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the limitations of such literary heroes of the day as Irving, Bryant, and Cooper 1. For some time he conducted an intimate correspondence with Lowell, to

whom he wrote

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WASHINGTON IRVING, 1788-1859 that no man in

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 1794-1874

America had ex

cited in him so much admiration; but as Longfellow's friend Lowell could not help resenting Poe's charges against Longfellow, and afterwards

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lowered the tone of his appreciation of Lowell. From the introductory chapter of "Barnaby Rudge" he foretold the plot of the entire book, which made Dickens humorously accuse him of diabolical power.

As a Romancer

VII

15

Until just before his death his literary reputation rested mostly upon his tales. Stedman says that Poe and Hawthorne were the last of the romancers. Poe showed the

fire, the richness, the instability of the tropics; Hawthorne the abiding strength and passion of the North. The New Englander

had the profounder insight; the Southerner's magic was that of the necromancer, who resorts to spells and devices, and when

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some apparition by

chance responds to

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1804-1864 his incantation, he is bewildered by the phantom he himself has raised.

His stories became known in 1833, when he won the $100 prize offered by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, by his "Manuscript Found in a Bottle". Ten years later he took another $100 prize for his story "The Gold-bug". His stories are full of gloom and

mystery. He delighted in the fantastic and grotesque, and was utterly wanting in humor "except of a kind which sends a chill down the reader's back and implies a contempt for bodies and souls, for the perils, helplessness, and meanness of the stricken human race." VIII

His pay for his literary work was meagre. His salary on the Southern Literary Messenger was at first $10 a week, but was afterwards raised to $15 a week; when he gave up his place he had promise of a rise to $20 a week. On Burton's Magazine he began work at $50 a month, and his pay on the Broadway Journal was at first $1 a column. His letters show that on Graham's Magazine he received about $4 a page. For "The Raven" he was paid a bare ten dollars. books brought him scarcely anything, his lectures would not draw hearers, and much of the time he was without employment. He who was a boy had been surrounded with every luxury was as a man so poor that he sometimes declined invitations for want of sufficient clothing; and a visitor to his Fordham cottage found his wife dying of con

His

His Love for his Wife

17

sumption, shivering in winter with no other bed-clothes than sheets and counterpane, eking out the warmth by a cat that lay upon her breast, and her husband's overcoat thrown upon the bed.

IX

He

His love for this wife, his own cousin, was the brightest feature of his character. married her before she was 14 years old, and he always watched over her tenderly, almost with worship. When she first ruptured a blood vessel he was in despair, and he claimed that it was this that first drove him to the use of narcotics and stimulants. Her mother lived with them and supported the family, taking care of such money as Poe was able to earn and eking out the income by taking boarders. After the death of his wife early in 1847 the mother still kept house for him, even after he became engaged successively to two other women; after his death she mourned him sincerely, and defended his memory.

X

In appearance he realized the ideal poet. He was slight and erect of figure, athletic,

well moulded. In his youth, perhaps emulating Byron's swimming across the Hellespont, he swam six miles in the James river against a strong tide, and walked back unfatigued1. Even in his last years he was proud of the distance he could jump. His head was finely modelled, his forehead and temples large, his hands fair as a woman's, his mien such that even the garb of poverty could never disguise the gentleman. In

early life his face

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was handsome

and intellectual,

his hair dark and
clustering, his
eyes a clear, sad
gray violet, large,
lustrous with ex-

pression, often

IN EARLY LIFE

"flashing with
the electric light

of feeling and of thoughts". His voice was soft and musical, his movement easy and quiet, his bearing such that no failure could humble it, his melancholy habitual but thoughtful. N. P. Willis said of him that

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