he turned his
attention to criticism, and when these essays were collected under the
titles "Among My Books" and "My Study Windows," they proved their author
to be the ablest critic, the most accomplished scholar, the most
cultured writer--in a word, the greatest all-around man-of-letters, in
America.

This prominence brought him the offer of the Spanish mission, which he
accepted, going from Madrid to London, in 1880, as Ambassador to Great
Britain, and remaining there for five years. The service he did there is
incalculable; as the spokesman for America and the representative of
American culture, he took his place with dignity and honor among
England's greatest; his addresses charmed and impressed them, and he may
be fairly said to have laid the foundations of that cordial friendship
between America and Great Britain which exists to-day. "I am a bookman,"
was Lowell's proudest boast--not only a writer of books, but a mighty
reader of books; and he is one of the most significant figures in
American letters.

So we come to the man who measures up more nearly to the stature of a
great poet than any other American--Edgar Allan Poe. Outside of America,
there has never been any hesitancy in pronouncing Poe the first poet of
his country; but, at home, it is only recently his real merit has come
to be at all generally acknowledged.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809--a stroke of purest irony on
the part of fate, for he was in no respect a Bostonian, and it was to
Bostonians especially that he was anathema. His parents were actors,
travelling from place to place, and his birth at Boston was purely
accidental. They had no home and no fortune, but lived from hand to
mouth, in the most precarious way, and both of them were dead before
their son was two years old. He had an elder brother and a younger
sister, and these three babies were left stranded at Richmond,
Virginia, entirely without money. Luckily they were too young to realize
how very dark their future was, and the Providence which looks after the
sparrows also looked after them. The wife of a well-to-do tobacco
merchant, named John Allan, took a fancy to the dark-eyed, dark-haired
boy of two, and, having no children of her own, adopted him.

It was better fortune than he could have hoped for, for he was brought
up in comfort in a good home, and his foster-parents seem to have loved
him and to have been ambitious for his future. He was an erratic boy,
and wa