some, indeed, it was considered handsome. It was strong, but it was
strange. There was an indefinable something unpleasant, something to
awaken distrust--fear--about it. Across the dome of the brow ran,
horizontally, a series of wavy furrows that produced, in place of the
benevolent air the lofty brow might have given, a sinister expression.
The eyes beneath the wrinkled brow were piercing and spoke of the fire
of active mentality, but they were always downcast and turned slightly
askance, so that few people caught the full force of their gleam, and
there was sternness and coldness, as well as will, in the prominent chin
and jaw.

He came late, but he was a little more cordial in his expressions of
pleasure in coming than any of those before him. His bows to Virginia
and Mrs. Clemm were more profound--his estimation of Virginia's beauty
he made at once apparent in the intense, admiring gaze he bestowed upon
her. His words of congratulation and good will for his host were more
extravagant than those of any of the others and were uttered in a voice
as smooth--as fluent--as oil; while he rubbed his large, fleshy hands
together in a manner betokening cordiality. When his host spoke, he
turned his ear toward him (though his eyes glanced aside and downward)
with an air of marked attention, and agreed emphatically with his views
or laughed uproariously at his pleasantries.

Yet at Rufus Griswold's heart jealousy was gnawing. Heaven had endowed
him with mind to recognize genius, yet had denied him its possession. He
that would have worn the laurel himself, was born to be but the
trumpeter of others' victories. He, like Edgar Poe, had an open eye and
ear for beauty--for harmony. He could feel the divine fire of
inspiration in the creations of master minds--yet he could not himself
create. He was a brilliant critic, but (as has been said) his ambition
was to be, like Poe, also a poet. His quick intuition had divined the
genius of Poe at their first meeting. He knew in a flash, that the neat,
slender, polished gentleman, with the cameo face, the large brow and the
luminous eyes, and with the deep-toned, vibrant voice, was one of the
few he had ever met of whom he could say with assurance, "There goes a
genius--" and of those few the topmost. Poe's writing, especially his
poetry, enthralled him. To have been able to come before the world as
the author of such work he would have sold his soul.

And this man who had caught him in