escaped by some strange
mischance into the prosaic daylight. His speech and actions were
unconsciously and sincerely dramatic, always as though done for
effect. He had that nervous, egotistic, self-centered nature common
to stage children who seem to have been dazzled by the footlights
and maddened by the applause before they are born. It was in his
blood. With the exception of two women who loved him, lived for him,
died for him, he went through life friendless, misunderstood, with
that dense, complete, hopeless misunderstanding which, as Amiel
said, is the secret of that sad smile upon the lips of the great.
Men tried to befriend him, but in some way or other he hurt and
disappointed them. He tried to mingle and share with other men, but
he was always shut from them by that shadow, light as gossamer but
unyielding as adamant, by which, from the beginning of the world,
art has shielded and guarded and protected her own, that
God-concealing mist in which the heroes of old were hidden, immersed
in that gloom and solitude which, if we could but know it here, is
but the shadow of God's hand as it falls upon his elect.

We lament our dearth of great prose. With the exception of Henry
James and Hawthorne, Poe is our only master of pure prose. We lament
our dearth of poets. With the exception of Lowell, Poe is our only
great poet. Poe found short story writing a bungling makeshift. He
left it a perfect art. He wrote the first perfect short stories in
the English language. He first gave the short story purpose, method,
and artistic form. In a careless reading one can not realize the
wonderful literary art, the cunning devices, the masterly effects
that those entrancing tales conceal. They are simple and direct
enough to delight us when we are children, subtle and artistic
enough to be our marvel when we are old. To this day they are the
wonder and admiration of the French, who are the acknowledged
masters of craft and form. How in his wandering, laborious life,
bound to the hack work of the press and crushed by an ever-growing
burden of want and debt, did he ever come upon all this deep and
mystical lore, this knowledge of all history, of all languages, of
all art, this penetration into the hidden things of the East? As
Steadman says, "The self training of genius is always a marvel." The
past is spread before us all and most of us spend our lives in
learning those things which we do not need to know, but genius
reaches out i