But one who
voluntarily exposes his Muse to the gaze of all comers should recall the
fate of King Candaules.
The world still thinks of Poe as a "luckless man of genius." I recently
heard him mentioned as "one whom everybody seems chartered to misrepresent,
decry or slander." But it seems to me that his ill-luck ended with his
pitiable death, and that since then his defence has been persistent, and
his fame of as steadfast growth as a suffering and gifted author could pray
for in his hopeful hour. Griswold's decrial and slander turned the current
in his favor. Critics and biographers have come forward with successive
refutations, with tributes to his character, with new editions of his
works. His own letters and the minute incidents of his career are before
us; the record, good and bad, is widely known. No appellor has received
more tender and forgiving judgement. His mishaps in life belonged to his
region and period, perchance still more to his own infirmity of will.
Doubtless his environment was not one to guard a fine-grained, ill-balanced
nature from perils without and within. His strongest will, to be lord of
himself, gained for him "that heritage of woe." He confessed himself the
bird's unhappy master, the stricken sufferer of this poem. But his was a
full share of that dramatic temper which exults in the presage of its own
doom.
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