedian, held out a promise of more, but discharged him when the time to make good came around—and this after Poe had gained what was considered a literary reputation in those days. With such resources, to have started the kind of magazine Poe had always in mind, would have tasked a man of great business ability, with no poetical ideas floating about in his head to divert him from the Main Chance.

Certainly Poe was not the man for the job--I doubt if he could have sold shares in El Dorado. But I do not think his failures, such as they were, justly convict him of a complete lack of that ordinary sense which enables a man to carry his money as far as the corner. There is a popular cant now, based on the success of some fortunate writers, that literary genius of high order is not inconsistent with first-rate business ability. I do not care to go into the discussion—especially as this is not a literary essay—but I will say that in most instances cited to prove the point, the money sense is a good deal more obvious than the literary genius.

To make what is called a business success in this world, a man is required to do homage unto many gods. But though he pay the most devoted worship to the divinities of Thrift, Enterprise, Courage, Energy, Foresight, Calculation, he will still fail should he omit his tribute to a greater god than these—Expediency!

In his poetical way Edgar Allan Poe went a-questing after many strange worships, and he was learned in all that mystic lore as far back as the Chaldeans. But he seems never to have got an inkling of that one Universal Religion in which all men believe, which settles all earthly things—the inexorable Divinity of Affairs, already named, by which success or failure is determined for every man that cometh into the world.

TOWARD the close of Poe's life a horde of female poets rushed upon his trail. His relations with them were not wholly "free from blame", to quote his biographers—they seem to have been, at any rate, Platonic. In-deed, the fact is self-evident. A poetess who is always studying her own emotions for "copy", is not to be taken unawares. I think Poe was in more danger of being led astray than any of the ladies whom he distinguished with his attentions. It is to be noted that they invariably speak of him as a "perfect gentleman", even after he has ceased to honor them with his affections. To me there is something rather literary than womanly in such angelic charity and forgiveness—'tis too sugary sweet. Have we not heard that lovers estranged make the bitterest enemies? At any rate, the lover of "Ligeia", "Eleonora" and similar abstractions was not a man to be feared by a poetess of well-seasoned virtue.

Yes, I am sure they only wanted to get copy out of him, and especially to link their names with his. They were mostly widows, too—which makes the thing even more suspicious. One of them—that one to whom he addressed his finest lyric—was forty-five. Lord, Lord ! what liars these poets are ! I give you my word that until very lately, I believed those perfect lines "To Helen" idealized some youthful love of Poe's.

Ah ! Psyche, from the regions which Are holy land.

Psyche lived in Providence, which is in the State of Rhode Island. She was, as I have said, forty-five, an age that should be above tempting or temptation. She wrote verses, now forgotten, and her passion for Poe was of the most literary character. After a two-days' courtship he proposed to her and was accepted, on condition, however, that he amend his breath —which is to say, his habits. Poe seems to have regretted his rashness, for he at once started on a bat (these remarks are not literary), as if the prospect of his joy were too much for him. Still Helen would not reject him; she merely wrote him more poetry—and the poet again turned to drink as if to drown a great sorrow. A day was set for the wed-ding, and he began celebrating at the hotel bar long before the hour appointed for the ceremony. Helen heard of his early start, and, knowing what he could do in a long day with such an advantage, she sent for him and broke off the engagement. This is the only instance I know of in Poe's entire career where his drinking had the least appearance of sanity.

Before this, and indeed during the lifetime of Mrs. Poe, he had broken with Mrs. Ellet, a lady who made feeble verse, but whose ability for scandal and mischief was out of the ordinary. It was through this daughter of the Muses that the poet became estranged from Mrs. Osgood, and there was a beautiful women's row, in which Margaret Fuller took a hand. Mrs. Osgood was a gushing person, ferociously intent on "copy", but of mature age and quite capable of taking care of herself. She declares and asseverates that Poe chased her to Providence—that fatal Providence 1--likewise to Albany, imploring her to love him. I wonder where he got the money for these journeys—about this time he was lecturing on the "Cosmogony of the Universe", in order to raise funds for his eternally projected magazine. The very popular nature of the subject and his own qualities as a lyceum entertainer,--which never would have commended him to the late Major Pond—incline me to the belief that Poe was not at that time burning much money in trips to Providence and Albany.

At any rate, Mrs. Osgood cut him out, though on her deathbed, with a last effort of the ruling passion (or literary motive) she very handsomely forgave him and pronounced a touching eulogy on his moral character.

Then there was "Annie", a married woman living near Boston, to whom Poe addressed a sincere and beautiful poem. The exigencies of her case rather strain the Platonic theory, but I do not give up my brief, mind you. I suspect that Annie was behind the breaking off with Helen; but, of course, he couldn't marry Annie for the reason that she had a husband already of whom we know no more), and divorces were not then negotiated in record time. Annie was therefore obliged to be content with the sweet satisfaction of foiling a hated rival—and to a woman's heart, we know this is the next best thing to landing the man. Annie, by the way, was not a literary person; she wanted love from Poe, not copy; and she seems to have sincerely, if not very sensibly, loved the poet for himself.

Remains the last of these queer attachments which throw a kind of grotesque romance over the closing years of Poe. Mrs. Shelton was of unimpeached maturity, like the rest, and like all the rest but one, a widow. She lived in Richmond, Virginia, and she had been a boyish flame of Poe's. Mrs. Shelton was neither beautiful nor literary, and she had attained the ripe age of fifty years. But she was rich, and though Poe was not a business man, I dare say he felt the money would be no great inconvenience—and then there was always the magazine to be started, dear me! Still he made love to her as if half afraid she would take him at his word—and he kept writing to Annie! But Mrs. Shelton was of sterner stuff than the poetic Helen. She had made up her mind to marry Poe for reasons sufficient unto herself, and she would have done it had not fate intervened. She made her preparations like a thorough business woman, and strong-mindedly led the way toward the altar. The wedding ring was bought (I can hardly believe with Poe's money), and all things were in readiness for the happy event, when the poet wandered away on that luckless journey whose end was in an-other world.

Mrs. Shelton wore mourning for him, and all her women friends told her it was wonderfully becoming. . . . I think Annie's crape was at the heart.

Edgar Allan Poe was a child in the hands of women, and that's the whole truth—a loving, weak, vain and irresponsible child. This count in the indictment is the weakest of all. I should not have referred to it were this a conventional "study" of the Poet.

THE notion that Poe was mad has within late years received a quasi-scientific confirmation—at least the doctors have settled the matter to their own satisfaction. I therefore advert to it in order to dispose of the Poe indictment in full.

My learned friend, Dr. William Lee Howard, of Baltimore (a town forever memorable to the lovers of the poet), sets out to prove that Edgar Allan Poe was not a drunkard in the ordinary sense (which is ordinarily believed), but was rather what the medical experts are now calling a psychopath; in plain words, a madman. "He belongs," says the doctor, "to that class of psychopaths too long blamed and accused of vicious habits that are really symptoms of disease—a disease now recognized by neurologists as psychic epilepsy." The doctor fortifies his thesis with much learning of the same portentous kind, and in conclusion he says:

"The psychologist readily understands the reason for Poe's intensity, for his cosmic terror and his constant dwelling upon the aspects of physical decay. He lived alternately a life of obsession and lucidity, and this duality is the explanation of his being so shamefully misunderstood—so highly praised, so cruelly blamed. In most of his weird and fantastic tales we can see the patient emerging from oblivion. We find in his case many of the primary symptoms of the psychopath—a disordered and disturbed comprehension of concepts, suspicion, and exaggerated ideas of persecution."

These be words horrendous and mouth-filling, but surely I need not remind the erudite Dr. Howard that—

When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,

And proved it 'twas no matter what he said.

And I suspect Dr. Howard in coming, as he thinks, to the defence of Poe's reputation, has done the poet an ill service, though I doubt if he will influence any right-judging minds. Nor am I in sympathy with the doctor's ingenious argument that the most strongly marked products of Poe's genius are to be referred to a diseased mental and nervous condition; which is simply Nordau's contention that all genius is disease. According to this view, all men of great intellectual power —e. g., Nordau himself and Dr. William Lee Howard—are insane; and yet it is a fact that the madhouses are chiefly peopled with the average sort of human beings.

No, the first of American poets was not mad because he wrote "The Raven", and "The House of Usher", and "Ligeia and "The Red Death". These masterpieces indeed prove that he was at certain fortunate times in possession of that highest and most potential sanity, that mens divinior, from which true artistic creation results—always the rarest and most beautiful phenomenon in the world.

Mad? I guess not! but no doubt he was thought to be cracked by the half of his acquaintance, for such is the tribute that mediocrity ever pays to genius. The small grocer folk and their kind about Fordham, as well as some more pretentious respectabilities, looked askance at the poor poet struggling with his burden and his vision; fighting his unequal battle with fate and fortune. In much the same way, with a scarcely veiled contempt and aversion, he was regarded by the successful literary cliques of the day, especially the "New England School" of his detestation—to which it must be allowed he offered provocation enough by his critical disparagements. It is to be noted that Mr. W. D. Howells, the leading inheritor of their tradition, though a critic of unusual breadth and sympathy, has a poor notion of Poe. In short, our poet was that scandal and contradiction in his own day—a true genius ; and he remains an enigma to ours.

But I do not think he was any more a psycho-path or a madman than—bless me !—Dr. William Lee Howard himself—though I will grant that, as we are now saying, several things got constantly on his nerves. And among these :

Chronic poverty.
Rejection of his literary claims.
Success of his inferiors.
The insolence of publishers.
Humiliation of spirit.

And—I must grant it the agony induced by his occasional excesses and his forfeiture of self-respect.

I do not argue that the misfortunes prove the genius, even though in Poe's case they seem to have been the penalty annexed to his extraordinary gifts—the curse of the malignant Fairy. But with due respect to the learned authority several times referred to, and in spite of all the Bedlam science in the world, I hold to my faith that true genius is not the negation, but the affirmation of sanity.

As for the literary smugs, to whom Poe is still anathema because he was a genius and also a scandal, according to their moral code : is it not enough, gentlemen, that you are prosperous, and respectable—and utterly unlike Poe?

NEXT to the subject of Poe's drinking habits, which you have to follow like a strong breath through every account of him that I have seen—his faithful biographers give most attention to his borrowings. Hence the typical Poe biography reads, as I have already suggested, like an indictment.

Now, the fact is, poor Poe was as bad a borrower as he was a drinker—he meant well, and heaven knows he tried hard enough in each capacity, but neither part fitted him, and in both he failed to rise to the dignity of the artist. He was truly a bum borrower (this is not a literary essay). He never executed a "touch" with grace or finesse. Instead of going to his friends with endearing assurance, smiling like a May-day at the honor and pleasure he de-signed them, he put on his hat with the deep black band and went like an undertaker to con-duct his own funeral. No wonder they threw him down ! But in truth he rarely had the courage to face his man, and so he sent the poor devoted Mrs. Clemm—that paragon of mothers-in-law for a poet !—or else weakly relied on his powers of literary persuasion and courted certain refusal by penning his modest request. Call this man a borrower! Why, he was a parody of Charles Lamb's idea that your true borrower—like Alcibiades or Brinsley Sheridan—belongs to a superior kind of humanity, the Great Race—born to rule the rest. He never realized the greatness of the Borrowing Profession—never rose to it, to take a metaphor from the stage, but remained a mumping, fearful, calamity-inviting, graceless and hopeless, make-believe borrower to the last.

For this his biographers are ashamed of him, as for his sprees, and this also has passed into the popular legend concerning Poe, of which the obscure dramatist (already referred to) has availed himself. Neither the unknown dramatist nor his biographers have deemed it worth while to explain this phase of Poe's life —these are the facts and here are the letters to Kennedy, Griswold, White, Thomas, Graham, Clarke, Simms, Willis, et al. Can you make anything else of them? And another count of the indictment in re Edgar Allan Poe is proven.

I am not writing a literary essay, but I must again lay stress on one thing, in extenuation of Poe's inveterate offence of borrowing from his friends—he did it very badly, so badly that this fact alone should excuse him in the eyes of the charitable. Let us also try to bear in mind that the most he could earn, after giving oath-bound guarantees as to sobriety, etc., was Ten Dollars a week—this was the sum for which Burton (the tragic comedian) hired him, and from which in a very short time the same Bur-ton ruthlessly separated him. The joke being that this same fat-headed Burton carried on the affair with a high show of regard for the dignity of the Literary Profession, outraged by Poe ! Ten dollars a week ! Why, do you know that our most popular author, Mr. Success G. Smith, is believed to earn about fifty thousand a year by his pen? That Mr. Calcium Givemfitts, the fearless exposer of corruption in high places, is worrying along on a beggarly stipend of, say, thirty-five thousand? That the famous society novelist, Mrs. Tuxedo Smith-Jones, barely contrives to make ends meet on the same hard terms; and that a score of others might be named whose incomes do not fall below twenty-five thousand? . . .

But, you say, does each and every one of these gifted and fortunate individuals make literature in the sense that Poe made it? My dear sir, these persons are all my intimate friends; I admire their works next to my own, though I confess I do not read them so often. Therefore, to single out one of these distinguished and successful authors for praise would be invidious ; and, besides—I am not writing a literary essay.

THAT old, old story of genius struggling with want, and overborne by cruel necessity, hampered too by its weaknesses, how pitiful though trite it is! The other day I went into the great Public Library of New York, in order to verify some data for this paper. Under the glass cases displaying rare books and autograph letters, I saw one or two exhibits which quite made me forget the object of my visit. I looked at them a long time, and I would like you to understand and share the feeling which they evoked in me.

There was, first of all, a copy of the First Edition of Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Man That Was Used Up", published by Graham of Philadelphia; a thin book, or rather pamphlet, in gray covers. An inscription stated that it was a very rare copy, only one other of this edition being known to exist, and that it had brought at auction in 1909, the sum of thirty-eight hundred dollars; the highest price yet paid for any book printed in America. Thirty-eight hundred dollars !—an amount that would have seemed a fortune to Poe and would have secured to his later years the independence of which he vainly dreamed to the last—perhaps added to his days and enabled him to leave us a richer literary legacy. And why was this great sum paid recently for a cheap paper-covered book printed away back in 1843, seeing that we possess the stories in numerous better editions? 'Why but because the rich collector prized and coveted that book for its rarity as one of the indubitable proofs of Poe's pilgrimage—let me say with-out irreverence, a thorn from his crown, a stone from his Calvary. Nay, has not the world, in various ways, always paid the highest price for the relics of the martyr? How else shall we surely know the elect ones who suffered and travailed in order that their great thoughts might be born?

I turned from this to an autograph letter of one of the most famous and unfortunate of poets, whose destiny is not without tragic likeness to that of Poe. It bore date March 31, 1788, and read in part as follows :

"I am so harassed with care and anxiety about this farming project of mine that my Muse has degenerated into the veriest prose wench that ever picked cinders or followed a tinker. . . . At present the world sits such a load on my mind that it has effaced almost every trace of the image of God in me."

The letter is signed Robert Burns.

In the same case I saw a letter of Poe's, addressed to one E. A. Duycinck, Esq., and bearing date November 13, 1845. It ran as follows :

"My dear Mr. Duycinck:

I am still dreadfully unwell and fear I shall be very seriously ill. I have resolved to give up the `Broadway Journal' and retire to the country for six months or perhaps a year, as the sole means of regaining my health and spirits. Is it not possible that, yourself, or Mr. Mathews, might give me a trifle for my interest in the paper? Or if this cannot be effected, might I venture to ask you for an advance of $5o on the faith of the American Parnassus, which I will finish as soon as possible? If you would oblige me in this manner, I would feel myself under the deepest obligation."

The writer ends by requesting that reply be sent by bearer—another proof of Poe's deficiency in the borrowing craft, since only a novice or a bungler would thus attempt to force a man's hand. Loans are very shy toward those who seem to need them so badly.

This letter so strangely companioning that of Burns, which it resembles in its burden of complaint and the cry of despair it voices, is stated to be from the Duycinck collection. I am inclined to suspect that the requested fifty was never added to the Poe collection.

By the way, there was another letter in the case, from a great and famous and successful contemporary of Poe, whose ordered and happy life was in every respect a contrast to his. I wonder why, under the circumstances, it gave me no thrill to read those lines penned by the hand of Longfellow :—verily unto him that hath shall not always be given !

A LAST word as to Poe's enemies—those whom he made for himself and those who were called into being by his literary triumphs. Here again I think Poe failed to hit it off, as he might have done. Though he labored at the gentle art of making enemies with much diligence, he never utilized them with brilliant success in a literary way (most of the criticism which procured him his enemies is hack-writing, not literature). For example, he did not make his enemies serve both his wit and reputation, as Heine so well knew how to do. The latter turned his foes into copy; throughout his life they were his chief literary asset, and I have no doubt that he almost loved them for the literature they enabled him to make. This is the most exquisite revenge upon a literary rival—to make him your pot-boiler and bread-winner as well as a feeder to your fame and glory. It was beyond Poe, and, therefore, the chronicle of his grudges has for us hardly more piquancy than the tale of his borrowings.

But his biographers weary us with it, as if the matter were of real importance. Nonsense! Our literary manners are doubtless improved since Poe's day; the brethren are surely not so hungry, and there is more fodder to go round (I have said this is not a literary effort). Still the civility is rather assumed than real; there is much spiteful kicking of shins under the table ; and private lampoons take the place of the old public personalities. I grant that authors are more generous in their attitude to-ward one another than formerly, and the fact cannot be disputed that they are fervently sincere in their praise of—the dead ones !

No, we shall not condemn Poe for the enemies he made. The printed word breeds hostility and aversion that the writer wots not of —yea, his dearest friends, scanning his page with jealous eye, shall take rancor from his most guileless words and cherish it in their bosoms against him. Write, and your friends will love you till they hate you; for there is no fear and jealousy in the world like those that lurk in the printed word. Write then, write deeply enough, down to the truth of your own soul, below the shams of phrase and convention, below your insincerities of self—and you shall have enemies to your heart's desire. The man who could print much and still make no enemies,* has never yet appeared on this planet.

Certainly it was not he who struggled desperately for the poorest living in and about New York some seventy-odd years ago; who saw his young. wife die in want and misery, with the horror of officious charity at the door; who not long afterwards, and in a kindly dream (as I must think it) left all this coil of trouble and sorrow behind him, bequeathing to immortality the fame of Edgar Allan Poe.