d another to
rival him.

If further testimony to his genius were needed, it might be found in the
fact that he was still unable to make a living with his pen, and was
forced to see his wife growing daily weaker without the means to provide
her proper nourishment. His sufferings were frightful; he was compelled
to bend his pride to an appeal for public charity, and the death of his
wife wrecked such moral self-control as he had remaining.

The rest is soon told. There was a rapid deterioration, and on October
3, 1849, he was found unconscious in a saloon at Baltimore, where an
election had been in progress and where Poe had been made drunk and then
used as an illegal voter. He was taken to a hospital, treated for
delirium tremens, and died three days later, a miserable outcast, at an
age where he should have been at the very zenith of his powers. The
pages of the world's history show no death more pathetically tragic.

Such a death naturally offended right-thinking people. Especially did it
offend the New England conscience, which has never been able to divorce
art from morals; and as the literary dominance of New England was at
that time absolute, Poe was buried under a mass of uncharitable
criticism. It should not be forgotten that he had struck the poisoned
barb of his satire deep into many a New England sage, and it was,
perhaps, only human nature to strike back. So it came to pass that Poe
was pointed out, not as a man of genius, but as a horrible example and
degrading influence to be sedulously avoided.

With foreign readers, all this counted for nothing. They were concerned
not with the life of the man, but with the work of the artist, and they
found that work consummately good. They were charmed and thrilled by the
haunting melody of his verse and the weird horror of his tales. In his
own country, recognition of his genius has grown rapidly of recent
years. Within his own sphere, he is unquestionably the greatest artist
America can boast--he climbed Parnassus higher than any of his
countrymen, and if he did not quite attain a seat among the immortals,
he at least caught some portion of their radiance.

After Poe, the man whom foreign critics consider America's most
representative poet is another who has been without honor in his own
country, and about whom, even yet, there is the widest difference of
opinion--Walt Whitman. Whitman was ostracized for many years not because
of his life, which was regular and a