"Nathaniel Parker Willis." By Henry A.Beers. "Edgar Allan Poe." By George E. Woodbury. (American Men of Letters Series.) Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The American Men of Letters Series is giving us some excellent biographies, well written, the facts well assimilated and grouped, and the whole treatment so accurate and graphic as to be full not only of instruction but of entertainment. Formerly American biography was so deficient in just those qualities which endear English biographical literature to us, that we were inclined to believe that the fault was inherent in Americans and American life, that our days and works lacked picturesqueness and color and left no salient points for the chronicler to seize. We now see that the meagre harvests of former biographers were due to their hasty and superficial generalizations. For at least three of the volumes in this series--the life of James Fenimore Cooper and the two now before us--may be favorably compared with the best work in the English Men of Letters Series, which is indeed high praise. Unusual and striking as were the incidents in the life of Cooper, they had completely dropped out of sight of the present generation. The biographers of Willis and Poe had no such advantage. Willis is still remembered, not only as a _litt?teur_ and journalist, but as a man about town, while legend has never ceased to be busy with the memory of Poe, so that the traditions of his strange career are curiously linked to and incorporated with his best-known works.