Page:Edgar Allan Poe - a centenary tribute.pdf/40

 which have just been shown to have been distinctly unpropitious to Poe's fame in America, his works would have been more carefully and fully annotated than those of any other American writer? There is enough interest and pathos and mystery in his biography to account for the study devoted to Poe the man; but I doubt extremely whether the popular and scholarly editions of his works would have increased as they have done within our own generation, to say nothing of such evidence of his fame as the multiplication of critical essays and monographs and the high prices paid for first editions of his books, if, despite his limitations, Poe had not been, besides a waif of fortune, the most unalloyed specimen of that indescribable something called æsthetic genius yet produced in this new world. Yes—a great deal has been accomplished in sixty years. It has been made practically certain that Poe's fame is permanent and large and luminous as a star, even if the star still shines out upon us from behind light clouds.

The fact that Poe, despite many limitations and drawbacks, among which we must count the comparatively brief span of his creative activity—he was writing not much more than twenty years—should have gained a position among American authors which in the eyes of most Europeans and of many of his own countrymen is, to say the least, second to none, is probably the most important fact that can be emphasized upon this centennial occasion. It is a cause for congratulation in more senses than one. The triumph of genius over untoward conditions always makes a profound appeal to generous natures. Fame seems to do her most salutary work when