Poe personally, and employed him as a regular contributor to a paper which the writer was editing. Poe's literary reputation rests mainly upon one remarkable poem, "The Raven." Mr. Lowell's portrait of the author of "The Raven" is both concise and true,--"three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge." He was unquestionably a man of genius, but wrong-headed from very childhood. We must worship our literary heroes and heroines from afar: indeed, this will apply with force to all notables; intimacy is pretty sure to disenchant us. "The love or friendship of such people," says De Quincey, "rather contracts itself into the narrow circle of individuals. You, if you are brilliant like themselves, they will hate; you, if you are dull, they will despise. Gaze, therefore, on the splendor of such idols as a passing stranger. Look for a moment as one sharing in the idolatry, but pass on before the splendor has been sullied by human frailty." Admiration is the offspring of ignorance; even where familiarity does not breed contempt, it blunts the keenness of our homage, since to those that know them best, authors quickly come down from their pedestals and become only men and women. One of Byron's biographers lays it down as a rule to avoid writers whose works amuse you; for when you see them they will delight you no more, though Shelley, he admits, was an exception. Mr. Emerson thought the conditions of literary success almost destructive of the best social powers. We are told by Lockhart that Scott could not endure, in London or Edinburgh, the little exclusive circles of literary society; he craved the company of men of business and affairs. "It is much better to read authors than to know them," says Horace Walpole. Speaking of young Mr. Burke, he says (in 1761), that although a remarkably sensible man, "he has not worn off his authorship yet, and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to be one. He will know better one of these days." Even Byron hated authors who were all author,--"fellows in foolscap uniform turned up with ink." Miss Mitford, in the ripeness of her experience, wrote that authors "as a general rule are the most disappointing people in the world;" much preferring persons who loved letters to those who followed the profession of authorship. Sir Egerton Brydges, the prolific writer of sonnets, novels, essays, letters, etc., says: "I have observed that vulgar readers almost always lose their veneration for the writings of the genius with whom they have had personal intercourse." We have spoken several times of the remuneration realized by authors for their literary productions, and perhaps a few more words upon this subject may be of interest to the general reader.