Turning to the biography of Edgar Allan Poe, we find that this writer receives only a column and a half, less space than is given Austin Dobson, Coventry Patmore, or W. E. Henley! And the biography itself is so inept that it is an affront to American taste and an insult to American intelligence. One is immediately interested in learning what critic the Encyclopædia’s editors chose to represent this American who has long since become a world figure in literature. Turning to the index we discover that one David Hannay is the authority—a gentleman who was formerly the British Vice-Consul at Barcelona. Mr. Hannay (apparently he holds no academic degree of any kind) lays claim to fame chiefly, it seems, as the author of _Short History of the Royal Navy_; but in just what way his research in naval matters qualifies him to write on Poe is not indicated. This is not, however, the only intimation we had that in the minds of the Encyclopædia’s editors there exists some esoteric and recondite relationship between art and British sea-power. In the _Britannica’s_ criticism of J. M. W. Turner’s paintings, that artist’s work is said to be “like the British fleet among the navies of the world.” In the present instance, however, we can only trust that the other articles in this encyclopædia, by Mr. Hannay—to-wit: _Admiral Penn_ and _Pirate and Piracy_—are more competent than his critique on Poe. Walt Whitman gets scarcely better treatment. His biography is no longer than Poe’s and contains little criticism and no suggestion of his true place in American letters. This is all the more astonishing when we recall the high tribute paid Whitman by eminent English critics. Surely the _Britannica’s_ editors are not ignorant of Whitman’s place in modern letters or of the generous manner in which he had been received abroad. Whatever one’s opinion of him, he was a towering figure in our literature—a pioneer who had more influence on our later writers than any other American. And yet his biography in this great British cultural work is shorter than that of Mrs. Humphry Ward! With such obviously inadequate and contemptuous treatment as that accorded Poe and Whitman, it is not surprising that all other American poets should be treated peremptorily or neglected entirely. There are very short biographical notes on Stedman, Louise Chandler Moulton, Sill, Gilder, Eugene Field, Sidney Lanier and Riley—but they are scant records of facts and most insufficient when compared to the biographies of second-rate poets of England.