The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-17
Witb r1lakcrs and Covers cf citerdtllrcs1
Edgar Allen Poe an0 His Work

of Poe's 'Utalume' and Raven This has heen made clear recently by the state ments of w. M. Rossetti, the poets brother. D. G. Rosetti is represented as saying in regard to The Raven in partic- ular: I saw that Poe had done the ut- most 1t was possible to do with the grief of the love on earth, and so determined to reverse the conditions and give ut- terance to the yearning of the loved on in Heaven The Raven was first pub lished in the Evening Mirror tNew forh) January 29 1S45 and it Is clearly es- tablished fact that before May F, 1857, tRossetti's 18th birthday, the text of the Blessed Damosel.' substantially. as print ed in The Germ, was in existence.
 Professor Richardson declares 1t se- rious mistake, grown current by itera- tion, that Poe has always been unap- preciated in his own country" nor has he received universal commendation abroad, since many foreigners formed their impressions from reading .Gris- wold,' and some, like The Edinburgh Re- view, of April, 1858. eLdeavored to out Herod Herod. Those who found Keats absurd" and ''tiresome," would natur- ally agree with Henry James as to what he called Poe's very valueless verse.
 On his fathers side Poe was of the best and oldest Southern stock. and always considered himself Southerner. but his genius Is not a creature of boundaries; nor can any real Samson of intellect be bound to locality by the withes and cords of the Philistines; his subjects were world subjects-yea, more; they were, as he says, Out of space. out ssof time in large measure.
 Thomas Dunn English, in his last years.
 an... A1 Aor of Poe by a series of articles in The Inde- pendent written fifty years after the death of the y"unhappy Master" but even the temporary notoriety of Eng fish, given by the use of the song, Alice, Ben Boit,' in ''Trilby,". did not give new life to old misrepresentation. for, be 1t known, Poe in. his lifetime was given Judgment against English in suit for islander. Within few years some of the leading magazines, together with Litera- ture, The Dial, and department writers in many newspapers, have shown discrimin- ating appreciation of Poe. both as to per sonality and as a literary force. On all hands, it Is now conceded that he was rot man of all. or even of very many, of the faults once ascribed to him. Years may. intervene before the final word may Abe said, but Richardson gives a fairer view than Stoddard. Lowell, or even, Woodberry, who shows con- stant tendency to revamp many of Gris- worlds malicious statements. though agreeing in some sort to the untrust- worthiness of his narrative. This Is Richardson's summary: Tt is not nee essary to retail the tale of his short life, or to rake the embers of hateful fires of controversy The son of strolling players. an adopted orphan. a spoiled child, wayward but brilliant student, a literary hack in all his career of twenty two years-often years of bitter poverty he "hitched his wagon to a star" as truly as did the favored Emerson in his sheltered nook. His life was as chaste as his writings: he was the center of a little home in which he was the idol of his young wife and her mother, toward both of whom his relations were ideal; his intense ambition did not of itself color his view of the world. though the tone of increa sing regret for things past re- echoes through much of his verse. For the rest he was not addicted to the use of opium; he yielded too often. and fa- tally at last. to alcoholic excess; and his naughty aloofness of mind sometimes degenerated into selfish ingratitude None of these things. however, affected the character of his work; and none, in a sense is the readers business Tn litera- ture it may be said that Poe was widely known in his own day even when flaw thorne called himself 'the obscurest