letter. Your troubles have given a morbid tone to your feelings which it is your duty to discourage. I myself have been as severely handled by the world as you could possibly have been, but my sufferings have not tinged my mind with melancholy, nor jaundiced my views of society. You must rouse your energies, and if care assail you, conquer it. I will gladly overlook the past. I hope you will as easily fulfil your pledges for the future. We shall agree very well, though I cannot permit the magazine to be made a vehicle for that sort of severity which you think is so 'successful with the mob.' I am truly much less anxious about making a monthly "sensation" than I am upon the point of fairness. You must, my dear sir, get rid of your avowed ill-feelings toward your brother authors. You see I speak plainly I cannot do otherwise upon such a subject. You say the people love havoc. I think they love justice. I think you yourself would not have written the article on Dawes in a more healthy stato of mind. I am not trammelled by any vulgar consideration of expediency; I would rather lose money than, by such undue severity, wound the feelings of a kind-hearted and honourable man; and I am satisfied that Dawes has something of the true fire in him. I regretted your word-catching spirit. But I wander from my design. I accept your proposition to recommence your interrupted avocations upon the Maga. Let us meet as if we had not exchanged letters. Use more exercise, write when feelings prompt, and be assured of my friendship. You will soon regain a healthy activity of mind, and laugh at your past vagaries."

This letter was kind and judicious. It gives us a glimpse of Poe's theory of criticism, and displays the temper and principles of the literary comedian in an honourable light. Two or three months afterwards, Burton went out of town to fulfil a professional engagement, leaving material and directions for completing the next number of the magazine in four days. He was absent nearly a fortnight, and, on returning, he found that his printers in the meanwhile had not received a line of copy; but that Poe had prepared the prospectus of a new monthly, and obtained transcripts of his subscription and account books, to be used in a scheme for supplanting him. IIo encountered his associate lato in the evening at one of his accustomed haunts, and said: "Mr. Poe, I am astonished: give me my manuscripts, so that I can attend to the duties you have so shamefully neglected, and when you are sober we will settle." Poe interrupted him with-"Who are you that presume to address me in this manner? Burton, I am-the editor of the Penn Magazine and you are hiccup-a fool." Of course, this ended his relations with the magazine.

A few months afterwards, however, he was installed as editor of Graham's Magazine, and his connexion with this periodical which

lasted about a year and a half, was one of the most active and brilliant periods of his literary life. He wrote in it several of his finest tales and most trenchant criticisms, and challenged attention by his papers entitled Autography, and those on cryptology and cyphers. In the first, adopting a suggestion of Lavater, he attempted the illustration of character from hand-writing; and, in the second, he assumed that human ingenuity could construct no secret writing which human ingenuity could not resolve a not very dangerous proposition, since it implied no capacity in himself to discover every riddle of this kind that should be invented. He, however, succeeded with several difficult cryptographs that were sent to him, and the direction of his mind to the subject led to the composition of some of tho tales of ratiocination which so largely increased his reputation. The infirmities which induced his separation from Mr. White and from Mr. Burton at length compelled Mr. Graham to seek for another editor; but Poe still remained in Philadelphia, engaged from time to time in various literary occupations, and in the vain effort to establish a journal of his own to be called The Stylus. Although it requires considerable capital to carry on a monthly of the description he proposed, I think it would not have been difficult, with his well-earned fame as a magazinist, for him to have found a competent and suitable publisher, but for the unfortunate notoriety of his habits, and the failure in succession of three persons who had admired him for his genius and pitied him for his misfortunes, by every means that tact or friendship could suggest, to induce the consistency and steadiness of application indispensable to success in such pursuits.

During his residence at Philadelphia, his manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentlemanly; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance; and there was a singular neatness and air of refinement in his home. It was in a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighbourhoods far from the centre of the town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius. For this, and for most of the comforts he enjoyed in his brightest as in his darkest years, he was chiefly indebted to his mother-in-law, who loved him with more than maternal devotion and constancy.

In the autumn of 1844, Poe removed to New York, and forthwith entered upon a new sort of life. Heretofore, from the commencement of his literary career, he had resided in provincial towns. Now ho was in a motropolis, and with a reputation which might have served as a passport to any socioty he could desire. For the first time, ho was received into circles capable of both the appreciation and the production of literature. He added to his fame, soon after he came to the city, by the publication of that re

markable composition, The Raven, of which Mr. Willis has observed that, in his opinion, it is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry over published in America, and is unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative power." His reputation as a magazinist rose rapidly, and he contributed numerous tales and critical articles to several of the chief periodicals. While on the high road to fame, however, he became engaged in various disputes, which of themselves, and the manner in which he sought to excuse his errors, reflect but little credit on his moral character. To give an example, he borrowed fifty dollars from a distinguished literary woman of South Carolina, promising to return it in a few days, and when he failed to do so, and was asked for a written acknowledgment of the debt that might be exhibited to the husband of the friend who had thus served him, he denied all knowledge of it, and threatened to exhibit a correspondenco which he said would make the woman infamous, if she said any more on the subject. Of course, there had never been any such correspondence; but, when Poe heard that a brother of the slandered party was in quest of him for the purpose of taking the satisfaction supposed to be due in such cases, he sent for a friend and induced him to carry to the gentleman his retractation and apology, with a statement, which seemed true enough at the moment, that Poe out of his mind." It is an ungracious duty for a biographer to have to describe such conduct on the part of a person of Poe's unquestionable genius and enlarged capacity; but those who are familiar with the career of this extraordinary creature, can unfortunately recall but too many similar anecdotes.

was

As the autumn of 1846 wore on, Poe's habits of frequent intoxication and his inattention to the means of support reduced him to much more than common destitution. He was now living at Fordham, several miles from New York, so that his necessities were not generally known even among his acquaintances; but when the dangerous illness of his wife was added to his misfortunes, and his dissipation and accumulated causes of anxiety had prostrated all his own energies, the subject was introduced into the journals. The result was a variety of pecuniary contributions, sufficient to relieve him from all temporary embarrassments; but his wife did not live to share this better fortune, for the illness above mentioned terminated in her death. A circumstance narrated by Mr. N. P. Willis refers to the period of Poe's life:

"Our first knowledge of Mr. Poe's removal to this city was by a call which we received from a lady who introduced herself to us as the mother of his wife. She was in search of employment for him, and she excused her errand by mentioning that he was ill, that her daughter was a confirmed invalid, and that their circum

stances were such as compelled her taking it upon herself. The countenance of this lady, made beautiful and saintly with an evidently complete giving up of her life to privation and sorrowful tenderness, her gentle and mournful voice urging its plea, her long-forgotten but habitually and unconsciously-refined manners, and her appealing and yet appreciative mention of the claims and abilities of her son, disclosed at once the presence of one of those angels upon earth that women in adversity can be. It was a hard fate that she was watching over. Mr. Poe wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too much above the popular level to be well paid. He was always in pecuniary difficulty, and, with his sick wife, frequently in want of the morest necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for years, the most touching sight to us, in this whole city, has been that tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office to office with a poem, or an article on some literary subject, to sell-sometimes simply pleading in a broken voice that he was ill, and begging for himmentioning nothing but that he was ill,' whatever might be the reason for his writing nothing-and never, amid all her tears and recitals of distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions. Her daughter died, a year and a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his ministering angel-living with him-caring for him-guarding him against exposure, and, when he was carried away by temptation, amid grief and the loneliness of feelings unreplied to, and awoke from his self-abandonment prostrated in destitution and suffering, begging for him still. If woman's devotion, born with a first love and fed with human passion, hallow its object, as it is allowed to do, what does not a devotion like this-pure, disinte rested, and holy as tho watch of an invisible spirit-say for him who inspired it?"

For nearly a year, Mr. Poe was not often before the public, but he was as industrious, perhaps, as he had been at any time; and, carly in 1848, advertisement was made of his intention to deliver several lectures, with a view to obtain an amount of money sufficient to establish a long-contemplated monthly magazine. His first lecture-and only one at this period-was given at the Society Library in New York, and was upon the Cosmogony of the Universe; it was attended by an eminently-intellectual auditory, and the reading of it occupied about two hours and a half; it was afterwards published under the title of Eureka, a Prose Poem.

To the composition of this work he brought his subtlest and highest capacities, in their most perfect development. Denying that the arcana of the universe can be explored by induction, but informing his imagination with the various results of science, he

entered with unhesitating boldness, though with no guide but the divinest instinct, into the sea of speculation, and there built up of according laws and their phenomena, as under the influence of a scientific inspiration, his theory of Naturo.

Poe was thoroughly persuaded that he had discovered the great secret; that the propositions of Eureka were true; and he was wont to talk of the subject with a sublime and electrical enthusiasm which they cannot have forgotten who were familiar' with him at the period of its publication.

In his preface he wrote:-"To the few who love me and whom I love; to those who feel, rather than to those who think; to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only roalitios -I offer this book of truths; not in the character of truth-teller, but for the beauty that abounds in its truth, constituting it true. To these I prosent the composition as an art-product alone-lot us say as a romance; or, if it be not urging too lofty a claim, as a poem. What I here propound is true; therefore it cannot die; or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will rise again to the life everlasting."

From this time, Poe did not write much; he had quarrelled with the conductors of the chief magazines for which he had previously written, and they no longer sought his assistance. It was at this period that his name was associated with that of one of the most brilliant women of New England, and it was publicly announced that they were to be married. He had first seen hor on his way from Boston, when he visited that city to deliver a poem before the Lyceum there. Restless, near the midnight, he wandered from his hotel near where she lived, until he saw her walking in a garden. He related the incident afterwards in one of his poems, worthy of himself, of her, and of the most exalted passion:"I saw thee once-once only-years ago;

I must not say how many-but not many.

It was a July midnight; and from out

A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,

There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,

With quietudo, and sultriness, and slumber,

Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand

Roses that grow in an enchanted garden,

Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses

That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death-
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses

T'hat smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.
"Clad all in white, upon a violet bank

I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,

And on thine own, upturn'd--alas, in sorrow!