considering all things, as good a cheap literary paper as was ever published. All his efforts, however, were insufficient to keep it alive, so, on the 3d of January, 1846, the poor poet was obliged to resign his favourite hobby of a paper of his own. It may be pointed out that whilst in possession of his journal he availed himself of the opportunity of displaying his almost Quixotic feelings of gratitude-those feelings denied him by the ruthless Griswold-towards all who had befriended him, and not only to the living, whose aid might continue, but towards those who had already entered into the "hollow vale." His generous tributes to departed worth are proofs of his nobility of heart, of greater weight than any disproof the malignity of Griswold would invent.

Besides the work on his own paper, Poe had somehow contrived to contribute a few tales and sketches to some of the magazines, and, among others, to Mr. Godey's Lady's Book. In the May number of this publication he commenced a series of critiques, entitled the "Literati of New York," "in which he professed," remarks Griswold, with his wonted sueer, "to give some honest opinions at random respecting their authorial merits." These essays were immensely successful, but the caustic style of some of them produced terrible commotion in the ranks of mediocrity, as may be seen from Mr. Godey's notes to the readers respecting the anonymous and other letters he receives concerning them. "We are not to be intimidated," he remarks, "by a threat of the loss of friends, or turned from our purpose by honied words. . . . Many attempts have been made and are being made by various persons to forestall public opinion. We have the name of one person. Others are busy with reports of Mr. Poe's illness. Mr. Poe has been ill, but we have letters from him of very recent dates, also a new batch of the Literali, which shows anything but feebleness either of body or mind. Almost every paper that we exchange with has praised our new enterprise, and

spoken in high terms of Mr. Poe's opinion." Dissatisfied with the manner in which his literary weakness had been reviewed by Poe, a Dunn English or Dunn Brown, for he is duplicately named, instead of waiting, as Griswold did, for the poet's death, when every ass could have its kick at the lion's carcase, "retaliated in a personal newspaper article," remarks Duyckinck, in his invaluable Encyclopedia, and "the communication was reprinted in the Evening Mirror in New York, whereupon Poe instituted a libel suit against that journal, and recovered several hundred dollars" for defamation of character.

If there be any one entertaining the slightest belief in Griswold's veracity, let him now refer to his unfaithful account of this affair in the soi-disant "Memoir," and compare it with the facts of the case. He states that Dunn English "chose to evince his resentment of the critic's unfairness by the publication of a card, in which he painted strongly the infirmities of Poe's life and character." "Poe's article," he continues, "was entirely false in what purported to be the facts. The statement of Dr. English appeared in the New York Mirror of the 23d June, and on the 27th Mr. Poe sent to Mr. Godey, for publication in the Lady's Book, his rejoinder, which Mr. Godey very properly declined to print." This led, asserts Griswold, "to a disgraceful quarrel," and to the "premature conclusion" of the Literati; and that Poe "ceased to write for the Lady's Book in consequence of Mr. Godey's justifiable refusal to print in that miscellany his 'Reply to Dr. English."" Poe's review of "English" appeared in the second or June number of the Literati, and from our knowledge of Griswold's habitual inaccuracy, we were not surprised to find, upon reference to the magazine, that the sketches ran their stipulated course until October, and after that date Poe still continuing a contributor to the Lady's Book; nor were we surprised to find Mr. Godey writing to the Knickerbocker magazine in defence and praise of Poe's "honourable and

blameless conduct;" but what certainly did startle us was, to discover that the whole of the personalities of the supposed critique included in the collection of Poe's works edited by Griswold, were absent from the real critique published in the Lady's Book!

Recoiling from such unsavoury subjects, it is a pleasant change to look upon the charming picture of the cruelly belibelled poet, and his diminutive ménage, as portrayed l Mrs. Osgood. "It was in his own simple yet poetical home," she remarks, "that to me the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child-for his young, gentle, and idolized wife, and for all who came, he had, even in the midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath the romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, he would sit hour after hour, patient, assiduous, and uncomplaining, tracing in an exquisitely clear chirography, and with almost superhuman swiftness, the lightning thoughts, the rare and radiant' fancies as they flashed through his wonderful and everwakeful brain. I recollect one morning towards the close of his residence in this city, when he seemed unusually gay and light-hearted. Virginia, his sweet wife, had written me a pressing invitation to come to them; and I, who could never resist her affectionate summons, and who enjoyed his society far more in his own home than elsewhere, hastened to Amity Street. I found him just completing his series of papers entitled 'The Literati of New York.' 'See,' said he, displaying in laughing triumph several little rolls of narrow paper (he always wrote thus for the press), 'I am going to show you, by the difference of length in these, the different degrees of estimation in which I hold all you literary people. In each of these, one of you is rolled up and fully discussed. Come, Virginia, help me!' And one by one they unfolded them. At last they came to

one which seemed interminable. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of the room with one end, and her husband to the opposite with the other. And whose lengthened sweetness long drawn out is that?' said I. 'Hear her,' he cried, 'just as if her little vain heart didn't tell her it's herself!""

It was in the summer of 1846 that the poet removed his dying wife to the quietude and repose of the cottage at Fordham, Westchester County, near New York. "Here," exclaims Mrs. Whitman, in her exalted essay on "Edgar Poe and his Critics "-the noblest memorial yet raised to the poet's memory-"here he watched her failing breath in loneliness and privation through many solitary moons, until, on a desolate, dreary day of the ensuing winter, he saw her remains borne from beneath its lowly roof." The fullest and most interesting account of Poe's life at Fordham is to be found in the "Reminiscences" of a brother author. Of his first visit to Fordham to see Poe he says

"We found him and his wife and his wife's mother, who was his aunt, living in a little cottage at the top of a hill. There was an acre or two of greensward, fenced in about the house as smooth as velvet, and as clean as the best kept carpet. There was some grand old cherry-trees in the yard that threw a massive shade around them.

"Poe had somehow caught a full-grown bob-o'-link. He had put him in a cage, which he had hung on a nail driven into the trunk of a cherry-tree. The poor bird was as unfit to live in a cage as his captor was to live in the world. He was as restless as his jailer, and sprang continually in a fierce, frightened way from one side of the cage to the other. I pitied him, but Poe was bent on training him. There he stood with his arms crossed before the tormented bird, his sublime trust in attaining the impossible apparent in his whole self. So handsome, so impassive in his wonderful, intellectual beauty, so proud and reserved, and yet so confidentially communicative, so