than upon the idiosyncrasies of their active, visible phenomena, or the peculiarities of their manner.'

-

"We have said that the charm of his conversation consisted in its genuineness, its wonderful directness, and sincerity. We believe, too, that, in the artistic utterance of poetic emotion, he was at all times passionately genuine. His proud reserve, his profound melancholy, his unworldliness-may we not say his unearthliness of nature made his character one very difficult of comprehension to the casual observer. The complexity of his intellect, its incalculable resources, and his masterly control of those resources when brought into requisition for the illustration of some favorite theme or cherished creation, led to the current belief that its action was purely arbitrary, that he could write without emotion or earnestness at the deliberate dictation of the will." 1

The year 1846 was the beginning of Poe's "descent" into the moral and physical Maelström," in which he was finally swallowed up. All his brilliant literary and social successes had been in vain, had proved incapable of lifting him to a prosperous plane, had made him indeed only a shining mark for malice and malignity.

"In his white ideal All statue-blind."

Even while he was frequenting these delightful salons, with his gentle Virginia by his side, he was personally and anatomically studying its frequenters with a view to presenting them in full-length life-like

1 Mrs. Whitman, "Edgar Poe," &c., pp. 36-38.

portraits for the fashionable journal of a neighboring city.

"In the series of papers which I now propose, he writes, in his Introduction, "my design is, in giving my own unbiassed opinion of the literati (male and female) of New York, to give at the same time very closely, if not with absolute accuracy, that of conversational society in literary circles. It must be expected, of course, that, in innumerable particulars, I shall differ from the voice, that is to say, what appears to be the voice, of the public; but this is a matter of no consequence whatever.

"New York literature may be taken as a fair representation of that of the country at large. The city is itself the focus of American letters. Its authors include, perhaps, one-fourth of all in America, and the influence they exert on their brethren, if seemingly silent, is not the less extensive and decisive. As I shall have to speak of many individuals, my limits will not permit me to speak of them otherwise than in brief; but this brevity will be merely consistent with the design, which is that of simple opinion, with little of either argument or detail. With one or two exceptions, I am well acquainted with every author to be introduced. . . . Each individual is introduced absolutely at random.”

...

Thirty-eight of these accomplished gentlemen and gentlewomen of a past generation pass panoramically before us, make their brief curtsy, and, as briefly, pass into the oblivion devoted to the Dilettanti. Poe's manner is sharp, French, epigrammatic; the crisp distinction of his style, the absolutely lucid form of his statement in these papers, has never been surpassed and seldom equalled; and yet he contrives to bring within

it just enough of the vanishing personality of his subject to pique attention and avoid offence.

Only a few reputations were assailed by the critic: coarse personalities were altogether absent; the women were treated with chivalrous respect and discrimination even the dreaded Margaret Fuller was discussed with Castilian courtesy; and the fellow-journalists Briggs, Willis, Colton, Hoffman, Locke-were almost universally appreciated and praised. Notes of discord sounded in the case of Aldrich and "Thomas Dunn Brown" and Lewis Gaylord Clark. "Mr. Clark, as a literary man, has about him no determinateness, no distinctiveness, no saliency of point; an apple, in fact, or a pumpkin has more angles. He is as smooth as oil, or a sermon from Dr. Hawkes; he is noticeable for nothing in the world except for the markedness by which he is noticeable for nothing."

Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Child, Miss Sedgwick, Miss Bogart, Miss Lynch, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Stephens, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Mowatt, and Margaret Fuller are the immortelles" beaded on Poe's eternal scroll; Halleck, Willis, and Fenno Hoffman (founder of "The Knickerbocker") are the only poets still distinguishable from the throng of minor contemporaries.

It is a curious fact that the two great historic foes of this period of American literature should also have been the Supreme Court of the time for the adjudication of literary reputations. Griswold revelled in anthologies, in volumes of prose and poetical selections, in old-fashioned florilegiums and elegant extracts sealed with the seven seals of Solomon's wisdom. Poe was the taster - and tester- in these cellars of Amontillado, often delicately and derisively sceptical of its

"

being Amontillado at all. Both men were phenomenally industrious, and both have left monuments of erudition. Rivals even in their surreptitious loves, they worked shoulder to shoulder in the bustling forties amid the noise of presidential campaigns and the far-off mutterings of the Mexican War; and the one bequeathed his reputation to the other to be ravenously devoured ! Griswold's cohort of friends- Horace Greeley, Raymond, Hoffman, Donald G. Mitchell, Bayard Taylor, C. G. Leland, the Carys, James T. Fields, etc., was offset by Poe's cohort of foes made in his self-imposed task as a censor morum of more than Catonian severity. Vermont and Virginia were certainly reflected in their temperaments: the one keen, cold, incisive, indefatigable, resourceful, devoting an entire lifetime to the altruistic presentation of others' claims to literary recognition, a Dryasdust of a superior kind whose labors in collecting and in commentary were informed by an intelligent spirit, if not by a flaming zeal; the other, warm, imaginative, high-strung, impelled by an irresistible genius that never let him rest, imperiously creative, haughtily egotistic, forced rather to the presentation of his own claims than to the recognition of others.

CHAPTER XII.

1846-1847.

FORDHAM: THE DEATH OF VIRGINIA POE.

THE sensation caused by the successive issues of "The Literati " was very great, and when the series reached Thomas Dunn Brown" [English], a violent explosion ensued. English published in "The Evening Mirror (then managed by Fuller & Co.) a libellous and slanderous article, full of filth and indecency, accusing Poe of forgery, theft, and drunkenness : "he is not alone thoroughly unprincipled, base, and depraved, but silly, vain, and ignorant, not alone an assassin in morals, but a quack in literature," etc., etc.

It is needless to say that Poe brought suit and recovered damages for defamation of character. The old gentleman (author of "Ben Bolt" and ex-member of the United States Congress) died in Newark April 1, 1902.

The controversy,1 coarse and abusive as it was on both sides, had one good consequence for Poe: it resulted in a verdict of $225 in his favor, the costs and all running up a bill of $492 for the other party. With this money, apparently, Poe furnished the little

1 English's letter appeared in the New York Mirror of June 23July 13, 1846, and Poe's reply in the Philadelphia Spirit of the Times July 10, 1846. See Vol. XVII. p. 233.