"I have been delaying to write to you from day to day in the expectation that I should have received an article from Hawthorne to send with my letter. I am now domiciled in the country & have been doing nothing but ramble about, gardening, farming, tending an increasing flock of poultry & in short, being out of doors & in active exercise as much as possible in order to restore my eyes effectually. "I have got the idea of Hawthorne's article so fixed in my mind that I forgot that I did not send you a poem in my last. I have such a reluctance to go into the city that though I have been here nearly three weeks I have not even brought out my Mss. yet. But I mean to do it in a day or two & shall then send you something which I hope will be to your liking. You must forgive my dilatoriness, My dear friend, the natural strength of which is increased by the pressure of my debts-a source of constantly annoying thought which prevents my doing almost anything as yet. "With regard to a sketch of my own life my friend [Robert] Carter thinks that he can give it better than I-and perhaps he will send you one. Meanwhile I give a few dates. I was born Feby 22 1819 in this house at Cambridge-entered Harvard College in 1834 & took my degree as Bachelor of Arts in regular course in 1838-my master's degree in 1841. While in college I was one of the editors elected to edit the periodical [Harvardiana] then published by the undergraduates, & also to deliver the Class poem-a yearly performance which requires a poet every year who is created as easily by the class vote as a baronet or peer of the realm is in England. I was in the Law School under Judge Story for two years & upwards took a degree of Bachelor of Laws by force of having my name on the books as a student-& published a volume of rather crude productions (in which there is more of everybody else than of myself) in Jany, 1841. On the Mother's side I am of Scotch descent. "I forgot to thank you for the biographical sketch of your own eventful life which you sent me. Your early poems display a maturity which astonished me & I recollect no individual (& I believe I have all the poetry that was ever written) whose early poems were anything like as good. Shelley is nearest, perhaps. "I have greater hopes of your 'Stylus' than I had of my own magazine, for I think you understand editing vastly better than I shall for many years yet& you have more of that quality—which is the Siamese twin brother of geniusindustry-than I. "I shall write again shortly mean while "I am your affectionate & obliged "friend J. R. L.” LOWELL TO POE [No date. Postmark, BOSTON, May 16.] "MY DEAR FRIEND, "I send you this little poem with some fears that you will be disappointed therein. But it is on the whole the most likely to please of any that I could lay my hands on-my Mss. being trusted to fortune like the Sybils leaves, & perhaps, like her's, rising in value to my mind as they decrease in number. You must tell me frankly how you like what I sent & what you should like better. Will you give me your address more particularly so that in case I have a package to send you I can forward it by express? "With all truth & love "I remain your friend The following letter is from Robert Carter, then Lowell's intimate associate, and belongs in this place : CARTER TO POE "MY DEAR SIR, 66 "CAMBRIDGE, MASS. "June 19, 1843. "I send you with this letter a copy of the Boston Notion, April 29, containing an abridgement which I made of the sketch of your life and writings which appeared in the Phila. Sat. Museum. I was absent from the city when it was printed and did not see the proof; consequently it is full of atrocious errors. What has become of the Stylus? I trust that it has not been found prudent to relinquish the enterprise though I fear that such is the case. It would give the friends of pure and elevated literature in this region great pleasure to learn that it is only temporarily delayed. "Mr. Lowell is in excellent health and his eyes have nearly recovered their usual strength. He has entirely abandoned his profession and is living at his father's house in the vicinity of this village. About a fortnight since he began to scribble vigorously and has within that period written about a thousand lines. You will see in the next Democratic Review, or at least in the August no., his longest and [piece of top cut off] blank verse and is entitled Prometheus. It contains nearly four hundred lines I think, and was written in seven or eight hours. At least, I left him one day at 11 A. M. and he had concluded to begin it immediately and when I saw him again at about 8 P. M. the same day he read to me upwards of two hundred and fifty lines and he had written besides before he began some stanzas of a long poem in ottava rima which has occupied him chiefly for the last two weeks. Graham has also a poem from him and there will be one in the next New Mirror. "Within a week I have read for the first time, Pym's Narrative. I lent it to a friend who lives in the house with me, and who is a lawyer, a graduate of Harvard, and a brother of Dr. O. W. Holmes, yet is so completely deceived by the minute accuracy of some of the details, the remarks about the statements of the press, the names of people at New Bedford &c. that, though an intelligent and shrewd man he will not be persuaded that it is a fictitious work, by any arguments drawn from the book itself, though [piece of top cut off] the latter part of the narrative. I dislike to tell him that I know it to be fictitious, for to test its truthfulness I gave it to him without remark and he has so committed himself by grave criticisms on its details that I dread to undeceive him. He has crossed the Atlantic twice and commented on an inaccuracy in the description of Pym's midnight voyage with his drunken friend. I have not the book in the house and knowing nothing of the sea, did not clearly comprehend the objection, but I think it was upon setting a 'jib' or some such thing upon a dismasted sloop-I know that the words 'jib'-'sloop' & 'only one mast' occurred in his remarks. "To return to a safer subject-I am extremely desirous of knowing the name of your novel in two volumes alluded to in the Museum' [this alleged novel was never named by Poe] and if it be not a secret, or one that can be confided to a stranger would be obliged by its communication. And while I am in an inquisitive mood, let me beg of you to tell me whether the name of the author of Stanley is Walter or W'm Landor and whether he has recently or will soon publish anything. Also who is the author of 'Zoe' and the Aristocrat?' My address is still 'Boston, care of Rev. Dr. Lowell.' 66 article on a subject in which I have no manner of interest. As I had nothing to say, it took me a great while to say it. I made an expedition to Boston to learn what I could about our lectures there, & found that the lectures for the season are now over. I mean the Society lectures. There are different gentlemen employed dilligently in lecturing upon physical sciences' & 'the lungs' &c &c. admission ninepence, children halfprice, but all the lectures of a more literary class are over. I spoke to the secretary of the Boston Lyceum about the probability of your success if you came experimentally, & he shook his head. It is not a matter in which I feel myself competent to judge-my bump of hope being quite too large. I asked him about engaging you for next year & he seemed very much pleased with the plan & said that the Society would be glad to do it. This course of lectures has (I think) the highest rank here. "To speak for myself I should be delighted both to see & hear you. I like your subject too. "The Boston people want a little independent criticism vastly. I know that we should not agree exactly, but we should at least sympathize. You occasionally state a critical proposition from which I dissent, but I am always satisfied. I care not a straw what a man says, if I see that he has his grounds for it, & knows thoroughly what he is talking about. You might cut me up as much as you pleased & I should read what you said with respect, & with a great deal more of satisfaction, than most of the praise I get, affords me. It is these halfpenny critics'— these men who appeal to our democratic sympathies by exhibiting as their only credentials the fact that they are 'practical printers' & what not, that are ruining our literature-men who never doubt that they have a full right to pronounce upon the music of Apollo's lute, because they can criticise fitly the filing of a handsaw, & who, making a point of blundering, will commend Hercules (if they commend at all) for his skill at Omphale's distaff. "It will please you to hear that my volume will soon reach a third edition. The editions are of five hundred each, but run over,' as printers say, a little so that I suppose about eleven hundred have been sold. I shall write to you again soon, giving you a sketch of my life. Outwardly it has been simple enough, but inwardly every man's life must be more or less of a curiosity. Goethe made a good distinction when he divided his own autobiography into poetry & fact. "When will Graham give us your portrait? I hope you will have it done well when it is done, & quickly too. Writing to him a short time ago I congratulated him upon having engaged you as editor again. I recognized your hand in some of the editorial matter (critical) & missed it in the rest. But I thought it would do no harm to assume the fact, as it would at least give him a hint. He tells me I am mistaken & I am sorry for it. Why could not you write an article now and then for the North American Review? I know the editor a little, & should like to get you introduced there. I think he would be glad to get an arti cle. On the modern French School of novels for example. How should you like it? The Review does not pay a great deal ($2 a page, I believe) but the pages do not eat up copy very fast. "I am sorry I did not know of your plan to lecture in Boston earlier. I might have done something about it. The Lyceum pays from fifty to a hundred dollars, as their purse is full or empty. I will put matters in train for next year, however "Affectionately your friend. "P. S. You must not make any autobiographical deductions from my handwriting, as my hand is numb with cold. Winter has come back upon us.” A letter, in which Lowell offered to write a sketch of Poe for Graham's, is here missing. LOWELL TO POE "ELMWOOD June 27. 1844. "MY DEAR FRIEND, "I have been stealing a kind of vacation from the pen during the last month, were concerned-though at the same time I think him as ignorant in political matters as a man can well be-in short ignorant to the full to be a Reviewer-But you are mistaken as to the authorship of it. It was not (I am quite sure) written by Dickens, but by a friend of his named Forster (or Foster) — the author of a book named 'Statesmen of the time of Cromwell.' Dickens may have given him hints. "I shall send you my sketch of course before it is printed, so that you can make any suggestions you like or suppress it altogether. I wish it to please you rather than the public. "Affectionately your friend LOWELL TO POE "J. R. L." "ELMWOOD Dec 12. 1844 "MY DEAR FRIEND, & I hope that my lying fallow for a time will increase my future crops, though I cannot bring myself to use the farmer's phrase & wish them to be heavier.' Now I ought by this time to have finished the article to accompany your head in Graham, but I have been unable to write anything. I have fits of this kind too often owing to a Constitutional indolence which was not counteracted by proper training in my childhood. You may be sure I am not one of those who follow a fashion which is hardly yet extinct, & call upon the good, easy world to accept my faults in proof of my genius. I can only mention it to ask forgiveness for my dilatoriness which springs from no want of interest but from sheer indolence-a fault-which your acquaintance with Life & Biography must have convinced you is one of the most incurable. However, I am resolved to set about it now in good earnest & I have one or two preliminary requests to make. I wish you would (if you can) write me a letter giving me in some sort a spiritual autobiography of yourself. The newspaper [The Saturday Museum containing Hirst's life of Poe] you sent me will give me enough outward facts but I want your own estimate of your life. Of course you need not write it as if for my use merely in the writing of this article-but as to a friend. I believe that the opinion a man has of himself (if he be accustomed "My object in writing this is to inself analysis) is of more worth than troduce you to my friend Charles F. that of all the rest of the world. If Briggs, who is about to start a literary you have a copy of your first volume weekly paper [The Broadway Journal] (of poems) will you send it to me by in New York & desires your aid. Harnden, directing it to be kept till was here a month or two since, & I called for & writing me a line by mail took the liberty of reading to him what to warn me of its being on the way. I I had written about you & to day I will return it to you by the same con- received a letter from him announcing veyance-as it must be valuable to you his plan & asking your address. Not & as you have not probably more than knowing it, & not having time to write one copy. I never saw it, nor can I him I thought that the shortest way get it. If you would send at the same would be to introduce you to him. He time any other of your writings which will pay & I thought from something I could not readily get you will oblige you said in your last letter that pay me very much & they shall be safely re- would be useful to you. I also took turned to you. the liberty of praising you to a Mr. Colton, who has written Tecumseh' to "I agree with you that the article on Griswold's book in the Foreign Quarterly Review was fair enough as far as the Conclusions the author came to "You will forgive me for not writing sooner & for writing so little now, when I tell you that I have been for some time keeping a printing office agoing at the rate of from eight to twenty pages a day. I am printing a volume of prose (in conversation form) about poets and everything else, [" Conversations on Some of the Old Poets"] & not having prepared my copy, am obliged to write & print at once. You will like some parts of the book and dislike others. He ing a magazine & I think I convinced him that it would be for his interest to engage you permanently. But I know nothing whatever of his ability to pay. "I am not to be married till I have "Yr. affectionate friend "P. S. You must excuse me if I have blundered in recommending you to Colton. I know nothing of your circumstances save what I gleaned from your last letter, &, of course, said nothing to him which I might not say as an entire stranger to you. It is never safe to let an editor (as editors go) know that an author wants his pay. "I was in hopes that I should have been able to revise my sketch of you before it appeared. It was written under adverse circumstances & was incomplete. If you do not like this method of getting acquainted, send Briggs your address. His is No 1 Nassau St. I never wrote an introductory letter before & do not own a complete letter writer-so you must excuse any greenness about it." 66 The acquaintance which the foregoing letters illustrate was not destined to good fortune. There had been mutual good-will and respect, with kindly offices, on both sides. The connection of Poe with Briggs in the editorial conduct of The Broadway Journal was the occasion of an exchange of views and facts between Briggs and Lowell which left Poe's reputation very much impaired in Lowell's judgment." Poe's admiration for the author of Rosaline,'" on the other hand, did not survive the lines in "The Fable for Critics," in which his own portrait was not inaptly drawn; after Briggs ceased to be his co-editor Poe attacked Lowell as a plagiarist, and the latter expressed his resentment at length in a passage to be found in his published 'Letters. Lowell, too, had lately met Poe just recovering from a spree, and the impression then received was sufficient of itself to terminate their relations. A short time after, in October, 1845, occurred the public scandal of Poe's visit to Boston to read a poem before the Boston Lyceum, which confirmed him in his lifelong dislike of the Bostonians. Later, in an unpublished letter to Mr. F. W. Thomas, early in 1849, Poe denounced Lowell with some contempt, and made a public disclosure of his changed attitude by an unfavorable review of "The Fable for Critics," in the Southern Literary Messenger, in February of that year. AN UNDISCOVERED MURDER ALF-WAY down the long Rue Nord du Sablon, in Bruges, the glory of Flanders, may be seen a decorated housefront, one among many for which the mediaval city is still famous. Its stone carvings, emblematic of the chase, are scarcely distinctive enough for more than a passing look; and as the ground-floor of the house, which never could have been an imposing one, was long since made over into shops, the surfeited traveller, whose objective point is the Grande Place, may pass and repass without noticing the decorations at all. Were the central door, by some chance, to stand open, he might catch a glimpse of an overgrown garden at the end of the long, dull archway; but there are other gardens in Bruges, and that of the Hôtel de Flandre, a few doors off, is larger and finer than this; furthermore, its |