much more disreputably than of old, with sneers and ridicule of his (Poe's) family.

The story of the ode we briefly summarize, gathering it from Stoddard's own relation: "A great reader from boyhood, I happened to come across a volume of indifferent verses written by an English officer in the service of the East India Company." "Well this Major Richardson wrote an "Ode to a Grecian Flute.” It struck my fancy and I must needs write a companion-piece." "Like all early writing it was crude, but there was promise in it." This from its author Stoddard. It was sent to Poe for publication in the Broadway Journal, who declined it thus: "We doubt the originality of the 'Grecian Flute' for the reason that it is too good at some points to be so bad at others."

Then followed a visit of Stoddard to Poe's sanctum and Poe's reiteration to the author's face of the charge of plagiarism. "You never wrote the ode to which I lately referred" and "I was comminated and threatened with condign personal chastisement. I left quickly but was not, as I remember, downcast." (The italics are ours.) Judging from Stoddard's admission above it would seem as if Poe knew pretty clearly what he was talking about. If he was at the time drunk, as Stoddard insists he was, what wonderful accuracy of aim!

That a man like Stoddard, who insists on telling us that he "was born in Massachusetts," should have had his egotism badly skotched by Poe's cavalier treatment of his ode is not to be wondered at.

"Constitutionally a liar," as he says Poe was, this much at least crops out of the controversy for the benefit of spectators, to wit, that Poe knew a sham when he saw one, and hence his treatment of the "Ode to the Grecian Flute" writer was not, as Stoddard would have us believe, evidence of his being that day under the "influence of liquor."

But no matter as to this. We write as an admirer of Poe nevertheless, in indignant protest at this satanic exhibition of spleen made by a living author toward a dead one.

He calls this paper we are reviewing a "gossipy paper," as if around the memory of that ode, respectfully declined by Poe, had festered such a sore in his mind that time refuses healing.

That the said ode was a humbug, he himself now frankly admits, for his delicate fancy had stolen the subject from an East India officer, and Poe's conception of its worthlessness, if not of its origin, was evidently a center shot.

The rankling barb however did its fatal work, and to-day, forty-five years after the trifling event, we find him in a magazine article for Lippincott making faces at and abusing with wordy epithet the personal character of one forty years in the grave.

Who, after reading this infamous assault upon the dead poet's fame, but could pray, "O that it were possible, the restoration to life for just one hour of the insulted dead! One hour in which his ghostly hand could, in its own inimitable way, brand the despicable

ghoul who cannot find among the living, who can resent it, subjects for misrepresentation!

Hear him: When the ode was declined, he (Poe) was irascible, surly and in his cups." "I meekly

ventured to remark."

No wonder Poe kicked him down stairs if the interview revealed, as it probably did, the meanness of the assumed meekness.

Again: "I left quickly, but not downcast." Indeed! And your turn came at last when Poe was in his grave.

"For time at last sets all things even,

And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
That could evade if unforgiven
The patient search and vigil long

Of him who treasures up a wrong."

How fiendishly it is followed up under the lying pretext of "personal kindness" to his memory! "Some men," he says, "are born great, others achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them, and among these last was Edgar Allan Poe."

Did it ever occur to Stoddard that the kick of Poe that sent him down stairs "meekly" with his declined "Ode," thrust also considerable greatness upon him?

It was the boot-toe of one now famous in American literature, and its persistent recall time and again in "gossipy" articles, shows how valuable this first boost towards fame was to the recipient.

Again the chronic meekness: "I blame Poe" for this? "The gods forbid:" I born in Massachusetts "of good English and Scottish blood" and behind him "a stock of hard drinking Marylanders," his father an inefficient player and "his mother a fairly good English actress and vocalist." Ye gods what a mag

nificent sneer.

O that Poe could only have had a bed-ridden sister still alive at whom this lineal descendant from the Puritans could also be making faces.

Again: "He was without honor," and this from a man who thinks it honorable to libel the dead!

"He was stingy, he was mean, he was parsimonious in the scanty words he doled out to Bryant, Lowell, Longfellow," and why not have added also, and the author of the Grecian Flute?

Then as a cap-sheaf to this gossipy abuse of Poe himself, follows naturally and gracefully and appropriately, no doubt, from his standpoint, sneers and jeers and ridicule of Mrs. Estelle Anna Lewis, one of Poe's friends.

By what sort of far-fetched stretch of propriety he can justify this sort of dragging into his "gossipy article" personal abuse of a lady, whose guest it seems he was, is beyond human comprehension. This must be his understanding of what constitutes one part of the compound of which he says Poe was composed, viz, "the courtly gentleman."

That he was her guest he admits, for he says: "I called by invitation, me and my wife," and his accept

ing the invitation may, with those of his stamp, justify such criticisms as he gives of the personal appearance of his hostess. "Attired in a low necked dress of flaming crimson tarlatan." "She began her disjointed chat." "Her husband was less elderly than his bedizened worser half;" "the modern antiques of the Wardour street pattern." And this and more in an article on Edgar Allan Poe, and this by an American poet who at that time was "meekly" trying to make headway with Poe and his friends.

Leaving glittering generalities Stoddard at last gets down to particular acts of depravity. He "was more than inconsiderate-he was dishonest-in the treatment of this patroness, who paid him one hundred dollars to review one of her books, and who complained of him very naturally upon his neglecting to do so. Nevertheless he did review it, sending his notes to Bayard Taylor with the request that he would insert as his own production. So unscrupulous at this period was the needy soul of Edgar Allan Poe." "I once had the note in which he made this preposterous request.

Now with all our hands uplifted in holy horror let us scrutinize closely this astounding revelation of Poe's depravity.

First, he promised to review a book and then did review it. This, Stoddard says, was "more than inconsiderate," it was dishonest."

Second, he sent his notes of the review to Taylor and asked him to insert them as his own. Horror upon horror! how "preposterous" this act must have