literature.-SAXE, JOHN GODFREY, 1875, Letter to the Poe Memorial, Oct. 10, ed. Rice, p. 88.

My firm conviction that widely as the fame of Poe has already spread, and deeply as it is already rooted, in Europe, it is even now growing wider and striking deeper as time advances; the surest presage that time, the eternal enemy of small and shallow reputations, will prove in this case. also the constant and trusty friend and keeper of a true poet's full-grown fame. -SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1875, Letter to the Poe Memorial, Nov. 9, ed. Rice.

No cunning barrister preparing an important brief; no great actor studying a new part; no machinist brooding over the invention of an engine, or a change subversive of the old machinery; no analytic chemist seeking to establish the fact of a murder by the discovery and proof of blood or poison in some unexpected substance; no Dutch painter working for months on the minute finish of all sorts of details in the background as well as foreground of his picture, -ever took more pains than did Edgar Allan Poe in the production of most of his principal works. The more impossible his story, the more perseveringly, learnedly, patiently, and plausibly he labored to prove the facts as he saw them. And, unless you throw the book down, he always succeeds. If you read on steadily, you must go with him. HORNE, RICHARD HENGIST, 1876, Letter to the Poe Memorial, Apr. 8, ed. Rice, p. 81. A literary Erinaceus. Professing himself the special apostle of the beautiful in art, he nevertheless forces upon us continually the most loathsome hideousness and the most debasing and unbeautiful horror. This passionate, unhelmed, errant search for beauty was in fact not so much a normal and intelligent desire, as an attempt to escape from interior discord; and it was the discord which found expression, accordingly, instead of the sense of beauty, -except (as has been said) in fragments. Whatever the cause his brain had a rift of ruin in it, from the start, and though his delicate touch often stole a new grace from classic antiquity, it was the frangibility, the quick decay, the fall of all lovely and noble things, that excited and engaged him. . . . Always beauty and grace are with him most poetic in their overthrow, and it is

the shadow of ruined grandeur that he receives, instead of the still living light so fair upon them, or the green growth clinging around them.-LATHROP, GEORGE PARSONS, 1876, A Study of Hawthorne, pp. 206, 309.

He loved all shadowy spots, all seasons drear; All ways of darkness lured his ghastly whim;

Strange fellowships he held with goblins grim,

At whose demoniac eyes he felt no fear. On midnights through dense branches he would peer,

To watch the pale ghoul feed, by tombstones dim,

The appalling forms of phantoms walked with him,

And murder breathed its red guilt in his ear! By desolate paths of dream, where fancy's

owl

Sent long lugubrious hoots through sombre air

Amid thought's gloomiest caves he went to prowl,

And met delirium in her awful lair, And mingled with cold shapes that writhe or scowl,

Serpents of horror, black bats of despair! -FAWCETT, EDGAR, 1876-78, Poe, Fantasy and Passion, p. 182.

There is not an unchaste suggestion in the whole course of his writings,—a remarkable fact, in view of his acquaintances with the various schools of French literature. His works are almost too spiritual.—STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE, 1880, Edgar Allen Poe, p. 93.

With

One of the most morbid men of genius the modern world has seen; in the regions of the strangely terrible, remotely fantastic, and ghastly, he reigns supreme. his lyrics we have not here to do. His best prose is no less distinctive and admirable for richness, force, clearness, and the correct choice of phrase, only definable as the literary touch. He, in this field, distances all his competitors, except Balzac, in the mental dissecting-room his only master. But, while the Frenchman deals with anomalous realities, the power of the American consists in making unrealities appear natural. Many of his works, like Hawthorne's, are either pages torn, as it were, from the second or third volumes of a complete romance, or suggestions of what might have been developed into one. This fragmentary manner has its disadvantages; but the writer of real imagination, who confines it within limited bounds, never

allows the interest of his readers to flag. Edgar Poe is consequently, save in his acrid criticisms and mistaken attempts at humour, never dull.-NICHOL, JOHN, 1880– 85, American Literature, p. 163.

I know several striking poems by American poets, but I think that Edgar Poe is (taking his poetry and prose together) the most original American genius.-TENNYSON, ALFRED LORD, 1883, Criticisms on Poets and Poetry, Memoir by his Son, vol. II, p. 292.

A certain tyrant, to disgrace The more a rebel's resting-place, Compelled the people every one To hurl, in passing there, a stone, Which done, behold, the pile became A monument to keep the name. And thus it is with Edgar Poe; Each passing critic has his throw, Nor sees, defeating his intent, How lofty grows the monument. -TABB, JOHN B., 1885, Poe's Critics, Harper's Magazine, vol. 70, p. 498.

Farewell, Farewell, thou sombre and solitary spirit: a genius tethered to the hack-work of the press, a gentleman among canaille, a poet among poetasters, dowered with a scholar's taste without a scholar's training, embittered by his sensitive scorn, and all unsupported by his consolations.LANG, ANDREW, 1886, Letters to Dead Authors, p. 150.

Edgar Allan Poe was fastidious-even morbidly fastidious-in his love of beautiful form; but he had no root of humanity in him, and little passion for actual external nature. He was not an interpreter. He had no mission, save to create dreams. A greater dreamer in prose than in verse, he has yet added to American literature a few poems of the most striking originality; but of deep spirituality he has none.

His

loftiest flights of imagination in verse, like his boldest efforts in prose fiction, rise into no more empyreal realm than the fantastic. His sense of beauty in language was usually fine. Like Gautier, he loved to work "in" onyx and enamel. -ROBERTSON, ERIC S., 1886, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Great Writers), p. 173.

Oblivious of what I may have said, but fully conscious of what I mean to say, Poe was a curious compound of the charlatan. and the courtly gentleman; a mixture of Count Cagliostro, of Paracelsus, who was wisely named Bombastes, and of Cornelius Agrippa, the three beings intermoulded

from the dust of Apollonius of Tyana and Elymas the Sorcerer. His first master in verse was Byron, in prose Charles Brockden Brown, and later Hawthorne. Most men are egoists; he was egotistical. His early poems are exquisite, his later ones

simply melodious madness. The parent. of "Annabel Lee" was Mother Goose, who in this instance did not drop. a golden egg. Always a plagiarist, he was always original. Like Molière, whom he derided, he took his own wherever he found it. Without dramatic instinct, he persuaded himself (but no one else) that he was a dramatist. The proof of this assertion is his drama of "Politian," which was never ended, and which should never have been begun.-STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1889, Edgar Allan Poe, Lippincott's Magazine, vol. 43, p. 109.

A meteoric genius, a wandering star, a man cursed and ruined by his own follies, and without significance as regards his times.-DAWSON, W. J., 1892, Quest and Vision, p. 279.

Turning aside from his own special field of literature, Baudelaire talked and wrote to make the name of Edgar Poe famous; and he was successful, for, as a Frenchman has himself certified, "It was through the labour and genius of Baudelaire that Edgar Poe's tales have become so well known in France, and are now regarded as classical models." Further, it should be noticed that Edgar Poe is the only American writer who has become popular in that land where the literature of the nineteenth century has reached a perfecton which after-ages will certainly record and admire.. But we ask ourselves, Is this result due to the exquisite style Baudelaire employed in his translation? and would his magic pen have endowed any foreign author, however unworthy, with fame? Did the strange influence lie in the rich fancy of the American author or in the richer setting given to it by the Frenchman? Baudelaire must evidently have known English well; but did he, whilst reading it, simultaneously clothe the English words in his own French dress, or did English style and New World fancy win his admiration? These questions are difficult to answer. Baudelaire's explanation does not altogether clear up the difficulty. "Believe me or not, as you like," he says, "but I discovered in Edgar Poe's works, poems and

stories which had been lying dormant in my own brain, vague, confused, ill-assorted, whilst he had known how to combine, to transcribe, and to bring them to perfection." Here was, according to the French poet, the secret of his success. He had discovered his affinity; he had but to collect his own floating ideas, finding no difficulty in the setting, for all was clear to him. The two authors were of one mind, and the result was this gift of classic work to France, created with alien thought. STUART, ESME, 1893, Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Poe, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 34, p. 66.

Hawthorne and Poe stand at the head of American literature in the line of creative ability. The chosen field of both was romance. Hawthorne, as said, had a large sense of humor, in which Poe was somewhat deficient. Hawthorne, though a recluse by nature, had finer touches of human sympathy. Poe had more of that imaginaiton which bodies forth shapes unknown. from airy nothingness and clothes them with rarest beauty. In structure of work, in painting with the rich colors of the South, Poe has never been excelled. When we would classify him, we may mention Coleridge and others as similar at a few points, but the author of "The Raven" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" stands alone. His works are unique and original. -LINK, SAMUEL ALBERT, 1898, Pioneers of Southern Literature, vol. II, p. 331.

It is the first and perhaps the most obvious distinction of Edgar Allan Poe that his creative work baffles all attempts to relate it historically to antecedent conditions; that it detached itself almost completely from the time and place in which it made its appearance, and sprang suddenly and mysteriously from a soil which had never borne its like before. There was nothing in the America of the third decade of the century which seemed to predict "The City in the Sea," "Israfel," and the lines, "To Helen."

Poe

stood alone among his contemporaries by reason of the fact that, while his imagination was fertilized by the movement of the time, his work was not, in theme or sympathy, representative of the forces behind it. The group of gifted The group of gifted men, with whom he had for most part only casual connections, reflected the age behind them or the time in which they lived; Poe

shared with them the creative impulse without sharing the specific interests and devotions of the period. He was primarily and distinctively the artist of his time; the man who cared for his art, not for what he could say through it, but for what it had to say through him. Poe alone, among men of his eminence, could not have been foreseen. This fact suggests his limitations, but it also brings into clear view the unique individuality of his genius and the originality of his work. His contemporaries are explicable; Poe is inexplicable. He remains the most sharply-defined personality in our literary history. His verse and his imaginative prose stand out in bold relief against a background which neither suggests nor interprets them. One may go further, and affirm that both his verse and his prose have a place by themselves in the literature of the world.-MABIE, HAMILTON W., 1899, Poe's Place in American Literature, Poe Memorial, ed. Kent, pp. 44, 46, 47.

Few, I fancy, will be present at that festival who can recall, as I do, the effect of the first publication of the poem which flamed like a meteor across our literary heavens and made the name of Poe immediately famous. When a boy in the backwoods of Western New York, I saw "The Raven" in one of the hundred of country papers in which it was almost simultaneously copied, and recognized at once that a new genius had arisen to divide the homage I paid to Byron, my prime favorite. in those early days. Anything connected with the name of Poe interested me intensely from that time; and though I never met him, I felt a shock of personal bereavement when his tragic death occurred, in 1849. Then, it was thought by some, a meteor of a night-time had burned itself out in space. But the genius of Poe was no meteor; it was a star of peculiar brilliancy, from which the mists of doubt and misunderstanding have parted more and more, and which still shows no signs of fading, amidst the brightest luminaries of our sky. -TROWBRIDGE, JOHN TOWNSEND, 1899, Letter to the Poe Memorial, ed. Kent, 63.

p.

When a boy of seventeen, in Harvard College, I read Poe's "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." It was just after the publication of the book and before it had attracted general attention; but I felt

Mr., Mrs., and Miss Edgeworth are just come over from Ireland, and are the general objects of curiosity and attention. I passed some hours with them yesterday afternoon, under pretence of visiting the new Mint, which was a great object to them, as they are all proficients in mechanics. Miss Edgeworth is a most agreeable person, very natural, clever, and well informed, without the least pretensions of authorship. She had never been in a large society before, and she was followed and courted by all the persons of distinction in London, with an avidity almost without example. The court paid to her gave her an opportunity of showing her excellent understanding and character. She took every advantage of her situation, either for enjoyment or observation; but she remained perfectly unspoiled by the homage of the great.-MACKINTOSH, SIR JAMES, 1813, Journal, May 11; Memoirs of Mackintosh, ed. his Son, vol. II, p. 267.

I went to Lady Davy's in the evening. There were seventy or eighty people there: amongst others Miss Edgeworth, who was my object. She is very small, with a countenance which promises nothing at first sight, or as one sees her in society. She has very winning manners. She re

Iceived with much warmth what I said of

my desire to see the author of her works, and of all the obligations that I felt in common with all our sex towards one of her genius.-BERRY, MARY, 1813, Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence, ed. Lewis, vol. II, p. 534.

She was a nice little unassuming "Jeanie Deans'-looking bodie" as we Scotch say -and if not handsome certainly not illlooking. Her conversation was as quiet as herself. One could never have guessed that she could write her name; whereas her father talked, not as if he could write nothing else, but as if nothing else was worth writing.- BYRON, LORD, 1821, Journal, Jan. 19.

We saw, you will readily suppose, a great deal of Miss Edgeworth, and two very nice girls, her younger sisters. It is scarcely possible to say more of this very remarkable person, than that she not only completely answered, but exceeded the expectations which I had formed. I am particularly pleased with the naïveté and good-humoured ardour of mind which she unites with such formidable powers of

acute observation. In external appearance, she is quite the fairy of our nurserytale the Whippity Stourie, if you remember such a sprite, who came flying through the window to work all sorts of marvels. I will never believe but what she has a wand in her pocket, and pulls it out to conjure a little before she begins those very striking pictures of manners.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1823, Letter to Joanna Baillie, July 11; Life by Lockhart, ch. lix.

Miss Edgeworth, with all her cleverness, anything but agreeable. The moment any one begins to speak, off she starts too, seldom more than a sentence behind them, and in general continues to distance every speaker. Neither does what she says, though of course very sensible, at all make up for this over-activity of tongue. -MOORE, THOMAS, 1831, Diary, Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence, ed. Russell, vol. VI, p. 187.

As we drove to the door Miss Edgeworth came out to meet us, a small, short, spare lady of about sixty-seven, with extremely frank and kind manners, and who always looks straight into your face with a pair of mild, deep gray eyes, whenever she speaks to you. Mrs. Edge

worth-who is of the Beaufort familyseems about the age of her more distinguished step-daughter, and is somewhat stout, but very active, intelligent, and accomplished, having apparently the whole care of the household, and adding materially, by her resources in the arts and in literature, to its agreeableness.

It is plain they make a harmonious whole, and by those who visited here when the family was much larger, and composed of the children of all the wives of Mr. Edgeworth, with their connections produced by marriage, so as to form the most heterogeneous relationships, I am told there was always the same very striking union and agreeable intercourse among them all, to the number sometimes of fifteen or twenty. What has struck me most today in Miss Edgeworth herself, is her uncommon quickness of perception, her fertility of allusion, and the great resources of fact which a remarkable memory supplies to her, combined into a whole which I can call nothing else but extraordinary vivacity.-TICKNOR, GEORGE, 1835, Journal, Aug. 21; Life, Letters and Journals, vol. 1, pp. 426, 427.