He professed to believe that Mrs. Browning was a poet greatly superior to her husband. Nevertheless he had read Robert Browning with some attention, for on one or two occasions he burlesqued successfully that poet’s mannerisms. For some reason he manifested a marked antipathy to Poe. And in this connection it may be of interest to mention that he was born (October 7, 1849) the day Poe died! But for Riley’s cordial dislike of Poe I might be tempted to speculate upon this coincidence as suggesting a relinquishment of the singing robes by one poet in favor of another. Riley had, undoubtedly, at some time felt Poe’s spell, for there are unmistakable traces of Poe’s influence in some of his earlier work. Indeed, his first wide advertisement came through an imitation of Poe--a poem called “Leonanie”--palmed off as having been found written in an old schoolbook that had been Poe’s property. Riley long resented any reference to this hoax, though it was a harmless enough prank--the device of a newspaper friend to prove that public neglect of Riley was not based upon any lack of merit in his writings. It was probably Poe’s sombreness that Riley did not like, or possibly his personal characteristics. Still, he would close any discussion of Poe’s merits as a writer by declaring that “The Raven” was clearly inspired by Mrs. Browning’s “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” This is hardly susceptible of proof, and Elizabeth Barrett’s gracious acceptance of the compliment of Poe’s dedication of his volume containing “The Raven” may or may not be conclusive as to her own judgment in the matter. Whitman had no attraction for Riley; he thought him something of a charlatan. He greatly admired Stevenson and kept near at hand a rare photograph of the Scot which Mrs. Stevenson had given him. He had recognized Kipling’s genius early, and his meeting with that writer in New York many years ago was one of the pleasantest and most satisfactory of all his literary encounters. The contentions between Realism and Romanticism that occasionally enliven our periodical literature never roused his interest; his sympathies were with the conservatives and he preferred gardens that contained familiar and firmly planted literary landmarks. He knew his Dickens thoroughly, and his lifelong attention to “character” was due no doubt in some measure to his study of Dickens’s portraits of the quaint and humorous. He always confessed gratefully his indebtedness to Longfellow, and once, when we were speaking of the older poet, he remarked that Mark Twain and Bret Harte were other writers to whom he owed much. Harte’s obligations to both Dickens and Longfellow are, of course, obvious and Harte’s use of dialect in verse probably strengthened Riley’s confidence in the Hoosier speech as a medium when he began to find himself.