man remained a marked characteristic, while his conversation was to the last genuine and fascinating.

ΧΙ

His character showed many inconsistencies. In his youth he considered pride the distinctive manly quality. His struggles with poverty cankered him. All through life he felt that if he could have had money and leisure instead of being driven like a packhorse for his daily bread he could have accomplished what other men scarce dreamed of. Gratitude was in him a lively sense of favors about to come. He forgot any bene

fits conferred in the past if he met with a refusal or a harsh criticism. He was selfwilled, capricious, imperious; originally with generous impulses but not steadily kind or amiable. Never knowing a mother's care he was a lonely boy, and his young manhood was weary, worn, and discontented. At West Point it was a joke among the cadets that he had secured the appointment for his son and then taken it himself. As he grew older and yielded to intoxicants his life became irregular, his manner eccentric, his disposition querulous. He was reserved, isolated, dreamy, with fantastic moods. His engagement with Mrs. Whitman was broken off because he was intoxicated upon the morning of the marriage, and two weeks before the day set for his marriage with another woman he was picked up drunk upon the streets of Baltimore and died in a hospital. XII

Stedman, his most discriminating biographer, says of him :

He was a man inebriate when sober, his brain surging with emotion; and a stimulant that only served to steady common men bewildered him. His mature years were a battle with inherent taint, in

creased by drugging in infancy and by the convivial usages of his guardian's household. Bearing in mind the lack of self-control inherent in Celtic and southern natures, he made a plucky fight.

But he lost the fight and died disgraced. His closest friend said of him :

Nothing so solitary, nothing so hopeless, nothing so desolate as his spirit in its darker moods has been instanced in the literary history of the nineteenth century.

XIII

Of his poems he says himself:

Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making at any time any serious effort in what under happier circumstances would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose but a passion, and the passions should be held in reverence. They must not-they cannot, at will be excited with an eye to the paltry compensations and the more paltry commendations of mankind.

His first book was published when he was eighteen years old. The second volume was printed for private circulation just before he entered West Point, and the third just afterward; but none of them attracted much attention. It was the publication of "The Raven" in 1845 that first gave him acknowledged rank. His biographer says:

No great poem ever published established itself so immediately, so widely, and so imperishably in men's minds. 1

Mrs. Browning said of it,

This vivid writing-this power which is felt-has produced a sensation here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by the music.

The general impression it has produced is that of the outpouring of a passionate spirit; yet Poe himself claimed that it was constructed in pure artifice, mechanically built up with the purpose of producing effect upon the reader. Much more simple and direct is "Annabel Lee", his last lyric, which illustrates his ear for rhythm and melody, and at the same time is a genuine lament for his lost wife.

XIV

ANNABEL LEE

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me--

Yes-that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-

Of many far wiser than we

And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;