evidence which has been so abundantly furnished us to prove it, and the wonder is, not so much that the biographer's audacious falsifications should have obtained credit abroad, as that no American should have yet produced as complete a refutation of them as could and should have been given years ago. Apart from deadly enmity, aroused by a subject of a domestic nature, the compiler could not forgive Poe for exposing his literary shortcomings. The only passage in which the soi-disant biographer appears to relent towards the dead poet is that in which he alludes to his own visit to Poe's residence in Philadelphia, and even then he cannot forbear from inserting a gratuitously insulting allusion. "It was while he resided in Philadelphia," Griswold remarks, "that I became acquainted with him. His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentlemanly; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance, and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neatness and the 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 tastefully and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius." On seceding from Graham's, Poe seems to have endeavoured to start a magazine of his own, to be entitled The Stylus, and Mr. Thomas C. Clarke, of Philadelphia, was to have been the publisher. The poet does not appear to have been enabled to obtain a sufficient number of subscribers to start the projected publication on a sound basis, and therefore the scheme fell through. Mr. Clarke, who is still residing in Philadelphia, speaks in high terms of Poe's probity and honour, as indeed does every one, save Griswold, who had dealings with him. It is much to be regretted

that circumstances have prevented Mr. Clarke giving to the world his reminiscences and collected facts relating to Edgar Poe.

In the spring of 1843 the one hundred dollar prize, offered by The Dollar Magazine, was obtained by Poe for his tale of "The Gold-Bug," a tale illustrative of and originating with his theory of ciphers. As usual, Griswold, in mentioning it, cannot refrain from displaying the cloven hoof, and, knowing it to be the most popular of Poe's stories in America, refers to it " as one of the most remarkable illustrations of his ingenuity of construction and apparent subtlety of reasoning." During this year Poe wrote for Lowell's Pioneer, and other publications. In 1844 he removed to New York, whither his daily increasing fame had already preceded him, and where he entered into a more congenial literary atmosphere than that in which he had recently resided. In the cities in which he had hitherto exercised his talents he was continually treading upon the mental corns of provincial cliques, but in New York, as he now entered it, he found a nearer approach to metropolitanism, and therefore a fairer field for the recognition of his powers. "For the first time," remarks Griswold, completely ignoring the talent of all other American cities, "for the first time he was received into circles capable of both the appreciation and the production of literature." has generally been assumed that the first publication he wrote for in New York was the Daily Mirror, but the author of a sketch of Willis and his contemporaries, contributed to the Northern Monthly in 1868, referring to Poe as one who has been more shamefully maligned and slandered than any other writer that can be named," states, "I say this from personal knowledge of Mr. Poe, who was associated with myself in the editorial conduct of my own paper before his introduction into the office of Messrs.

Willis and Norris ;" adding, "for Mr. Willis's manly vindication of the unfortunate I honour him." And, again, referring to Willis's vindication of Poe from his biographer's degrading accusations, he says, "Mr. Willis's testimony is freely confirmed by other publishers. On this subject I have some singular revelations which throw a strong light on the causes that darkened the life, and made most unhappy the death, of one of the most remarkable of all our literary men

-as an English reviewer once said, 'the most brilliant genius of his country."" During Poe's connection with the author of this article, his Life, with a portrait prefixed, was published; and, remarks this writer, "both the life and the portrait are as utterly unlike the gross caricatures manufactured since his death as is the portrait prefixed to a recent volume of Poe's poems, and which bears no resemblance to the fine intellectual head of Poe." "Why," indignantly demands this publisher, "Why are such wrongs perpetrated upon the dead? Why are they permitted?”

Towards the autumn of the year Poe sought and found employment as sub-editor and critic on the Mirror, a daily paper belonging to N. P. Willis and General George Morris. In a letter written by Willis from Idlewild, in October 1859, to his brother poet and former copartner Morris, he thus alludes to Poe's engagement with him :-" Poe came to us quite incidentally, neither of us having been personally acquainted with him till that time; and his position towards us, and connection with us, of course unaffected by claims of previous friendship, were a fair average of his general intercourse and impressions. As he was a man who never smiled, and never said a propitiatory or deprecating word, we were not likely to have been seized with any sudden partiality or wayward caprice in his favour. . . It was rather a step downward, after being the chief editor of several monthlies, as Poe had been, to come into the office of a

daily journal as a mechanical paragraphist. It was his business to sit at a desk, in a corner of the editorial room, ready to be called upon for any of the miscellaneous work of the day; yet you remember how absolutely and how good-humouredly ready he was for any suggestion; how punctually and industriously reliable in the following out of the wish once expressed; how cheerful and present-minded his work when he might excusably have been so listless and abstracted. WE LOVED THE MAN for the entireness of the fidelity with which he served us. When he left us, we were very reluctant to part with him; but we could not object— he was to take the lead in another periodical.'

During the six months or so that Poe was engaged on the Mirror, the whole of which time Willis asserts "he was invariably punctual and industrious," and was daily "at his desk in the office from nine in the morning till the evening paper went to press." During this time some of the most remarkable reproductions of his genius, including his poetic chef-d'œuvre of "The Raven," were given to the world. This unique and most original of poems first appeared in Colton's American Review for February 1845 as by "Quarles." It was at once reprinted in the Evening Mirror, and in a few weeks had spread over the whole of the United States, calling into existence parodies and imitations innumerable. Mrs. Whitman informs us that, when "The Raven" appeared, Poe one evening electrified the gay company assembled at a weekly reunion of noted artists and men of letters, held at the residence of an accomplished poetess in Waverley Place, by the recitation, at the request of his hostess, of this wonderful poem. After this, it was of course impossible to keep the authorship secret. Willis reprinted the poem with the author's name attached, remarking that, in his opinion, it was "the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is unsurpassed in

English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift." It carried its author's name and fame from shore to shore ; drew admiring testimony from some of the first of English poets, and finally made him the lion of the season. And for this masterpiece of genius-this poem which has probably done more for the renown of American letters than any other single work-it is alleged that Poe, then at the height of his renown, received the sum of ten dollars, that is, about two pounds!

In the February number of Graham's Magazine for this same year appeared a biographical and critical sketch of Edgar Poe by James Russell Lowell. In many respects we deem it the best critique on his genius that we have yet seen, and although the estimate formed of Poe's poetic precocity may not be perfectly just, it is difficult to find. fault with the admirable analysation of his prose writings. It is somewhat singular, however, that in the collection of Poe's works edited by Griswold, Mr. Lowell should permit the continual reprinting of this critique "with a few alterations and omissions," when those very omissions serve to give colour to one of Griswold's vilest charges, that of the alleged theft of Captain Brown's Conchology book. In the beginning of this year the Broadway Journal was started, and in March Poe was associated with two journalists in its management. He had written for it from the first, but had nothing to do with the editorial arrangement until the tenth number. One of the most noticeable of his contributions was a critique on the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to whom he shortly afterwards dedicated, in most admiring terms, a selection of his poems, published by Messrs. Wiley and Putnam, under the title of "The Raven and other Poems." About the same time the same firm published a selection from his prose compositions as "Tales," and

VOL. I.

d