Such a reputation is that of Edgar Allan Poe. One would have thought
that posterity would be eager to make up to his shade for the criminal
animus of Rufus Griswold, his first biographer. On the contrary, it
prefers to perpetuate the lying portrait; and no consideration of the
bequests of Poe's genius, or of his tragic struggles with adverse
conditions, no editorial advocacy, or documentary evidence in his
favour, has persuaded posterity to reverse the unduly harsh judgment of
his fatuous contemporaries.

Fortunately, it all matters nothing to Poe now. It is only to us that it
matters.

Saddening, surely, it is, to say the least, to realize that the humanity
of which we are a part is tainted with so subtle a disease of lying, and
so depraved an appetite for lies. Under such conditions, it is
surprising that greatness and goodness are ever found willing to serve
humanity at all, and that any but scoundrels can be found to dare the
risks of the high places of the world. For this social disease of gossip
resembles that distemper which, at the present moment, threatens the
chestnut forests of America. It first attacks the noblest trees. Like
it, too, it would seem to baffle all remedies, and like it, it would
seem to be the work of indestructible microscopic worms.

It is this vermicular insignificance of the gossip that makes his
detection so difficult, and gives him his security. A great reputation
may feel itself worm-eaten, and may suddenly go down with a crash, but
it will look around in vain for the social vermin that have brought
about its fall. It is the cowardice of gossip that its victims have
seldom an opportunity of coming face to face with their destroyers; for