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Show Haunted Palace;" "The House of Usher" had given place to the transcendental trans-cendental folly of "Eureka " "Whisky and opium had done their perfect work. The evil things In robes of sorrow had finished the ruin of the mumming should cease with tho husk of greatness that was borne to the hospital on that night in the loneHome October of sixty years agone. The symphony was over; it was time for the leader to go. It was best. It was kindest that the mummlnm should cease with tho music, that the score of the haunting harmonics be intrusted to the world's safe keeping; and tho rest he left to grow "a dim remembered story Of the old-time entombed." . REVIEW OF LIFE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE Generally speaking, the history of American literaturo has beon singularly singu-larly pcacoful. But Poo, and in a later day, Whitman, have beon storm centers which have almost made 'is forget the summer calm of our liter-arv liter-arv landscape. It Is not so much tlv.t the facta of Poc's career aro in dispute, dis-pute, though the record leaves something some-thing to be desired in the way of au- thentlclty. It Is rather that those facts aro viewed through the spec-toclos spec-toclos of prejudice; spectacles now rony with affection, now green wl'.h tnvy, but never by any chance ocolr-less. ocolr-less. One biographer dwells on tha testimony of Willis that Foe was tho gentlest gentleman who ever did back work in a newspnper office; and treats us to long descriptions usually written writ-ten by women of the poet's remarkable remark-able beauty, his charm of manner, hi? old-world courtesy. Another lingers with loving malice over the fact that other men paid Foe's tailor bills, that he reprinted his old articles and poems po-ems as new ones, and that he had been known to sleep off his potatlonj on the sawdust covered floor of a low-clasc low-clasc barroom. One telis us at length of Poe's undeniable love for hl4 wife; and another of his equally undeniable un-deniable efforts to marry some wealthy woman anyone would do during the days of his wldowerhoo.l. That Poo was a groat and a morbid genius' the world Is fully agreed; and It Is agreed on very little else con ct-rnlng him. The greater part of Poe's life history his-tory la aii ofttold tale, but one I hat seems to gather fresh Interest with each retelling. Tbat he was born in Loston, in 1809, the uon of a worthy actreec-mother and a cvorthless, wellborn well-born father; and that a little more than forty years later he was picked up uneonKcloua in a Baltimore slum and taken to a hospital to die, are items in the mental furniture of millions. mil-lions. The death of his mother beforo his third blthday, his adoption by John Allan, a shrewd Scotch merchant settled set-tled in Klchmond.Va ; his admission to and expulsion from West Point, are likewise common property. It U not so well known that prior to his West Point experience he served two years In the regular army under an assumed name; that he won a non-commis-fcioned officer's place by good, Mteadv work, and that he was reported by & officers to have no bad habits whatever. what-ever. Everyone knows that through a considerable part of ihs life Poe waj a periodical drr.nkard; not' so many are aware that he was a confirmed user of opium. The memory of his stinging criticisms has outlawed the life of tho critic and usually the reputation rep-utation of the crillclsed. His stories are still acknowledged masterpieces of plot and workmanship; and tho place where "The Raven" is unknown a place where the English language h;is not penetrated. Alio, Poe was tho first American Author to gain an international in-ternational reputation of any value. All these things and many more are known- to all who care to interest themselves In Poe. One would think that on so broad a ftnindatiou of fact It might be possible to roa? a consistent consist-ent estimate of tho strangest character, charac-ter, but such has no; been the case. For the great, obvious fact of Poo's llfo and work was the morbid, oppressive, op-pressive, horror-shadowed nature uf both. Hl3 Indeed tho light that never was on sea nor lana; but his as well tho phantoms of strangeness and loth-ing loth-ing that come up through the Ivory pale. It was something deeper than the gloom which Byron coined into trude dollars for literary export Poe's is a dark, unwholesome habit of mind that showa In all his best work; and is to much a part of him that, with few exceptions, when you miss tho morbidness you miss the genius as well. This is tho riddle that must be solved before one can properly appraise ap-praise the man; and, so far, no one l as offered a solution that any great number of persons seem inclined to accept. Yet, to my mind, the solution is n curiously simple one. Tho secret of Poe's Jaundiced outlook on life is not his drunkenness nor his opium eating; neither his strange genius nor his undeniable selfishness. It Is rather, that his temperament and gonitis go-nitis and vices combined with the society so-ciety in which he was placed to shut him off from his fellows, to malso him a creature aparL Poe's was the morbidness mor-bidness not of liquor, but of loneliness; loneli-ness; not of opium, but of isolation And that Is the worst and most hon-lotH hon-lotH morbidness of all. Once let the Altallzins stream of human life be walled off, and the clearest waters of thought gather into stagnant and unwholesome un-wholesome pools, where creepln-things creepln-things breed and flourish, and whew shapes of fear and foulness haunt the shades. Among his contemporaries, P-e had three titles to celebrity; his critiques his poems and his stories Tho first are known to us mainly by the tradition tradi-tion of their cutting savagery. When wo turn from Poe's critiques to his Imaginative work, we pass from cleverness to genius at a step. Here his lack of "scholarship," that prized possession of those who sit In the grandstand and tell how the game should be played, was a help, rather than a hindrance. He has llterarv faults, even here! but they aro no't vital ones. Ho mars some of the best passages by the Introduction of seraphs ser-aphs and Psycho and 'dolons and other neeldees things. His heroines always have a boauly suggestive, to the modern reader, of the tubercle' ba-ccillus; ba-ccillus; his heroes are high-born misanthropes; mis-anthropes; his surroundings are tarns and castles and perishing domains. In a word, though not of the world, ho could not wholly escape Its influence; influ-ence; for these things were reckoned In Poe's time the indlspenslbles of art. They had a number of queer hallucinations hal-lucinations in those days, when you stop to thluk of It. They even imagined imag-ined that Fonimore Cooper wrote English Eng-lish and that William Gilmore Sims produced literature. Poe defined poetrv as the rhythmical rhythmic-al creation of beauty; and he held himself rigorously to that standard Measured by this test, he would be the Kreafest of American poets; with Keats and Tennyson and Shelly as his sole superiors in the language. But I do not thing anyone but Po" ever seriously accepted that definition It measures "Kublal Kahn" perfectly; and "The Lotus Eaters," and the "Oil? to a N'lghtlngalo," and moat of "Fro-methus "Fro-methus Unhound." But will anvon. pretend that It can ever be stretched to cover "Chllde Harold." or that It even hints at the philosophy and insight in-sight and melody and majestv that make up 'Othello" and "Macbeth'" Yet, faulty as was the definition on- cannot help wishing it had found a wider acceptance. If Browning had hen convinced that poetry Is the rhythmical rhy-thmical creation of beauty, what quarrels quar-rels and headaches and jawaches we should have been spared! It would have helped still more If some other missionary could have made Browning Brown-ing believe that poetry Is the rhythmical rhyth-mical expression of senae. Leaving out the abortive "grotesques.' "gro-tesques.' Poe's tales, like ancient Gaul, may be divided into three parts, There are those which for want of a better word we must call the romances: ro-mances: "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Pit and the Pendulum." "Llgela." and many others. There are the studies of monomania; as "Tho Telltale Heart." and "The Black Cat." There are the stories with a scientific basis: as "The Descent Into the Maelstrom," Mael-strom," "The Goldbug," and the three detective 6torIes. These last have been the subject of many acrid and amusing debates. It Is charged that Conan Doyle modeled Sherlock Holmes on the lines of Poe's Frenchman, Di-pln; Di-pln; and that the whole spring of the tales whereof the cocaine-using Londoner Lon-doner is the hero may be found in Poe. I believe the charge to be equally equal-ly true and Important. If one dees pleasing work In an acceptable fash-Ion, fash-Ion, why should It be counted a re pioach that he learned his trade un- , der a competent workman? To my mind, Poe has few greater claims on modern gratitude than that of being literary grandfather to "Tho Five Orange Pips," "The Priory School," "The Hound of the Baskervllles," and "The Second Stain," I do not include "The Dancing Men." For this particular partic-ular tale to be found In tho possession posses-sion of one who had read "The Gold-bug" Gold-bug" seems leas a case of inheritance than a larceny. A great, a wonderful, a morbid genius; gen-ius; that, at the last as the first, is one's judgment of Poe. We may mourn for his wasted life, but not for his early death. The best of him was dead already. The flawless taste had failed; the unrivaled craftsmanship craftsman-ship was lost; the Jingle of "For Annie" An-nie" had followed the melody of "The |