inally quarreled with his guardian and adopted father--by
whom he was disowned--and then betook himself to the life of a literary
hack. His brilliant but underpaid work for various periodicals soon
brought him into notice, and he was given the editorship of the
_Southern Literary Messenger_, published at Richmond, and subsequently
of the _Gentlemen's_--afterward _Graham's_--_Magazine_ in Philadelphia.
These and all other positions Poe forfeited through his {527}
dissipated habits and wayward temper, and finally, in 1844, he drifted
to New York, where he found employment on the _Evening Mirror_ and then
on the _Broadway Journal_. He died of delirium tremens at the Marine
Hospital in Baltimore. His life was one of the most wretched in
literary history. He was an extreme instance of what used to be called
the "eccentricity of genius." He had the irritable vanity which is
popularly supposed to accompany the poetic temperament, and was so
insanely egotistic as to imagine that Longfellow and others were
constantly plagiarizing from him. The best side of Poe's character
came out in his domestic relations, in which he displayed great
tenderness, patience and fidelity. His instincts were gentlemanly, and
his manner and conversation were often winning. In the place of moral
feeling he had the artistic conscience. In his critical papers, except
where warped by passion or prejudice, he showed neither fear nor favor,
denouncing bad work by the most illustrious hands and commending
obscure merit. The "impudent literary cliques" who puffed each other's
books; the feeble chirrupings of the bardlings who manufactured verses
for the "Annuals;" and the twaddle of the "genial" incapables who
praised them in flabby reviews--all these Poe exposed with ferocious
honesty. Nor, though his writings are _un_moral, can they be called in
any sense _im_moral. His poetry is as pure in its unearthliness as
Bryant's in its austerity.

{528}

By 1831 Poe had published three thin books of verse, none of which had
attracted notice, although the latest contained the drafts of a few of
his most perfect poems, such as _Israfel_, the _Valley of Unrest_, the
_City in the Sea_, and one of the two pieces inscribed _To Helen_. It
was his habit to touch and retouch his work until it grew under his
more practiced hand into a shape that satisfied his fastidious taste.
Hence the same poem frequently reappears in different stages of
development in succe