gone. The most probable story is that he had been drugged by political
workers, imprisoned in a "coop" with similar victims, and used as a
repeater [1], this procedure being a common one at the time. Whether
he was also intoxicated is a matter of doubt. There could be but one
effect on his delicate and already diseased brain. He was taken to a
hospital unconscious, lingered several days in the delirium of a
violent brain fever, and in the early dawn of Sunday, October 7,
breathed his last.

[Footnote 1: Repeater, a person who illegally votes more than once]

The dead author's character immediately became the subject of violent
controversy. His severe critical strictures had made him many enemies
among the minor writers of the day and their friends. One of the men
who had suffered from Poe's too caustic pen was Rufus W. Griswold, but
friendly relations had been nominally established and Poe had
authorized Griswold to edit his works. This Griswold did, including a
biography which Poe's friends declared a masterpiece of malicious
distortion and misrepresentation; it certainly was grossly unfair and
inaccurate. Poe's friends retorted, and a long war of words followed,
in which hatred or prejudice on the one side and wholesale,
undiscriminating laudation on the other, alike tended to obscure the
truth. It is now almost impossible to see the real Poe, just as he
appeared to an ordinary, unprejudiced observer of his own time. Only
by the most careful, thoughtful, and sympathetic study can we hope to
approximate such an acquaintance.

The fundamental fact about Poe is a very peculiar and unhappy
temperament, certain characteristic qualities of which began to
disclose themselves in early boyhood and, fostered by the vicissitudes