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possessed, too, a brilliant and pungent style, which reveals itself often in the Poe Memoir and a critical gift - delicate, incisive, penetrating of no mean order. With all the masculine strength and untiring industry that he displayed was mingled, however, one soft, one weak spot: he believed himself to be a poet; and on this spot Poe as might have been expected — infallibly put his finger.

But in contrasting these good and evil demons of Poe's existence so much at length, the conscientious biographer should not overlook the smaller but likewise significant agencies that contributed to mould and round out existence for him at this time.

Among these were Dr. N. C. Brooks of Baltimore and his "American Museum," published in the Monumental City, The Gift" (Miss Leslie's "Annual "), the Pittsburg "Literary Examiner," and Burton's "Gentleman's Magazine."

Instead of writing a review of Irving, whom he did not like but considered an "overrated writer 99 of "surreptitious and adventitious reputation," of "tame propriety and faultlessness of style " as Dr. Brooks had requested him - Poe sent the freshest and most powerful of his tales- the dream-tale "Ligeia," said on the margin of Ingram's copy, in a MS. note, to have been dreamed, like Kubla Khan, while he was asleep.

In December, 1838, Poe contributed to "The American Museum," "The Signora Zenobia," and "The Scythe of Time" (rechristened, later, "How to Write a Blackwood Article," and "A Predicament").

"The Gift" for 1839 energized him into writing his story of dualism, the favorite Doppelgänger idea

:

of German literature, "William Wilson," in which he dramatizes Conscience and makes it subordinate to the animal nature. The old balladry of England and Germany is full of the story of the man of two natures so loosely amalgamated that they slip asunder and the evil one goes forth to roam at the midnight hour, or the good one fiercely incarnates itself and confronts the other ideas as old as the ancient Persian dualism of Light and Darkness, of Ormuzd and Ahriman dallied with by Shelley, and Hawthorne, and Calderon, and Stevenson, and Goethe (whose Faust and Mephisto appear simply radiations of the good and the evil in a naturally combined Faust-Mephisto). Poe has artistically slipped the razorlike edge of his analysis in between these twin natures, separated their sutures without the spilling of blood, and set them adrift as marvellous automata, to play over against each other.

"The Museum" for April contained "The Haunted Palace,' " and the "Gentleman's Magazine" for September The Fall of the House of Usher," two masterpieces which by a sort of magnetic affinity ultimately ran together and were combined in one story. Of this combined masterpiece Lowell said in "Graham's" for February, 1845:

"As an example of his style we would refer to one of his tales, The House of Usher,' in the first volume of his Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque.' It has a singular charm for us, and we think that no one could read it without being strongly moved by its serene and sombre beauty. Had its author written nothing else it would alone have been enough to stamp him as a man of genius, and the master of a classic style. In this tale occurs one of the most beautiful of his poems. It loses greatly by being taken out of

its rich and appropriate setting, but we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of copying it here.

We know no modern poet who might not have been justly proud of it." [Here he quotes "The Haunted Palace," and adds :]

"Was ever the wreck and desolation of a noble mind so musically sung?"

In a note evidently inspired by Poe himself this number of "Graham's" (p. 52) says:

"Since the publication of the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,' Mr. P. has written, for this and other journals, the following tales, independently of essays, criticisms, etc.: The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,'Never Bet Your Head' [sic], A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,' The Masque of the Red Death,'The Colloquy of Monos and Una,' The Landscape Garden ’ [sic], The Pit and the Pendulum,' The Tell-Tale Heart,' The Black Cat,' The Man of the Crowd,' The System of Doctors Tarr and Fether' [sic], The Spectacles,' The Elk,' 'The Business Man,' The Premature Burial,' The Oblong Box,' Thou Art the Man,' Eleonora,' Three Sundays in a Week,' The Island of the Fay,' 'Life in Death,' The Angel of the Odd,' The Literary Life of Thingum-Bob,' The Descent into the Maelström,' The 1002-Tale of Scheherazade,' 'Mesmeric Revelation,' The Murders in the Rue Morgue,'The Purloined Letter,' and The GoldBug.' He is also the author of the late BalloonHoax. The Grotesque and Arabesque' included twenty-five tales."

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"The Haunted Palace" appeared in April, and in the following November appeared Longfellow's Beleaguered City" in the "Southern Literary Mes

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senger." A furious controversy arose in which Poe accused the New England poet of stealing his idea. The reader may judge for himself by comparing the two poems.

There was no reason for Poe's jealousy of Longfellow since the poems are as unlike as charcoal and diamond. Poe never seems to have realized that he could not be plagiarized, that he was too unique and original to be copied, that Poe could not under any circumstances be Longfellow. The pretty and picturesque conceit of "The Beleaguered City," is as different from the glory and ghostliness of "The Haunted Palace" as the solemn, almost insane head of Dante is from that of a cherub afloat in one of Correggio's ceilings.

one

The year 1839 was signalized by two events, unimportant, but remarkable as showing the spirit of his enemies, the publication of "The Conchologist's First Book"; the other as witnessing the issue of perhaps the most original volume of short stories ever published the "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque."

The

As we write, the first and second editions of the manual on conchology (1839, 1840: Philadelphia: Haswell, Barrington, & Haswell) are before us. facsimile of the title-page of the edition of 1839 reveals all the minutiæ of the descriptive title once in vogue. This is followed by a preface signed E. A. P., explaining the terms Malacology and Conchology, with acknowledgments to Mr. Isaac Lea of Philadelphia and Mr. Thomas Wyatt, "and his late excellent Manual of Conchology."" Three pages of introduction, with quotations from De Blainville, Parkinson, and Bergman

pages very agreeably written intro