whose destiny to sin did not involve the
doom of death. He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjugated his
will and engrossed his faculties, always to bear the memory of some
controlling sorrow. The remarkable poem of "The Raven" was probably much
more nearly than has been supposed, even by those who were very intimate
with him, a reflection and an echo of his own history. _He_ was that
bird's

"----unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden
bore--
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never--never more.'"

Every genuine author, in a greater or less degree, leaves in his works,
whatever their design, traces of his personal character; elements of his
immortal being, in which the individual survives the person. While we
read the pages of the "Fall of the House of Usher," or of "Mesmeric
Revelations," we see in the solemn and stately gloom which invests one,
and in the subtle metaphysical analysis of both, indications of the
idiosyncracies--of what was most remarkable and peculiar--in the author's
intellectual nature. But we see here only the better phases of his
nature, only the symbols of his juster action, for his harsh experience
had deprived him of all faith, in man or woman. He had made up his mind
upon the numberless complexities of the social world, and the whole
system with him was an imposture. This conviction gave a direction to his
shrewd and naturally unamiable character. Still, though he regarded
society as composed altogether of villains, the sharpness of his
intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with villany,
while it continually caused him by overshots to fail of the success of
honesty. He was in many respects like Francis Vivian, in Bulwer's novel
of "The Caxtons." Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst
emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict
him, but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his
cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this
poor boy--his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed
around him like a fiery atmosphere--had raised his constitutional
self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to
admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious--bad enough,
but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over w