but it's a damnable
concoction all the same. Kennedy has about given him up--told me so
yesterday, and when Kennedy gives a fellow up that's the last of him."

"Then I'm ashamed of Kennedy," retorted Horn. "Any man who can write as
Poe does should be forgiven, no matter what he does--if he be honest.
There's nothing so rare as genius in this world, and even if his flame
does burn from a vile-smelling wick it's a flame, remember!--and one
that will yet light the ages. If I know anything of the literature
of our time Poe will live when these rhymers like Mr. Martin Farquhar
Tupper, whom everybody is talking about, will be forgotten. Poe's
possessed of a devil, I tell you, who gets the better of him once in a
while--it did the night of St. George's dinner."

"Very charitable in you, Richard," exclaimed Pancoast, another
dissenter--"and perhaps it will be just as well for his family, if he
has any, to accept your view--but, devil or no devil, you must confess,
Horn, that it was pretty hard on St. George. If the man has any sense of
refinement--and he must have from the way he writes--the best way out of
it is for him to own up like a man and say that Guy's barkeeper filled
him too full of raw whiskey, and that he didn't come to until it was too
late--that he was very sorry, and wouldn't do it again. That's what I
would have done, and that's what you, Richard, or any other gentleman,
would have done."

Others, who got their information second hand, followed the example of
St. George's guests censuring or excusing the poet in accordance with
their previous likes or dislikes. The "what-did-I-tell-yous"--Bowdoin
among them--and there were several--broke into roars of laughter when
they learned what had happened in the Temple mansion. So did those who
had not been invited, and who still felt some resentment at St. George's
oversight.

Another group; and these were also to be found at the club--thought only
of St. George--old Murdock, voicing their opinions when he said: "Temple
laid himself out, so I hear, on that dinner, and some of us know what
that means. And a dinner like that, remember, counts with St. George. In
the future it will be just as well to draw the line at poets as well as
actors."

The Lord of Moorlands had no patience with any of their views. Whether
Poe was a drunkard or not did not concern him in the least. What did
trouble him was the fact that St. George's cursed independence had made
him so far forge