l6 THE BRONX SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



West Point. The literary stamp of it was that in the first 

 line of his criticism, unfledged critic that he was. he set up a 

 standard, not that of his leisured hearth of Virginia or the 

 newspaper offices of New York or the parlor coteries of 

 Boston, but the standard of all the world ; and though he con- 

 tracted opportunism, that was only the wear and tear of 

 practical life on a fine ideal. 



But it is not enough to be a critic. No critic ever had his 

 hundredth birthday celebrated. Poe was from his youth an 

 all-round man of letters. One trait which peculiarly wins 

 the respect of his fellow craftsmen, I think, is that he never 

 was anything else but a man of letters. He never earned 

 any money except by his pen. He labored twenty years; for 

 four of these he had a salary as an editor, and a dozen times 

 he spoke from a platform; otherwise he was an unattached 

 writer and lived from day to day. I have no manner of 

 doubt he was sincere in saying that in thus adhering to his 

 profession he cheerfully bore poverty. His profession pauper- 

 ized him. Is it not startling to think that we are gathered 

 here, in a city which is the shrine and throne of gold, to do 

 honor to a man who was a beggar all his days? It is a 

 striking tribute to true values. I make no complaint of fate. 

 Literature dedicates her sons to the vow of worldly sacrifice. 

 It has been so of old time. He was not chosen to be poor 

 more than the others were chosen. Hawthorne and Emerson 

 and Poe — the three most brilliant men in our literature — all 

 led meagre lives, but Poe alone was the perfect victim. Poe 

 not only lived meagrely; at times he starved. Poverty is a 

 terrible foe; it is thorough in its work on men and nations; 

 it kills. What a victory it is of the spirit over its life, of the 

 spirit that makes for immortality through all disguises of 

 human wretchedness — that we have today in our minds and 

 hearts, out of Poe's meagre and starved life, poetry, romance, 

 the imagery that fades not away ! It is true that there is that 

 in it which terrifies; here is the legend and superscription of 

 pain and death; bis music is the requiem of the soul that 



