_Edgar Allan Poe._--Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1869), like the three authors just mentioned, was a poet, yet to his own time he was perhaps even better known as a short story writer and essayist. Opinions about the value of his literary work have been as various as those respecting his character; but it is safe to claim for him no mean place among writers of criticism. In this department of literature he undertook to bring about a reform among American authors who had passed from timid deference to English opinion into the stage of noisy and indiscriminate praise of every piece of writing produced in this country. From a study of Coleridge, Poe had come to the conclusion that poetry was a matter of “intellectual happiness”; its soul was the imagination. A person of metaphysical acumen, therefore, by noting how poetic moods are excited, could produce a finer poem than one who, lacking the analytical faculty, could only feel the emotions he desired to arouse in his readers. Poe laid great stress, too, on perfection of form as of the utmost importance in producing an effect; truth was a secondary matter, except in detail, and as a means of securing assent to a conclusion which might be essentially untruthful. The object of poetry, he thought, is to arouse a subtle, indefinite pleasure; this was imparted by music; hence the necessity of melody, of the refrain. As a critic, Poe was often savage in the extreme; but it must be remembered, as we look back upon him, that the urbanity of the modern book reviewer was then a thing unknown. Poe’s literary judgments have in the main been justified, although some of his unsparing attacks in “The Literati of New York” arouse resentment even at this late day, while his equally unrestrained laudation of certain of his now wholly forgotten contemporaries leads one near to contemptuous amusement. Poe’s most important contribution to the theory of writing are two essays usually reprinted with his poems; of these “The Philosophy of Composition” first appeared in _Graham’s Magazine_ for April, 1846, and “The Poetic Principle,” originally a lecture, was printed in _Sartain’s Magazine_ for October, 1850. Perhaps an essay “On Critics and Criticism” ought also to be mentioned; it was first published in _Graham’s Magazine_ for January, 1850.