ris paribus, he who loses himself in a thought-labyrinth of his own weaving, is certainly inferior to him who findeth his way out. The former may be able to weave a beautiful web of thought, but to this power the latter adds the still higher of ability to describe the successive steps of the process.

As the novelist, he stamped this same wonderful capacity of his genius, and acuteness of analytical power, upon every tale. The very minutest-minutiæ are related at length; but, with such consummate skill, and such power of exciting description, that the reader, instead of growing weary, as is usual, finds in it a perfect fascination. But, above all others, the peculiar manner in which he treats the horrible and revolting, (for in this he seems to have had an unearthly delight,) is the remarkable characteristic of his fiction. He paints scenes the most shocking, depicts passions the most devilish, portrays deeds so horrible, that he is obliged to introduce an Orang-outang as the actorall this he does, and yet, the reader, instead of being disgusted or outraged, as is usual with other authors who attempt this style of fiction, is led on and on by the gradual and graceful advance of the description, until, when he finally reaches the catastrophe, he is almost ready to cry out in the phrenzy excited in him, his blood grows cold with horror-but, it is a very pleasant phrenzy, a very fascinating horror; and he feels that he has been led on by a power which can only be described by the word genius. Not that this is the highest, nor even a very high accomplishment of genius, but it is a peculiar accomplishment, which nothing else but genius can effect. And, though Poe can by no means be called a successful caricaturist, as Dickens, nor an earnest, enthusiastic Reformer and Philanthropist, as Kingsley, nor a great Novelist, as Bulwer, yet we must have recourse to his works to find success in that peculiar but acknowledged kind of fiction, in which he developed all his plots, and conceived all his heroes; and in this he discovered the wonderful power of his genius and taste; in that, in what there is so great liability to degenerate into the disgusting and the outrageous, he produced a simple, fascinating, excitement; in that, in what all others have failed, he was wonderfully successful.

Poe wrote, comparatively speaking, but a small amount of poetry; yet it is in this department, perhaps, that he is most widely and most favorably known. If popularity be a fair test of merit, we must consider him to have been the greatest poet who has ever appeared in our Literature. I do not hesitate to assert, that of all American productions in meter, no other is so popularly and so favorably known as Poe's Raven. True, the poem is but a short one, but, I believe there

is enough in it to give the author a very high, if not the highest seat, among American Bards. The Elegy, too, is but short; yet, upon its merits, to a great extent, rests the enviable reputation of Thomas Gray. A marked excellence in this poem is the wonderful adaptation of rhythm to sentiment. Its music affects us like the chant of some mysterious anthem. Weird and melancholy, it is but a fit accompaniment to his still more melancholy thoughts and weirder fancies. Some have accused him of a lack of soul and emotion in his poems, rendered still more patent by his rigid mechanism. But, that there is a want of emotion, sad, deep, and earnest, in portions of his Raven, in the greater part of his Annabel Lee, in the whole of his Lenore, I confess I fail to discover. And, at least, as a palliation to any appearance of mechanism, we feel that it arises from his striving at perfection in harmony and sympathy of thought and sound. So nearly did he come to this perfection, that we are inclined to overlook, as far as possible, a defect that plainly has its origin in his attempts to reach it. If we measure his poetry by its effects, we give it high praise. I have somewhere or other read of an English lady, who, having a bust of Pallas on the mantle of her chamber, after reading The Raven, was so vividly impressed with its weird fancies, that she was obliged to have the bust removed, before she could again, with any peace of mind, occupy her room. And, surely, the melancholy sorrow of his Annabel Lee, and Lenore, lay a strong hold on our sympathies.

Thus we have Poe, in the three-fold character of critic, novelist and poet; attractive, skillful, successful in each. But we cannot leave him thus; for, as I said at the outset, it is almost impossible to separate his works and his life. In none of his writings, however, and many of them are, in a certain sense, auto-biographical, are to be found any of those coarser and darker qualities of nature, which every reviewer now-a-days seems to feel it his duty to parade, with a semblance of virtuous disgust, over page after page of his article, ignoring, or at least not mentioning the fact, that he possessed a single virtue. Indeed, there has grown up, within the last few years especially, a fashionable kind of abuse of Poe, against which I must protest for at least two reasons. First, it ignores his virtues; and, that he did possess virtues, and they, too, of a most courteous and affectionate kind, we have the testimony of Mrs. Osgood's brief memorial, in which she pays a tribute of admiring respect to him, as her departed friend. Prominent among the better qualities of his nature, we have her testimony to the respect, to the "tender reverence," with which he approached her sex; to his unselfish friendship for her; to

his filial devotion to his mother-in law; to his pure, self-sacrificing love to his wife. Grant that he was as bad a man, away from his family, as his worst calumniators would represent him, no one has yet been found vile enough to belie the virtue of his conduct in his domestic relations. In his home, to his invalid wife and her dependent mother, he was all that the warmest affection and kindliest gentility could make husband and son. In speaking of powers and capacities not discoverable in literature, Mrs. Osgood says: "But it was in his conversation and his letters, far more than in his poetry and prose writings, that the genius of Poe was most gloriously revealed. His letters were divinely beautiful, and, for hours, I have listened to him, entranced by strains of such pure and almost celestial eloquence, as I have never read or heard elsewhere."-In speaking of his relations and intercourse with his fellow-men, alluding to his connection with him in the editorial department of the Mirror, Willis says: "Throughout all this considerable period, we had seen but one presentment of the man-a quiet, patient, industrious, and gentlemanly person, commanding the utmost respect and good feeling, by his unvarying deportment and ability." Thus we have the testimony of these two worthy persons, to his virtues and merits, both in private and public relations of persons who knew whereof they spoke.

Again, this indiscriminate abuse is unfair, because it assigns no reasons for his irregularities and moral defects. Although the self-indulgence of the poet, whether in the grosser form of sensuality, or in the less atrocious one of intemperance, is not to be excused and smiled away, because his passion is strong or his imagination vivid; yet, there are circumstances and temptations which fall in his way, by which his offences, in common with the rest of mankind, are, in a measure, palliated. Now it seems to me, that the training of Poe's childhood, the course of his education in that most critical part of his life, while he was passing from his boyhood to his manhood, his associations in his College discipline-all are circumstances of this description. He was of good ancestry; yet, we cannot but look with suspicion upon his immediate descent-his father an actor, his mother an actress. He, perhaps, suffered the penalty of the law: The sins of the parents shall be visited on their posterity. It is at least certain that, by their early death, he was deprived of that fond solicitude for his moral and religious culture, which the parent (be that parent good or bad) alone can feel. He was at once adopted into the family of Mr. Allan. It really seems that fate had so destined it, that misfortune should follow upon misfortune, in a series, lim

ited only by his death. For the time being, of course, it was for his welfare; it gave him a home; it made him the recipient of kindnesses which he could not have expected at the hands of strangers; it supplied him with the means of educating and cultivating his mind; it secured him a position in the most intelligent and refined society; it did all these things and many more; yet, it must be regarded, in view of his subsequent life, the greatest of his calamities. Not that Mr. and Mrs. Allan were not kind and affectionate enough; not that they were not people of correct deportment of life; but, because they were too kind, and too affectionate; while they failed, most unfortunately failed, to exercise that control and government over him which should have curbed his follies and tempered his developing tastes, they failed in that which could have turned their kindness and affection to a good account.

Treated with all the indulgence of a pet, and conqueror in every foolish whim, he grew into boyhood, with a disposition unmanageable, because never taught to brook restraint. Thus reared, with no lessons of self-control, with no developed power of self-denial, he left the family circle, and entered the University of Virginia, where he was thrown into company, which even Mr. Griswold (who seems to have considered Poe's life a kind of bad debt, which he, as his literary executor, was obliged to settle at as great a discount as possible) characterizes as "extremely dissolute." While his intellectual powers were such as enabled him, with no apparent effort, to bear away the "very highest honors," he had not had that strength of purpose and moral character developed in him, which could have enabled him to resist his surrounding temptations. The result was, that, thoughtless and impulsive, he soon became as wild and dissolute as the wildest and most dissolute of his companions.

About this time his adopted mother died. Her death was a most painful blow to his sensitive nature. Her he had loved with a filial affection, for her he felt a lasting debt of gratitude, to her he owed much of the little good he had learned at his home-hearth-stone. We are told that he often spent day after day by her grave, and, that on one of these occasions he wrote a poem dedicated to her, in which occurs the following beautiful stanza :

Of all who owe thee most-whose gratitude
Nearest resemblest worship—oh, remember

The truest, the most fervently devoted,

And think that these weak lines are written by him.

By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think

His spirit is communing with an angel's.”

His guardian again married. Poe was driven from his home, penniless, with nothing upon which to depend for a livelihood save his genius. To him who had been reared in luxury, who had feasted on the goods of fortune, this was a most cruel event. It is to be remembered, however, to the credit of him and his genius, that, while the immediate object of his intense literary labor was nothing more than the means with which to secure a livelihood, unlike most others who write for money, he at the same time earned a fame, which shall live as long as our literature. Among our authors, none did more than Poe to support the dignity and independence of American authorship, against the charges of English critics.

Prevented by the length of my article from tracing his life any further, suffice it to say, in conclusion, that the habits of dissipation he formed in early life, never loosened their hold upon him, but seemed to grow stronger and wilder as his years advanced, until he quitted his painful desk forever in 1847, being then but thirty-eight years old. His life, though short and active, was a most painful tragedy—the sole author of its violence, a reckless, relentless passion for drink. We have evidences of how he tried, how he struggled, how he agonized, to emerge into a better and nobler life; we discover, in his early death in a Hospital of Inebriates, his mournful, utter failure. He had faults, many and grievous. But, can we see nothing in the circumstances of his early life, which would soften our harsh estimate of them? can we not be sufficiently generous to the defenseless dead to let them rest at peace, at least as far as crimination goes? For the sake of our literature, he died an age too soon; for the sake of his own immortal happiness, I fear, an age too late. Over his career we linger with mingled feelings of reverence and sorrow-reverence for his genius, sorrow for his mournful lapses from the straight path of a true life. Rather be ours the mildness of pity, than the severity of judgment. Charity prompts us to believe, that, under kindlier circumstances, he would have lived a better life, and have died at a more seasonable age, and in a fitter place that he would have had more faith in men, and they more love for him.

J. A. D.unbar. 267