perfection, that his whole soul yearned to attain the highest
pleasures of artistic creation. His was perpetually a deeply agitated
soul; as such, it was natural he should outwardly seem irritable,
impatient, restless, discontented, and solitary. It is impossible to
believe that there was any strain of real evil in Poe. A man who could
inspire such devotion as he had from such a woman as Mrs. Clemm, a man
who loved flowers and children and animal pets, who could be so
devoted a husband, who could so consecrate himself to art, was not a
bad man. Yet his acts were often, as we have seen, most
reprehensible. Frequently the subject of slander, he was not a victim
of conspiracy to defame. Although circumstances were many times
against him, he was his own worst enemy. He was cursed with a
temperament. His mind was analytical and imaginative, and gave no
thought to the ethical. He remained wayward as a child. The man, like
his art, was not immoral, but simply unmoral. Whatever his faults, he
suffered frightfully for them, and his fame suffered after him.


LITERARY WORK

Poe's first literary ventures were in verse. The early volumes,
showing strongly the influence of Byron and Moore, were productions of
small merit but large promise. Their author was soon to become one of
the most original of poets, his later work being unique, with a
strangely individual, "Poe" atmosphere that no other writer has ever
been able successfully to imitate. His verse is individual in theme,
treatment, and structure, all of which harmonize with his conscious
theory of poetic art. His theory is briefly this: It is not the
function of poetry to teach either truth or morals, but to gratify
through novel forms "the thirst for supernal beauty"; its proper