With ordinary steadiness and application, a brilliant future awaited him, but his craving for drink proved fatal, although he struggled against it so far as to take the pledge of total abstinence. He started to visit New York, on business, and reached Baltimore on October 3, 1849, where it is supposed that he took some drugged whiskey, as he was found helpless in the streets. He was conveyed to the Washington University Hospital, where he died on the 7th of October, 1849. Of his Poems, those which are the best known, and the most generally admired, are amongst the latest he produced. Thus, “The Raven,” which obtained a great and immediate success, was not published until early in 1845; “Eulalie,” in August, 1845; “Ulalume,” most musical, most melancholy of poems, appropriately appeared soon after his wife’s death. “To my Mother” was addressed to his mother-in-law, and best friend, Mrs. Clemm, in 1849; “Eldorado” and “For Annie” came out in the same year; whilst the two very celebrated poems, “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells” were not published until after their author’s death. All his poems have a melancholy tinge, and, unlike most modern American authors, Poe seems almost destitute of humour. “The Raven” is at once the most characteristic and the most popular of his poems; it is also that which is most frequently selected for parody, or imitation. Many authors have also adopted the metre for serious poems, such as “The Gazelle” and “The Dove.” Poe wrote an ingenious and amusing account of the origin and growth of “The Raven.” The article is much too long, and too discursive, to give in full; but the following extracts contain its most important passages:―― THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. * * * * * Holding in view these considerations, as well as that degree of excitement which I deemed not above the popular, while not below the critical taste, I reached at once what I conceived the proper _length_ for my intended poem――a length of about one hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight. My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work _universally_ appreciable. I should be carried too far out of my immediate topic were I to demonstrate a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, and which, with the poetical, stands not in the slightest need of demonstration――the point, I mean that Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the Poem.