ance, but attainable only where one mind alone has at least the general control. Experience, to be brief, has shown me that in founding a journal of my own lies my sole chance of carrying out to completion whatever peculiar intentions I may have entertained.

"These intentions are now as heretofore. It shall be the chief purpose of the magazine proposed, to become known as one wherein may be found at all times, on all topics within its legitimate reach, a sincere and a fearless opinion. It shall be a leading object to assert in precept and to maintain in practice the rights, while in effect it demonstrates the advantages, of an absolutely independent criticism—a criticism self-sustained; guiding itself only by intelligible laws of art; analysing these laws as it applies them; holding itself aloof from all personal bias, and acknowledging no fear save that of the right.

"There is no design, however, to make the journal a critical one solely, or even very especially. It will aim at something more than the usual magazine variety, and at affording a fair field for the true talent of the land, without reference to the mere prestige of name, or the advantages of worldly position. But since the efficiency of the work must in great measure depend upon its definitiveness, THE STYLUS will limit itself to Literature Proper, the Fine Arts, and the Drama."

Notwithstanding the large number of his admirers, and the friendly co-operation of Mr. Thomas C. Clarke, who was to have been the publisher, Poe found the minimum number of subscribers necessary to start the magazine very difficult to obtain; he therefore set about his lectures for the purpose of getting "the means of taking the first step."

The first lecture of the series was given in the library of the New York Historical Society; it was upon the cosmogony of the universe, and formed the substance of the

work he afterwards published as "Eureka, a Prose Poem." Mr. M. B. Field, who was present, says "It was a stormy night, and there were not more than sixty persons present in the lecture-room. His lecture was a rhapsody of

the most intense brilliancy. He appeared inspired, and his inspiration affected the scant audience almost painfully. His eyes seemed to glow like those of his own 'Raven,' and he kept us entranced for two hours and a half." Such small audiences, despite the enthusiasm of the lecturer, or the lectured, could not give much material aid towards the poet's purpose. Poor and baffled he had to return to his lonely home at Fordham, to contemplate anew the problems of creation; or to discuss with stray visitors, with an intensity of feeling and steadfastness of belief never surpassed, his unriddling of the secret of the universe.

In the early summer of 1848 we find Poe delivering a lecture at Lowell, on the "Female Poets of America." "In an analysis of the comparative merits of the New England poetesses," says the Hon. James Atkinson, who attended the lecture, "the lecturer awarded to Mrs. Osgood the palm of facility, ingenuity, and grace ;-to Mrs. Whitman, a pre-eminence in refinement of art, enthusiasm, imagination, and genius, properly so called;-to Miss Lynch he ascribed an unequalled success in the concentrated and forcible enunciation of the sentiment of heroism and duty." Mrs. Whitman, undoubtedly the finest female poet New England has produced, had been first seen by Poe, says Griswold, "on his way from Boston, when he visited that city to deliver a poem before the Lyceum there. Restless, near midnight, he wandered from his hotel near where she lived, until he saw her walking in a garden. He related the incident afterwards in one of his most exquisite poems, worthy of himself, of her, and of the most exalted passion."

Meanwhile the beautiful young widow lived on per

fectly unconscious of the fierce flame she had aroused in the poet's heart, until, in the beginning of the summer of 1848, about the time of the above lecture, the first intimation reached her in the shape of the beautiful lines, “To Helen," alluded to by Griswold, commencing "I saw thee once-once only-years ago." There was no signature to the poem, but the lady was acquainted with Edgar Poe's exquisite handwriting, and therefore knew whence it came. About this time the poet went to Richmond, Virginia, and forming the acquaintance of the late Mr. John R. Thompson, the talented editorial proprietor of the Southern Literary Messenger, agreed to become again a contributor to its pages. Mr. Thompson, like all who knew Poe personally, became strongly attached to him, and has left some interesting reminiscences of him. The poet at this period was making many inquiries about Mrs. Whitman, and speaking both publicly and privately in high praise of her poetry, so that at last, even before they met, their names were, as Griswold truthfully states, frequently associated together. One day, says Mr. Thompson, Poe rushed into the office of the Messenger in a state of great excitement, sat down and wrote out a challenge to a Mr. Daniels, editor of the Richmond Examiner, and requested Mr. Thompson to be its bearer to the person challenged! In explanation of his conduct, he handed his friend a paragraph cut from the Examiner, giving an account of Poe's presumed engagement to Mrs. Whitman, and making some comments on the lady's temerity. The enraged poet said he did not care what Daniels might say about him, but that he would not have the lady's name dragged in. Mr. Thompson refused to deliver the challenge, and Poe went personally to see Daniels, and the result was that the offending paragraph was withdrawn. In September of this year, Poe, having obtained a letter of introduction from a lady friend, sought and obtained an interview

with Mrs. Whitman. The result of this and several subsequent interviews, was the betrothal of the two poets, notwithstanding the most strenuous opposition of the lady's family. Much as she revered his genius, the opposition of her relatives to the match appears for a time to have caused the lady to withstand the poet's passionate appeals, but ultimately, as stated, they were engaged. The following paragraphs from a letter written by Poe on the 18th of October of this year, show how intensely he could feel, and how earnestly he could express his feelings as well in private correspondence as in those compositions intended for the public eye :

66

You do not love me, or you would have felt too thorough a sympathy with the sensitiveness of my nature, to have so wounded me as you have done with this terrible passage of your letter-How often I have heard it said of you, 'He has great intellectual power, but no principleno moral sense.

"Is it possible that such expressions as these could have been repeated to me-to me-by one whom I loved—ah, whom I love!

"By the God who reigns in heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonour-that, with the exception of occasional follies and excesses, which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, and which are hourly committed by others without attracting any notice whatever I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek- -or to yours. If I have erred at all, in this regard, it has been on the side of what the world would call a Quixotic sense of the honourable of the chivalrous. The indulgence of this sense has been the true voluptuousness of my life. It was for this species of luxury that in early youth I deliberately threw away from me a large fortune rather than endure a trivial wrong.

"For nearly three years I have been ill, poor, living out of the world; and thus, as I now painfully see, have afforded opportunity to my enemies to slander me in private society without my knowledge, and thus, with impunity. Although much, however, may (and, I now see, must) have been said to my discredit during my retirement, those few who, knowing me well, have been steadfastly my friends, permitted nothing to reach my ears-unless in one instance, of such a character, that I could appeal to a court of justice for redress.* .. I replied to the charge fully in a public newspaper-afterwards suing the Mirror (in which the scandal appeared), obtaining a verdict and receiving such an amount of damages as for the time completely to break up that journal. And you ask me why men so misjudge mewhy I have enemies? If your knowledge of my character and of my career does not afford you an answer to the query, at least it does not become me to suggest the answer. Let it suffice that I have had the audacity to remain poor, that I might preserve my independence-that, nevertheless, in letters, to a certain extent, and in certain regards, I have been 'successful'—that I have been a critic-an unscrupulously honest, and, no doubt, in many cases a bitter onethat I have uniformly attacked-where I attacked at all -those who stood highest in power and influence; and that, whether in literature or society, I have seldom refrained from expressing, either directly or indirectly, the pure contempt with which the pretensions of ignorance, arrogance, or imbecility inspire me. And you who know Forgive me

all this you ask me why I have enemies.

if there be bitterness in my tone."

The man who could write thus, it is impossible not to feel, must have been sincere; must have been incapable of

* The Dunn-English libel. (See ante p. lx.)-Ed.