Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/28

 to apply a wholesome check to the vanity of a young author, proposed inviting him to translate for the company a difficult passage in Greek, of which language she knew him to be profoundly ignorant, although given to a rather pretentious display of Greek quotations in his published writings. Poe’s earnest and persistent remonstrance against this piece of méchanceté alone averted the embarrassing test.

Sometimes his fair young wife was seen with him at these weekly assemblages in Waverley Place. She seldom took part in the conversation, but the memory of her sweet and girlish face, always animated and vivacious, repels the assertion, afterwards so cruelly and recklessly made, that she died a victim to the neglect and unkindness of her husband, “who,” as it has been said, “deliberately sought her death that he might embalm her memory in immortal dirges.” An article in Fraser’s Magazine, published some two years ago, repeats the assertion that Poe was the murderer of his wife, “causing her to die of starvation and a broken