On desperate seas long wont to roam, Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche Could anything be more dainty, airy, amber-bright than this is? Its elegance is Horatian. It is merum nectar, as Scaligar says of the Ode to Pyrrha. I do not believe what is asserted, that this was written when Poe was fourteen; but it was undoubtedly written in his earliest youth. Now, Poe may have done this and done that. Youths brought up by fine good-natured old Micios, particularly if their "veins run wine," as is believed of some, will do many strange things. There are hundreds of youths as "wild" as Poe; but this one wrote the above poem. That is the interesting fact. A fragment of song like this comes out of the inner being of a man, and the capability of producing it is the fact of his nature. These poems had, as was natural, great success. He was already known as a youth of "genius,” one who had shown a certain power of a mysterious character, one who breathed the breath of that sacred wind which "bloweth where it listeth." But he was still as irregular as ever, having been created to be so, seemingly. He entered as private into a regiment, and again disappeared from his friends. We have a striking account of his next appearance from Mr. Griswold's memoir of him. He turned up once more, "thin, pale, and ghastly," the mark of poverty branded upon him, and began the world now regularly as a "literary man." He soon got employment; he was a scholar, had read a great deal, and was not wanting in people to encourage him. There still remained, however, one step to take. Edgar, while his income was about a hundred a-year, thought it was time to marry. He married accordingly-a most beautiful girl, of course. She was his cousin, Virginia Clemm-" as poor as himself," says Griswold, grimly. A most amiable, lovable, and lovely person, however,—which some people think the most important consideration,-she appears to have been. Whenever the curtain of Poe's private life is pulled aside, which is not frequently, for his biographers and countrymen tell us more of his misdoings generally than of his home,-for he had a home,—we get a glimpse of her beautiful face-cheerful, affectionate always-sad, alas, latterly, but still, like Oriana's, "sweet" as well as "pale and meek." How little do we know of the wives of famous men! What idea do we carry away of any of the three Mrs. Miltons? Of all the goodness of the wife of "brave old Samuel?" Of the tenderness and affection of Mrs. Fielding? To us they are barely names; but we ought to hear more of them. Poe's life henceforth is the life of a man-of-letters by profession, and, on the whole, it is a melancholy history. No man can complain that there is not in the literary profession as much-indeed, there is more-allowance made for frailties, eccentricities, shortcomings of all kinds, than there is in other departments of active life in our modern social state. When, therefore, we find Edgar Poe quarrelling with so many people with whom he had business relations, continually in miserable embarrassments when he had a pen which could command money, what can we say? A career like that of our old Savages and Boyses, as his, too often, waş,—what can we make of it? We must even admit that his misery was mainly caused by the "dissipation" which we find universally attributed to him. All his aspirations, his fine sensibilities, sought wildly for their gratification through the medium of the senses. The beauty which he loved with his whole soul, he madly endeavoured to grasp in the forms of sheer indulgence. Like Marlow's Faustus, he used his genius to procure him self-gratification, and always at the end of such a career, it is the devil, as our pious old singers believed, who waits for the hero. In truth, it was the Beautiful that he loved with his entire nature. In sorrowful forms, sombre or grotesque forms-brilliant and musical, or scientific forms, he sought the Beautiful; and in all these forms his writings have embodied it. In his life, too, he loved the emotions which the Beautiful produces; but we know from the Phædrus, old wisdom yet new, "that though the beautiful be the dearest and most lovable of all things," yet that "he who hath not been lately initiated in the mysteries, or rather has become depraved, is not easily excited to the true beauty itself, but only to a certain likeness of it, which goes by its name; and so he does not venerate it, but, after the manner of animals, striveth after pleasure." And thus Edgar Poe drew a sensual veil across the vision of his soul, and in that blinded way sinned; and sinning, suffered. Other men have been as reckless as he in their youth, yet have escaped out of it, and risen into clear day. But he did not, he made strong efforts,-he fell, however, finally. From the period of his marriage, as I have said, he made literature his profession, and was connected at different periods with leading American journals. Occasionally he produced one of the few poems which compose his collection; "The Raven" in particular excited immense attention. He wrote Tales and Essays, and Reviews of all that was noticeable in American literature; the latter, in his work the Literati, I have read, and admire their sharp cutting vividness of analysis. They show a man of large and various literary attainments (he always passed for one of the best scholars of America), with a spice of that bitterness which sprang from his misanthropy; for poor Edgar, as Griswold dryly and solidly informs us, "considered society as principally composed of villains!" He hated and despised the blockheads who, perhaps from no virtue of their own, were exempt from his failings and consequent sufferings; but, unhappily, the blockheads, in their condemnation of Edgar, were but too often in the right. Yet let not such, there or elsewhere, be too harsh on the failings of a fine nature, and the degradation of a noble mind. Who shall explain the mysteries of temperament? Who calculate the force of circumstances? The spiritual part of this man, of which a specimen remains with us, was highly beautiful, and allied to the perennial beauty! Let solid excellence of the epitaph description remember, that perhaps all its parlour virtues are not worth one hour of Coleridge's remorse. I have hinted above that it is difficult to get such details of the better part of Edgar's life as would enable me to give some little picture of him. WILLIS has written a fine graceful sketch, both manly and tender, of him, and describes him as "a winning, sad-mannered gentleman." But Willis never visited |