figures, dedicate to Aphrodite, of Bombyca and Battus! Somewhat,
Theocritus, thou hast to answer for, thou that first of men brought
the shepherd to Court, and made courtiers wild to go a Maying with
the shepherds.



LETTER--To Edgar Allan Poe



Sir,--Your English readers, better acquainted with your poems and
romances than with your criticisms, have long wondered at the
indefatigable hatred which pursues your memory. You, who knew the
men, will not marvel that certain microbes of letters, the survivors
of your own generation, still harass your name with their
malevolence, while old women twitter out their incredible and
unheeded slanders in the literary papers of New York. But their
persistent animosity does not quite suffice to explain the dislike
with which many American critics regard the greatest poet, perhaps
the greatest literary genius, of their country. With a commendable
patriotism, they are not apt to rate native merit too low; and you,
I think, are the only example of an American prophet almost without
honour in his own country.

The recent publication of a cold, careful, and in many respects
admirable study of your career ("Edgar Allan Poe," by George
Woodberry: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston) reminds English
readers who have forgotten it, and teaches those who never knew it,
that you were, unfortunately, a Reviewer. How unhappy were the