OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. Ql 



controlled. The spirit is imperfectly master of the mind, of 

 itself. It is fretted by an. inability to find full and perfect means 

 of expression. Like high-mettled horses, genius may be swift- 

 ly ruined. Its temptations are great, its pride and poverty 

 like whips of scorpions, its sufferings keen to the point of hy- 

 sterics and of wildness. If the will is weak and circumstances 

 untoward, if the childhood and youth have been over-stimulat- 

 ed and unhealth}^, there will be frequent lapses into what is mor- 

 bid and unmanly. 



So it was with Poe; and in the literary consideration of such 

 an author we have the strongest desire to separate the writings 

 from the man, to judge the writings in themselves, forgetting 

 the biography. A few of Poe's productions are almost match- 

 less, and instinctively we feel that it would be better to leave 

 the man out of the account. What has a man's life and fortune 

 to do, we are tempted to sa^^, with his writing ? But it is im- 

 possible ; the man, as alwaj^s, belongs with his works and his 

 works to the man. At the best, his was a pitiful and disagree- 

 able story; it was an unworthy and unmanly life. Poe was 

 sinned against, no doubt. He inherited an excitable and un- 

 quiet temperament, and received no adequate training or gov- 

 ernment as a child. Early in life he was left an orphan and by 

 his adopted parents used as a plaything and spoiled. At 

 home and in college he gained no just ideas of life, or standards 

 of right conduct. Add to this the fact tha-t in his later career 

 Poe continually forced himself to spells of intense cerebral ex- 

 citement in the labor of composition which were followed by an 

 irritability and exhaustion that many fail to understand. The 

 knowledge he acquired, or rather picked up at random, was 

 scrappy, ill-assorted. and inaccurate. Hardlj^ a detail of his life 

 has been spared as a subject of bitter controversy and of the most 

 diverse interpretations, exalting him to heaven or damning him 

 to hell. If anywhere, his actions toward his child-wife seem 

 to show the best of which he was capable, a romantic affection, 

 an unselfish feeling, a tender if exaggerated sympathy. 



These things are to be said for him. Yet the verdict must be 

 that he was completely and utterly self-centered, idle in youth. 



