compassionate acquaintances or admiring friends--any way he could--for
eighteen or nineteen years: lost his wife, involved himself in endless
difficulties, and finally died in what should have been the prime of
his life, about six months ago. His enemies attributed his untimely
death to intemperance; his writings would rather lead to the belief
that he was an habitual taker of opium. If it make a man a poet to be

Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love,

Poe was certainly a poet. Virulently and ceaselessly abused by his
enemies (who included a large portion of the press), he was worshiped
to infatuation by his friends. The severity of his editorial
criticisms, and the erratic course of his life, fully account for the
former circumstance; the latter is probably to be attributed, in part
at least, to pity for his mishaps.

"If Longfellow's poetry is best designated as quaint, Poe's may most
properly be characterized as fantastic. The best of it reminds one
of Tennyson, not by any direct imitation of particular passages, but
by its general air and tone. But he was very far from possessing
Tennyson's fine ear for melody. His skill in versification, sometimes
striking enough, was evidently artificial; he overstudied metrical
expression and overrated its value so as sometimes to write, what
were little better than nonsense-verses, for the rhythm. He had an
incurable propensity for refrains, and when he had once caught a
harmonious cadence, appeared to think it could not be too often
repeated. Poe's name is usually mentioned in connection with _The
Raven_, a poem which he published about five years ago. It had an
immense run, and gave rise to innumerable parodies--those tests of