He was a monomaniac on plagiarism, forever raising the cry of ‘Stop thief.’ Yet Poe, like Molière, whom he resembled in no other particular, ‘took his own’ whenever it pleased him to do so, and he was not over solicitous to advertise his sources. He was in the right. If poets advertised their sources, what would be left for the commentators to do? Poe hinted that Hawthorne appropriated his ideas, and he flatly accused Longfellow of so doing. He was punished grotesquely, for Chivers, the author of _Eonchs of Ruby_, accused Poe (after the latter’s death, when it was quite safe to do so) of getting many of his best ideas from Chivers. VI THE POET Poe’s claim to mastership in verse rests on a handful of lyrics distinguished for exquisite melody and a haunting beauty of phrase. That part of the public which estimates a poet by such pieces as find their way into anthologies regards Poe primarily as the author of ‘The Bells’ and ‘The Raven.’ If popularity were the final test of merit, these strikingly original performances would indeed crown his work. After sixty years, neither has lost in appreciable degree the magical charm it exerted when first the weird melody fell upon the ear. Each is hackneyed beyond description; each has been parodied unmercifully, murdered by raw elocutionists, and worse than murdered by generations of school-children droning from their readers, about the ‘midnight dreary’ and the ‘Runic rhyme.’ But it is yet possible to restore in a measure the feeling of astonished delight with which lovers of poetry greeted the advent of these studies in the musical power of words. The practical and earnest soul will find little to comfort him in the poetry of Poe. It teaches nothing, emphasizes no moral, never inspires to action. The strange unearthly melodies must be enjoyed for the reason that they are strange and unearthly and melodious. The genius of the poet has travelled By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named Night, On a black throne reigns upright, and we can well believe that it comes From an ultimate dim Thule,-- From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of Space--out of Time. Wholly out of space and time was he who wrote ‘Dreamland,’ ‘The City in the Sea,’ ‘The Haunted Palace,’ ‘Israfel,’ ‘The Sleeper,’ and ‘Ulalume.’ It is idle to ask of these poems something they do not pretend to give, and it can hardly be other than uncritical to describe them as ‘very superficial.’ They are strange exotic flowers blooming under conditions the most adverse, a fresh proof that genius is independent of place and time. * * * * *