It was in The Messenger that he first published the studies Berenice and Morella, reveries belonging to the Ligeia group, and connected in theme with The MS. found in a Bottle, and the splendid Fall of the House of Usher. He did literary criticisms for this paper and eventually became assistant editor. At twenty-six he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, a girl of fourteen. He made some reputation in Richmond, but he left the place in 1837, sanguine of a New York success. The New York Review, however, did little for him, and Poe and his wife had to move on to Philadelphia. There he published various tales, including Ligeia, William Wilson, and The Fall of the House of Usher. In 1839, Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque, Poe's first collection, were given to the public, and then for a while he occupied himself with analytical subjects, writing a great deal about crypto grams, and exercising bis extraordinary analytical talent in solving those sent to the paper. His power of analysis enabled him to invent something new in the narrative form, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, contributed to Graham's Magazine in April 1841. This remarkable story was followed by A Descent into the Maelstrom. By this time he had won a place for himself in Philadelphia; he was the editor of Graham's Magazine, and he was known as the author of some tales that had made a stir in London and Paris.

But in 1842 he left Philadelphia under the influence of a tragedy more pitiful and terrible than any tragedy in literary history. His wife had burst a blood vessel while singing. Poe took leave of her for ever. He underwent all the agonies of her death, but she recovered and he was delivered to the torture of hope. The vessel broke again, and again, and even once again! He drank to escape from the terrible suspense. He was a man sensitive and nervous to an abnormal degree, and he loved his wife with a passion that went beyond the grave. " I became insane," he said, " with long intervals of horrible sanity. ... I drank—God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity." He could do no work under those agonising conditions, and he lost the editorship of Graham's Magazine. His wife died in 1847. Poe was only.thirty-eight, but his life was over. He occupied himself with a work which was to explain the uni verse, Eureka. We can say of Eureka that it gave its author

solace, and that it is a medley which Baudelaire has taken seriously. He died on October 8, 1849, and his end must have seemed the height of tragic mockery to the divine spectator of the pessimists. He came into New York city and fell in with a gang of ruffians who were rushing some election business. They seized the unfortunate man, plied him with drink, put papers into his hand and dragged him round the booths. His friends found him dying in some sordid place. It remains to be said that his Literary executor disapproved of Poe's tempera ment and Poe's methods. And he treated the poet with a rigour that reads like malignity.

II

There is a distinction seldom made in criticism between the short story and the tale.