ical unknown, into the gleaming, impalpable kingdom of pure
romance from which he brought back such splendid trophies, were but
experiments. He was only getting his tools into shape getting ready
for his great effort, the effort that never came.

Bread seems a little thing to stand in the way of genius, but it
can. The simple sordid facts were these, that in the bitterest
storms of winter Poe seldom wrote by a fire, that after he was
twenty-five years old he never knew what it was to have enough to
eat without dreading tomorrow's hunger. Chatterton had only himself
to sacrifice, but Poe saw the woman he loved die of want before his
very eyes, die smiling and begging him not to give up his work. They
saw the depths together in those long winter nights when she lay in
that cold room, wrapped in Poe's only coat, he, with one hand
holding hers, and with the other dashing off some of the most
perfect masterpieces of English prose. And when he would wince and
turn white at her coughing, she would always whisper: "Work on, my
poet, and when you have finished read it to me. I am happy when I
listen." O, the devotion of women and the madness of art! They are
the two most awesome things on earth, and surely this man knew both
to the full.

I have wondered so often how he did it. How he kept his purpose
always clean and his taste always perfect. How it was that hard
labor never wearied nor jaded him, never limited his imagination,
that the jarring clamor about him never drowned the fine harmonies
of his fancy. His discrimination remained always delicate, and from
the constant strain of toil his fancy always rose strong and
unfettered. Without encouragement or appreciation of any sort,
without models or precedents he built up that pure style of his that
is without peer in the language, that style of which every sentence
is a drawing by Vedder. Elizabeth Barrett and a few great artists
over in France knew what he was doing, they knew that in literature
he was making possible a new heaven and a new earth. But he never
knew that they knew it. He died without the assurance that he was or
ever would be understood. And yet through all this, with the whole
world of art and letters against him, betrayed by his own people, he
managed to keep that lofty ideal of perfect work. What he suffered
never touched or marred his work, but it wrecked his character.
Poe's character was made by his necessity. He was a liar and an
egotist; a man who h