Coupled with this, to him, uncomfortable sensitiveness to verbal sounds, was his almost superhuman power of dissecting thought—extremely uncomfortable to others, even to the best of writers. Thus gifted with a mental touch equally for the substance of language and the substance of thought which language struggles to give birth to; possessed of the power of an eager and a nipping sarcasm and an infernal courage, fortified with extensive reading and a retentive memory, Poe became a scourge to mediocrity, imitation, sham and pretense. There could not have been a more critical time for such a man to attempt a livelihood at letters; there could not have been a man better fitted to work havoc among the essayists and poetasters of the day, to compel literary reform and to bring misfortunes on himself. “He elected himself chief justice of the court of criticism and head hangman of dunces,” says Stoddard. “He hated a bad book as a misdemeanor.” Burton, proprietor of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, remonstrated with Poe against the severity of some of his book reviews. “You say,” said he to Poe, “that the people love havoc; I think they love justice.” One adds, “Poe thought literary justice meant havoc with such mediocrity as then flourished.” To the cause of pure literature he thus devoted his life with example, with precept and with destructive force. He was the Wendell Phillips of American literature. He did a work that was necessary to be done in behalf of American literature. He pulled down upon his own head and theirs, the sham temple which the little scribbling Philistines had erected. So it is not to be wondered at that “he contrived to attach to himself animosities of the most enduring kind,” as the _Messenger_ declared. It became Poe against the whole literary world of America in a very short time—for he had unstinted praise for no one. It is doubtless due to the influence of this army of foes that he lost in succession all his editorial situations and was impoverished. There were other enemies as unscrupulous as Griswold. One of these put in successful circulation the theory that Poe, by cruelty, deliberately caused the death of his wife in order to get the inspiration for “The Raven,” and the story may still be met on its rounds, notwithstanding the fact that the poem was written two years before she died. (Amiable human nature delights in contemplation of human monsters.) She declared on her death-bed that her life had been shortened by anonymous letters slandering and threatening her husband. Perhaps it was to meet this story that he wrote that curious analysis (“The Philosophy of Composition”) of the mechanical and prosaic methods by which he constructed “The Raven.”