Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/27

Rh Mr. Poe might have been found in the crest of Walter Scott’s puissant Templar, Bois Guilbert,—a raven in full flight, holding in its claws a skull, and bearing the motto, “Gare le Corbeau.”

Mr. Longfellow has very generously said, in a letter to the editor of the Literary Messenger: “The harshness of his criticism I have always attributed to the irritation of a sensitive nature chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong.”

A recent and not too lenient critic tells us that “it was his sensitiveness to artistic imperfections, rather than any malignity of feeling, that made his criticisms so severe, and procured him a host of enemies among persons towards whom he entertained no personal ill-will.”

In evidence of the habitual courtesy and good nature noticeable to all who best knew him in domestic and social life, we remember an incident that occurred at one of the soirées to which we have alluded. A lady, noted for her great lingual attainments, wishing 3