e honor. His narrative is
clear, compressed, and powerful, and throughout his writings choice
symbols abound. He was fond of themes of death, insanity, and terror.
The wonder of it all is that this struggling, poverty-stricken
craftsman, irregular in his habits of living, using only negative life
and shadowy abstractions, should, from out his disordered fancies,
weave stories and poems of such undying beauty and force.

Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her health
was always delicate and her death confirmed Poe's tendency toward
dissipation. His life was filled with dire poverty and a hard struggle
for a livelihood. His home relations were happy. The last years of his
life were spent at Fordham, a suburb of New York. He died in a
Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849.

BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.

_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.

_Introduction to American Literature_, F.V.N. Painter.

_Life of Poe_, Richard Henry Stoddard.

_Edgar Allan Poe_, G.E. Woodberry.

_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.

"Art of Poe, _Independent_, 66: 157-8. January 21, 1909.

"Dual Personality," _Current Literature_, 43: 287-8.

CRITICISMS

Some critics have maintained that Poe is our only original genius in
American Literature. Lowell wrote in his _Fable for Critics_:--

"There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of
him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge."

Whatever judgments the various critics may give of Poe and his
writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever
writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that
have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness
of details. He loves mystery and terror,--not the fancies and fears of
a child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote
from ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and the world they
live in is exceptional. He is inventive, original in arranging his
material, and shallow but keen in his thinking.

He believed that art and life have little in common, and in his
writings seemed to be unmoved by friendship, loyalty, patriotism,
courage, self-sacrifice or any of the great positive attributes of
life that make living worth while. His writings lack the human touch,
tenderness, and the buoyancy of sympathy. He is an artist who does his
work with a clear-cut, hard fin