ing, and how soon its force takes hold
of him! In fact, he will overrate the relative value of the first good work
by which his attention has been fairly caught. _The Raven_, also, has
consistent qualities which even an expert must admire. In no other of its
author's poems is the motive more palpably defined. "The Haunted Palace" is
just as definite to the select reader, but Poe scarcely would have taken
that subtle allegory for bald analysis. _The Raven_ is wholly occupied with
the author's typical theme--the irretrievable loss of an idolized and
beautiful woman; but on other grounds, also, the public instinct is correct
in thinking it his representative poem.

A man of genius usually gains a footing with the success of some one
effort, and this is not always his greatest. Recognition is the more
instant for having been postponed. He does not acquire it, like a miser's
fortune, coin after coin, but "not at all or all in all." And thus with
other ambitions: the courtier, soldier, actor,--whatever their parts,--each
counts his triumph from some lucky stroke. Poe's Raven, despite augury, was
for him "the bird that made the breeze to blow." The poet settled in
New-York, in the winter of 1844-'45, finding work upon Willis's paper, "The
Evening Mirror," and eking out his income by contributions elsewhere. For
six years he had been an active writer, and enjoyed a professional
reputation; was held in both respect and misdoubt, and was at no loss for
his share of the ill-paid journalism of that day. He also had done much of
his very best work,--such tales as "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of
Usher," (the latter containing that mystical counterpart, in verse, of
Elihu Vedder's "A Lost Mind,") such analytic feats as "The Gold Bug" and
"The Mystery of Marie Roget." He had made proselytes abroad, and gained a
lasting hold upon the French mind. He had learned his own power and
weakness, and was at his prime, and not without a certain reputation. But
he had written nothing that was on the tongue of everybody. To rare and
delicate work some popular touch must be added to capture the general
audience of one's own time.

Through the industry of Poe's successive biographers, the hit made by _The
Raven_ has become an oft-told tale. The poet's young wife, Virginia, was
fading before his eyes, but lingered for another year within death's
shadow. The long, low chamber in the house near the Bloomingdale Road is
as famous as the room wher