nd social advantages, and bound him
down to a life of unceasing toil, penury and helplessness. It deprived
him of a social position and social enjoyment; for his poverty-stricken
"home" was never one to which he could invite his friends; and he
himself seems never to have found in it any real pleasure, but to have
regarded it merely as a haven of refuge in seasons of distress. But as
the years went by and, despite his incessant toil, his life and his home
grew more cheerless and poverty-stricken, he became hopeless and in a
measure reckless. It is to be noted that it was only after the death of
his wife that he appeared to recover anything like hope or energy. Then
his prospects suddenly brightened in the love of a good and talented
woman who could have made his life happy and prosperous, when, owing to
his miserable weakness of will in yielding to temptation, for which
there was no excuse, it was all at once swept from his grasp.

Mr. John Mackenzie might well have said, as he did, that Poe's marriage
was the greatest misfortune of his life and as a millstone around his
neck, holding him down against every effort to rise. But perhaps not
even this close friend knew how keenly the poet must have felt the
narrowness of his life, the sordidness of his home, and the humiliation
of his poverty. Patiently and uncomplainingly he bore his unhappy lot;
and it is to be noted to his credit that howsoever he might at times go
astray, no word or act of unkindness toward the wife and mother who
loved him was ever known to escape from him.

It will be seen from all that has here been written, in the light of
prosaic truth, that Poe's real character was one very different from
that which it has pleased the world in general to ascribe to
him--judging him as it does by the character of his writings as a poet.
The folly of such judgment, and the extent to which it was until
recently carried, is simply surprising. It is true that he appeared to
have but one ideal--the death of a woman young, lovely and beloved--and
that ideal in the imagining of the world resolved itself into the
personality of his wife. She, they concluded, was the original of all
the Lenores, and Anabel Lees, and Ullalumes, which inspired his
melancholy and despairing lyre; and in its gloom and hopelessness they
could see nothing but the expression of the poet's own nature. As well
have accused Rembrandt of being gloomy and morose because he painted in
dark colors. Lik