facts of Poe's life and comprehend the evolution of his character as well as we think we do, and to urge upon all in possession of documents or family traditions likely in any way to aid us to put their information at the disposal of students. It is not fair to pass moral judgments upon the mature man about whose frailties so much is known, until we are better acquainted with the voluntary and involuntary elements that made up the formative period of his life.
But I am nearing the end of my allotted time and all I have done is to assert that, on the whole, we have accomplished a good deal for Poe's fame in the past sixty years and that there is still much to do before we shall have the right to feel that we understand thoroughly the man and his life. To most people, however, it is the man's works that count, some holding that they represent the high-water-mark of American literary achievement, others maintaining that they are possessed of but slight intellectual and moral value and of only a very limited aesthetic value. What of these much discussed works in prose and verse? Shall we ever reach anything approaching a consensus of expert and popular opinion with regard to them? Has the Poe critic as much encouragement to pursue his studies as the Poe biographer has?
All things considered, it seems to me that he has. Not only have the editions, the monographs, the essays multiplied greatly, but what is more important, Poe in the last twenty years, through small volumes of selections and through various sorts of anthologies, has made his way into the schools. We poor teachers of English are constantly belabored for the supposititious inefficiency of
