urned to his experiments in analysis--publishing in _The Saturday
Evening Post_ an _advance_ review of Charles Dickens' story "Barnaby
Rudge," which was just beginning to come out in serial form. In the
review he predicted, correctly, the whole development and conclusion of
the story. It brought him a letter from Dickens, expressing
astonishment, owning that the plot was correct, and enquiring if Edgar
Poe had "dealings with the devil."

Soon followed the "Colloquy of Monos and Una," in which in the exquisite
prose poetry of which The Dreamer was a consummate master, his
imagination sought to pierce the veil between this world and the
next--to lay bare the secrets of the soul's passage into the "Valley of
the Shadow."

Whatever else Edgar Poe wrote, he continued to pour out through the
editorial columns of _Graham's Magazine_ a steady stream of criticism of
current books. While entertaining or amusing the public as far as power
to do so in him lay, he did not for a moment permit anything to come
between him and the duties of his post as Defender of Purity of Style in
American Letters. He was unsparing in the use of his pruning hook upon
the work of his contemporaries and the height of art to which by his
fearless, candid and, at times, cruel criticism, he sought to bring
others, he exacted of himself. In spite of the amount of work he
produced, each sentence that dropped from his pen in this time of his
maturity--his ripeness--was the perfection of clear and polished
English.

But the evidences of this conscientiousness in his own work did not make
the little authors one whit less sore under his lash. Privately they
writhed and they squirmed--publicly they denounced. All save one--an
ex-preacher, Dr. Rufus Griswold--himself a critic of ability, who would
like to have been, like The Dreamer, a poet as well as a critic.

When Edgar Poe praised the prose writings of Dr. Griswold, but said he
was "no poet," Dr. Griswold like the other little authors writhed and
squirmed secretly--very secretly--but openly he smiled and in smooth,
easy words professed friendship for Mr. Poe--and bided his time.

As for Poe himself, he had by close and devoted study of the rules which
govern poetic and prose composition--rules which he evolved for himself
by analysis of the work of the masters--so added to his own natural
gifts of imagination and power of expression, so perfected his taste,
that crude writing was disgusting to his litera