He retouched and polished them from year to year, until they stand
unsurpassed in their restricted field. He received only ten dollars for
_The Raven_ while he was alive, but the appreciation of his verse has
increased to such an extent that the sum of two thousand dollars was
recently paid for a copy of the thin little 1827 edition of his poems.
It has been humorously said that the French pray to Poe as a literary
saint. They have never ceased to wonder at the unusual combination of his
analytic reasoning power with his genius for imaginative presentation of
romantic materials,--at the realism of his touch and the romanticism of his
thought. It is true that many foreign critics consider Poe America's
greatest author. An eminent English critic says that Poe has surpassed all
the rest of our writers in playing the part of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to
other authors. At home, however, there have been repeated attempts to
disbar Poe from the court of great writers. Not until 1910 did the board of
electors vote him a tablet in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.
It may be admitted that Poe was a technical artist, that his main object
was effectiveness of impression and beauty of form, that he was not
overanxious about the worth of his subject matter to an aspiring soul, and
that he would have been vastly greater if he had joined high moral aim to
his quest of beauty.
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