night, with drenched garments and arms beating the winds and rains,

would speak as if the spirits that at such times only could be evoked by

him from the Aidenn, close by whose portals his disturbed soul sought to

forget the ills to which his constitution subjected him---close by the

Aidenn where were those he loved-the Aidenn which he might never see,

but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to receive the less fiery

and more happy natures 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

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1