his home, and cannot be said to have been intimate with him. Yet we hear of the air of simplicity and elegance which pervaded the poet's house, we have a glimpse of it from the pen of Frances Osgood,--we see the poet industrious, playful, with his beautiful and affectionate Virginia with him, and her mother, whose name is never to be mentioned in the history of Poe's life without signal honour. Maria Clemm, his mother-in-law, was truly a mother to him, faithful to him through all the strange fortune which he underwent, with true womanly constancy.

His portrait, prefixed to the American edition, is a very interesting-a very characteristic one. A fine thoughtful face you see at once, with lineaments of delicacy, such as belong only to genius or high blood. The forehead is grand and pale, the eyes dark, gleaming with sensibility and the light of soul. A face of passion it is, and in the lower part wants firmness,a face that would inspire women with sentiment, men with interest and curiosity.

His wife died,—they had had no children. His "Annabel Lee" records his recollection of her with something more than tenderness. I suppose his wayward ways caused her much sorrow; but they loved each other truly. She seems to have been a simple, affectionate creature, contented on very easy terms, rich with a heart that could bear much, and, • most likely, placed its highest hopes elsewhere. She, at all events, did her duty in all purity and

goodness, and is gone where these virtues are better understood than here.

Poe had been lecturing on the "Universe" in 1848, and producing his strange great book Eureka, on which I shall not attempt to speak critically. In the autumn of 1849 he had, after a sad fit of insane debauchery, made one vigorous effort to emerge. He joined a Temperance Society,-he led a quiet life,— and his marriage was talked of. But on the evening of the 6th of October, 1849,-a Saturday evening,— passing through Baltimore on his way to New York, accident threw him among some old acquaintances. He plunged into intoxication; and on the Sunday morning he was carried to an hospital, where he died that same evening, at the age of thirty-eight years. No details have been given of this last 'scene: let us be thankful that we bear not that pain in our memory!

It remains that I should say something of his genius, and the fruits of it which remain with us. Of his character, what is there to say? "Theory" of it, or how to "explain" this and that about such a problem, so as to pronounce what his life meant,— only the presumption of pedants ventures on decisions about these matters now-a-days. There is something about the "mystery of a Person"* which we should be very cautious in explaining, though

* CARLYLE.

there are some who think that from a post-mortem examination of the body you can learn the soul of a man. The conditions of a man's life, complex as they are, make the real understanding of his character very difficult. Too often, particularly in artificial ages like ours, a man's whole career has to be run, like a race at a fair, in a sack. Many a man never gets fair play-sometimes is born with a constitution that won't permit it-sometimes is born into circumstances that will not. Let us be charitable. Southey's "Doctor," when he heard of a Toper, was wont to say compassionately, "Bibulous clay, sir— bibulous clay!" I would not put forward this compendious excuse for Poe; but we must allow for infirmity in the man. He was indulged early; he was seduced by example. Because he left traces of something high and beautiful in him in spite of this, don't let us make that a reason for being harsher on him than on the frail mortals of his race. One pious scribbler told us-very soon after his death-(have they not in America, as here, a rule at all cemeteries that "no dogs are admitted?") that

"His faults were many, his virtues few." But I learn from those who knew him-men like my friend BUCHANAN READ, himself a fine, graceful, tender poet-that his friends loved him, and that those who understood him pardoned his infirmities. Much more should they be pardoned now to one,

"Whose part in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,

Is that his grave is green.”—Bryant.

It has been remarked of him that he united singularly the qualities of the Poet with the faculties of the Analyst. He wrote charming little ballads, and was a curious disentangler of evidence-criminal evidence, for instance-and fond of problems and cipher. The union is indubitable; but I scarcely think it should have been so much dwelt upon. Every man of fine intellect of the highest class includes a capacity more or less for all branches of inquiry. Carlyle was distinguished in arithmetic long before he became the Teacher which we hail him as now. On the other hand, inventors in the regions of mechanics partake of something poetic in their inspiration. Brindley was as eccentric as Goldsmith. Watt would muse over a tea-kettle, as Rousseau did over la pervenche, or over the lake into which he dropped sentimental tears. One very curious theory was hit upon by a solid critic a little while ago to explain Poe's two-handedness. He knew that Poe wrote fine poetry-he knew Poe made subtle calculations; and what was his inference? Credite posteri! He insisted that the calculating faculty was the fact, and that the poetry was calculation. I scarcely ever remember a more curious instance of the "cart being put before the horse"-by the ass! Nothing can be more clear, to be

sure, than that Poe employed a great deal of ingenuity and calculation in the finishing of his tales and polishing of his poems. But all this leaves the poetic inspiration pure at the bottom as the essential fact. Otherwise, if we are to make the calculating the predominant faculty, we may look out for a volume of Sonnets by Cocker! Poe has admitted us, in one of his essays, to the genesis of "The Raven," and has even told us which stanza he wrote first, and on what mechanical principles he managed the arrangement of the story. But surely all this presupposes the pure creative genius necessary to the conception ?

Keeping the distinction in view, we shall easily see that all his Tales-analytic and other-resolve themselves into poems, instead of the poems resolving themselves into machinery. The "Gold Bug," for example, makes a most ingenious use of cipher, but the cipher is only matériel. Without creative genius mere cipher is an affair for the Foreign Office—which still remains a very inferior place to Parnassus. The same remark applies to his other poetical exercisesfor such they are-in Mesmerism, Physics, Circumnstantial Evidence, &c. Far from being a narrow student of the details of these, he always has clearly an eye in using them to the poetic goal or result.

However, it is with his Poems that our main business is just now. I should say that he was a true poet, first of all. I mean simply, that his view