appears that he actually was a native, as it were by accident, of Boston
itself. In the words of the Psalmist, "Lo! there was he born!" This
Gentile poet, such was the then state of American literature, could not
arrive on earth elsewhere than in the Jerusalem of Massachusetts. But
that concession was not known to the high priests, the Lowells, the
Holmeses, the Nortons, to whom Poe seemed a piratical intruder from
Javan or Gadire.

Nothing is so discouraging to a young poet of originality as to find
himself isolated. Everything new is regarded with suspicion and dislike
by the general world of readers, and usually by the leaders of criticism
as well. Yet the daring prophet feels supported if he has but his Aaron
and his Hur. In the generation that immediately preceded Poe, Wordsworth
and Coleridge had been derided, but they had enjoyed the emphatic
approbation of one another and of Southey. Shelley had been a pariah of
letters, yet he was cordially believed in by Byron and by Peacock. Even
Keats could shrink from the mud-storms of the Scotch reviewers behind
the confident zeal of Leigh Hunt and Reynolds. At a still later moment
Rossetti and Morris would shelter themselves securely, and even
serenely, from the obloquy of criticism, within a slender peel-tower of
the praise of friends. In all these cases there could be set against the
stupidity of the world at large the comfortable cleverness of a few
strong persons of taste, founded, as all good taste must be, upon
principles. The poet could pride himself on his eclecticism, on his
recognition within, as Keats said, "a little clan." But Poe's misfortune
was to have no clan of his own, and to be rejected by precisely those
persons who represented, and on the whole justly represented, good taste
in America.

His behaviour in this predicament was what might have been expected from