Legends and Lyrics (1872) and The Mountain of the Lovers (1875). JOHN P. KENNEDY (1795-1870), congressman from Maryland, and Secretary of the Navy in 1852-1853, wrote novels that were once popular. HorseShoe Robinson (1835), his best work, a story of the Revolution, contains much exciting action, ending with the battle of King's Mountain; the picture of Marion's swamp-camp at night is graphic; but the original, shrewd character of "Horse-Shoe" and the narrative of his daring exploits are the best part of the book.

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870), of South Carolina, was a versatile and prolific author,' and, after Poe, the most considerable man of letters in the South. He experienced to the full the obstacles which Southern

1 Lyrical and Other Poems, 1827. Early Lays, 1827. The Vision of Cortes, Cain, and Other Poems, 1829. Atalantis; 1832. Martin Faber, 1833. The Book of My Lady, 1833. Guy Rivers, 1834. The Yemassee, 1835. The Partisan, 1835. Mellichampe, 1836. Pelayo, 1838. Richard Hurdis, 1838. Carl Werner, 1838. Southern Passages and Pictures, 1839. The Damsel of Darien, 1839. Border Beagles, 1840. The History of South Carolina, 1840. The Kinsmen, 1841. Confession, 1841. Beauchampe, 1842. Donna Florida, 1843. Castle Dismal, 1845. The Life of Francis Marion, 1845. Helen Halsey, 1845. Count Julian, 1845. Grouped Thoughts, a Collection of Sonnets, 1845. Views and Reviews, 1846 (imprint, 1845). The Wigwam and the Cabin, 1845-1846. Areytos; or, Songs of the South, 1846. The Life of Captain John Smith, 1846. The Life of Chevalier Bayard, 1847. Lays of the Palmetto, 1848. Atalantis (containing also The Eye and the Wing), 1848. The Life of Nathaniel Greene, 1849. Father Abbot, 1849. Sabbath Lyrics, 1849. The Cassique of Accabee, with other Pieces, 1849. The City of the Silent, 1850. The Lily and the Totem, 1850. Norman Maurice, 1851. Katharine Walton, 1851. Michael Bonham (drama), 1852. The Sword and the Distaff, 1852. Marie de Berniere, 1853. Poems (2 vols.), 1853. Vasconselos, 1854. The Forayers, 1855. Eutaw, 1856. Charlemont, 1856 The Cassique of Kiawah, 1859. Benedict Arnold, a Dramatic Essay 1863. Etc., etc.

Nociety at that time opposed to the literary life; but his strong natural bent toward letters1 and the resolution of his character (at maturity he had the look of a lion) triumphed over all the difficulties which could be conquered by individual effort. Belonging to the poorer class, he had scant and wretched school instruction. The Charleston library, however, was open to him; and his grandmother, with whom he lived for many years, fired his boyish imagination with old tales of superstition and stories of the Revolution. When his father returned from several years' residence in the wilds of Mississippi, he increased the future romancer's stock in trade by thrilling descriptions of rough border life and of Indian warfare. Simms early began to write and publish; meeting with some success, he boldly gave himself to literature, pouring forth poems, novels, histories, and biographies with amazing rapidity, editing the Charleston Gazette, and struggling heroically at various times to keep several ill-starred magazines afloat. His poetry displays much talent and facility. The earlier volumes, consisting mostly of poems on love, nature, and Indian life, and imitative of Byron and Moore, are inferior. Atalantis, an ambitious poem of fancy, in dramatic form, the main elements apparently suggested by The Tempest, Comus, and Prometheus Unbound, is written in light blank verse, and some of the songs are pretty. Donna Florida, an avowed attempt to imitate the wit of Don Juan without its indecency, amusingly pictures the aged Ponce de Leon's courtship

1 To hide the light from his vigilant grandmother, who did not approve of late hours, the boy would read in his room with candle and head inside a box.

of a saucy young beauty;1 the description of the fight with the Florida Indians is spirited. Songs and Ballads have music, warmth, local color, and love for the "sunny South." The Cassique of Accabee is an interesting and pathetic tale of an Indian chief's love for a white girl. Norman Maurice is a bold attempt to write a tragedy on a subject from contemporary American life. The scene is Philadelphia and Missouri; Maurice, a young lawyer and senator-elect, is in danger of ruin by the plots of his enemy; his wife stabs the plotter, to get the seemingly incriminating papers, and is killed by the shock to her moral nature. The style is rather oratorical, and the general effect crude. Much of Simms's best poetry is in the collection of 1853; the tales make interesting and poetic use of local traditions and scenery; The Shaded Water is a quietly beautiful nature poem; Summer in the South has flush; in Bertram and The Death of Cleopatra, which were perhaps influenced by Landor's Imaginary Conversations, are excellent style and some true dramatic feeling; several versified Bible stories reflect, like Willis's languidly pious wares, the taste of the times. Simms's poetry, as a whole, lacks concentration and perfection of form. His novels have been more widely read, but they also bear marks of haste. His models were Scott and Cooper, and occasionally Godwin

1 Leonora's song to her tedious wooer is tricksy:

Old men young maids pursuing,

How little do they guess,

That every hour of wooing,

But makes their chances less. . . .

Love hath no long discourses,

A single smile, a sigh,

These are the sovereign forces,

That give him victory.

Canto II., after stanza 35

In the

and Brown; but the subject-matter was fresh. so-called "border romances," the crudest of his stories, rough life in the Southwestern states is described with much vigor and rush. His best novels, as The Partisan, The Kinsmen, and Katharine Walton, handle themes from Southern history in the stirring times of the Revolution; and the pictures of Southern life and society, and the narratives of historical or semi-historical events, are still interesting. Like Cooper, however, Simms often loiters by the way to talk when he should be in the saddle; his humor is sometimes tedious; his love scenes are comparatively insipid; and his heroes. and heroines are, in general, less individual and interesting than the characters from common life, although he succeeds in giving rather vivid impressions of the beauty and spirit of high-bred Southern women. But in scenes of action, as in the attack upon the Middleton mansion in The Kinsmen, the narrative is often rapid and powerful, holding the attention and stirring the blood. Simms had talent and industry enough. What he needed, in order to reach that slightly higher level which ensures permanence of fame, was brilliancy, a severer standard of workmanship, and a more favorable literary environment.1

JOHN ESTEN COOKE (1830-1886), of Virginia, wrote several novels of much the same general character as

1 In the years 1835-1846 seven of the novels were reprinted in England; and The Wigwam and Cabin, a collection of tales, was translated into German in 1846.

2 Leather Stocking and Silk, a Story of the Valley of Virginia, 1854. The Virginia Comedians; or, Days in the Old Dominion, 1854. Henry St. John, Gentleman, a Tale of 1774-1775, 1859. Surrey of Eagle's Nest, 1866. Fairfax, 1868. Hilt to Hilt, 1869. Hammer and Rapier. 1870. The Virginia Bohemians, 1880. My Lady Pokahontas, 1885.

those by Simms.

His analysis of character was much keener and deeper, however, and his gift of humor greater, and there is more passion and poetry in his style. He reminds one of Thackeray, at times, by his easy familiarity with good society and by a suggestion of reserve power. The Virginia Comedians, perhaps his best novel, gives vivid and brilliantly colored pictures of life in the Old Dominion in 1763 and 1765; but the attempt to introduce Patrick Henry is a flat failure, leading to nothing but tiresome political conversations and sophomoric declamation.

The life of * EDGAR ALLAN POE1 is the saddest in

1 LIFE. Born in Boston, Jan. 19, 1809. Father an actor; mother an English actress. After his mother's death in 1811, adopted by John Allan of Richmond; 1815-1820, at Manor House School, near London; 18201825, at school in Richmond; Feb. 14, 1826, matriculated in University of Virginia; because of gambling debts, withdrawn in December and placed in his guardian's counting-room. Wandered to Boston; served in the army, 1827-1829; admitted to West Point, July 1, 1830; Mar. 6, 1831, discharged. In Baltimore, writing for magazines, 1831-1835. In Richmond, editor of The Southern Literary Messenger, 1835-1837; probably married secretly to his cousin, Virginia Clemm, thirteen years old, at Baltimore, 1835; publicly married, 1836. In New York, writing, 18371838. In Philadelphia, 1838-1844: associate editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, 1839-1840; editor of Graham's Magazine, 1841-1842. In New York, 1844-1849 (living at Fordham, in the environs, after 1845): "paragraphist" for The Evening Mirror, 1844-1845; co-editor, editor, and owner of The Broadway Journal, 1845; wife died, Jan. 30, 1847; conditionally accepted by Mrs. Sarah Whitman, November, 1848; rejected for intemperance, December, 1848. To Richmond, July, 1849; apparently engaged to Mrs. Sarah Skelton in September; died in Baltimore, Oct. 7, 1849.

WORKS. Tamerlane and Other Poems, 1827. Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, 1829. Poems, 1831. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840. Tales, 1845. The Raven, in the New York Evening Mirror, Jan. 29, 1845. The Raven and Other Poems, 1845. Eureka: a Prose Poem, 1848. Annabel Lee, in The New York Tribune soon after Poe's death. The Bells, in Sartain's Magazine, November, 1849. On Critics and Criticism, in Graham's Magazine, January, 1850. The Poetic Principle