THE POE CENTENARY. 



ADDRESS BY PROF. GEO. E. WOODBERRY. 



E are gathered here to do honor to genius. One 

 |\Y/ name is on our lips, one memory is in our hearts 

 ' — that of Edgar Allan Poe. Sixty years ago five 

 mourners stood round his grave; today in five 

 great cities of the nation, and elsewhere, men gather, as we do 

 here, by scores and hundreds, to commemorate hi-- birth. It 

 is because genius, once horn into life, is indestructible; it is 

 safe alike from any stroke of earthly fortune and from time's 

 attack, it is the immortal vigor of the race. Men do not 

 willingly let the memory of it die; men protect its memory, 

 and this is singularly true of Poe. Xo American name in 

 literature is, I think, so warmly cherished. It is a pleasure, 

 too, to recognize American genius, and today it is an added 

 grace that Poe was a child of the South. He was. neverthe- 

 less, both in his genius and his life, remarkably free from 

 locality. It has not been sufficiently observed hitherto, I think, 

 that more than any of his contemporaries Poe occupied a 

 central position in his generation; he was better acquainted 

 with the literary product of the time, and both by his residence 

 and his letters was in touch with a wide area of the country. 

 He had lived in Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New 

 York, and had repeatedly visited Xew England, and his corre- 

 spondence reached Cincinnati, St. Louis, Louisville. Tennessee 

 and Georgia. More than the others, he had national range. 



Poe was a Southerner by his breeding ; he was an American 

 by his career; he was a citizen of the world by his renown. 

 It was a distinguishing trait of his personality that when his 

 first tales were hardly dry from the press, he was already 

 negotiating for publication in England. He always belonged 

 in spirit to the larger world. The adventurous sense of it was 

 his cadet dream of joining the armies of Poland when he left 



