e the artist, Poe loved obscure and sombre ideas and
conceptions, and he delighted in embodying these in his poems as much as
Rembrandt did in transferring his own to canvas.

APPENDIX.

NO. 1.

Lest the reader should be under the impression that much of what I
relate concerning Poe's childhood and certain circumstances connected
with his early youth is taken from Gill's _Life of Poe_, I will make an
explanation.

At the time when the first edition of Gill's work was issued I was
engaged in writing what I intended to be a little book concerning Poe,
compiled from my own personal knowledge of him and what I had been told
by others. In some way Gill heard of this, and wrote to me, coolly
requesting to be allowed to see my manuscript, which I, of course,
excused myself from doing. Again and again he wrote, saying that he
"merely wished to see exactly what I had written." In self-defence,
I finally sent him the first part or chapter of the manuscript, he
promising to return it as soon as read. After some weeks it was returned
to me, without a word accompanying; and at the same time a second
edition of Gill's "_Life_" was issued--the first having been
suppressed--in which, to my surprise, I found copious extracts from my
manuscript. All those little anecdotes of Poe's childhood were thus
appropriated, with more important matter--such as Poe's dissipation when
in Richmond and his enlisting in the army, both of which Gill had in his
first edition positively denied; and this he made use of as though it
had been his own original material. My book was, of course, ruined, and
all that I could do was, some years after, to write "_The Last Days of
Poe_," published in _Scribner's Magazine_, though even from this Gill
made "_Notes_" for the Appendix of his second or third edition.

Some of the material thus appropriated by Gill I have reclaimed and
inserted in this work. A comparison between the first and second edition
of Gill's "_Life of Poe_" affords a curious study, since in the second
he has carefully corrected the misstatements of the former from my
manuscript.

My friend, Gen. Roger A. Pryor, late Judge of the Supreme Court of New
York, brought suit against Gill in this matter, but met with so much
trouble and annoyance by reason of the latter's persistence in evading
it, that it was finally, at my own earnest request, abandoned.

Mr. Gill, I am informed, is still living.

NOTE 2.

A strange fate was that