Washington Irving died on the 28th of November, 1859, at his dear Sunnyside, and now lies buried in a cemetery upon a hill near by, in a beautiful spot overlooking the Hudson river and Sleepy Hollow.
* * * * *
NOTE.—The thanks of the publishers are due to G. P. Putnam's Sons for kind permission to use extracts from the Works of Washington Irving.
THE STORY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
[Illustration: EDGAR ALLAN POE.]
EDGAR ALLAN POE
CHAPTER I
THE ARTIST IN WORDS
Who has not felt the weird fascination of Poe's strangely beautiful poem "The Raven"? Perhaps on some stormy evening you have read it until the "silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" has "thrilled you, filled you, with fantastic terrors never felt before." That poem is the almost perfect mirror of the life of the man who wrote it—the most brilliant poetic genius in the whole range of American literature, the most unfortunate and unhappy.
Poe had a singular fate. When Longfellow and Bryant and Lowell and Holmes were winning their way to fame quietly and steadily, Poe was writing wonderful poems and wonderful stories, and more than that, he was inventing new principles and new artistic methods, on which other great writers in time to come should build their finest work; yet he barely escaped starvation, and the critics made it appear that, compared with such men as Longfellow and Bryant, he was more notorious than really great. Lowell in his "Fable for Critics" said: