Page:Edgar Allan Poe - a centenary tribute.pdf/31

 THE CENTENARY OF POE.

Probably not a few of you traveling in Europe have kept your eyes open for evidences of interest in things American, and perhaps in American literature. If you have, your eyes may have lighted, as mine did not many months ago, on a copy of a French translation of some of Poe's tales, wretchedly printed, in yellow paper covers, adorned with a repelling woodcut of the author. I saw my copy in a small bookshop on the Corso in Rome, and standing next to it was an equally unattractive copy of a French translation of some of Byron's poems. The juxtaposition naturally suggested a certain train of reflections. Poe and Byron, although they number more Continental readers than most of the writers that have used the English tongue, are precisely the two writers of commanding position against whom the harshest criticism has been directed by an influential portion of the public of their respective and respectable countries. That this is true of Byron will be admitted by most persons acquainted with modern British criticism. If you doubt it, you may read the pages devoted to the poet in Professor George Saintsbury's volume on English literature in the nineteenth century, pages which leave one wondering just how eccentric a critic may be without losing his reputation. It