e from his popular recognition everywhere. Few were the lands,
few the languages he was unknown to: he showed me a version of the "Psalm
of Life" in Chinese. Apparently even the poor lost autograph-seeker was
not denied by his universal kindness; I know that he kept a store of
autographs ready written on small squares of paper for all who applied by
letter or in person; he said it was no trouble; but perhaps he was to be
excused for refusing the request of a lady for fifty autographs, which
she wished to offer as a novel attraction to her guests at a lunch party.

Foreigners of all kinds thronged upon him at their pleasure, apparently,
and with perfect impunity. Sometimes he got a little fun, very, very
kindly, out of their excuses and reasons; and the Englishman who came to
see him because there were no ruins to visit in America was no fable, as
I can testify from the poet himself. But he had no prejudice against
Englishmen, and even at a certain time when the coarse-handed British
criticism began to blame his delicate art for the universal acceptance of
his verse, and to try to sneer him into the rank of inferior poets, he
was without rancor for the clumsy misliking that he felt. He could not
understand rudeness; he was too finely framed for that; he could know it
only as Swedenborg's most celestial angels perceived evil, as something
distressful, angular. The ill-will that seemed nearly always to go with
adverse criticism made him distrust criticism, and the discomfort which
mistaken or blundering praise gives probably made him shy of all
criticism. He said that in his early life as an author he used to seek
out and save all the notices of his poems, but in his latter days he read
only those that happened to fall in his way; these he cut out and amused
his leisure by putting together in scrapbooks. He was reluctant to make
any criticism of other poets; I do not remember ever to have heard him
make one; and his writings show no trace of the literary dislikes or
contempts which we so often mistake in ourselves for righteous judgments.
No doubt he had his resentments, but he hushed them in his heart, which
he did not suffer them to embitter. While Poe was writing of "Longfellow
and other Plagiarists," Longfellow was helping to keep Poe alive by the
loans which always made themselves gifts in Poe's case. He very, very
rarely spoke of himself at all, and almost never of the grievances which
he did not fail to share with all