CHAPTER V.

1834-1836.

POE BECOMES A CONTRIBUTOR TO The Southern Literary Messenger.-MARRIES VIRGINIA CLEMM.-Editor of The Messenger. -HIS BRILLIANT ARTICLES. HIS SEVERE CRITICISMS.SOCIAL POSITION IN RICHMOND.

DGAR POE was now upon the first step of the ladder which leads ad astra. Like Goldsmith, Shelley, Byron, Burns, and Keats, his literary career was brief, and like theirs, his fame will be enduring. He did not, like Lord Byron, "awake one morning, and find himself famous.' He had to fight his way to recognition, through toil, poverty, and suffering.

John P. Kennedy was neither a great lawyer, great novelist, nor great statesman; but his kindness to Poe will embalm his name forever in the memory of all lovers of genius. Of the three gentlemen composing the committee, he alone extended a helping hand to the poor young poet; he alone interested himself in the career of the ambitious young author. He invited Poe to his house, made. him welcome at his table, and furnished him with a saddle-horse, that he might take exercise whenever he pleased.

He did more: he introduced his protégé to the proprietor of The Southern Literary Messenger, then recently started at Richmond, and recommended him as being "very clever with his pen, classical, and scholar-like." Mr. F. W. White, the proprietor of The Messenger, invited Poe to send in a contribution. He was delighted to comply with the request. In the number for March, 1835, appeared his strangely beautiful story, "Berenice," which attracted immediate attention. From that time Poe became a regular monthly contributor to The Messenger, furnishing tales, poems, and criticisms with marvelous rapidity, when we consider their exquisite finish.

It is pleasant to quote, from one of Edgar Poe's letters, written to Mr. White at this time, two passages, which show that he possessed, in a remarkable degree, the very two virtues which have been denied him, viz., gratitude and humility. He had written a critique of John P. Kennedy's novel, "Horse-shoe Robinson," and, apologizing for the hasty sketch he sent, instead of the thorough review which he intended, he says: "At the time, I was so ill as to be hardly able to see the paper on which I wrote, and I finished it in a state of complete exhaustion. I have not, therefore, done anything like justice to the book, and I am vexed about the matter, for Mr. Kennedy has proved himself a kind friend to me in every respect, and I am sincerely grateful to him for many acts of generosity and attention." In the same letter, in answer to Mr. White's

query, whether he was satisfied with the pay he was receiving for his work on The Messenger, Poe wrote: "I reply that I am, entirely. My poor services are not worth what you give me for them."

For four years Edgar Poe had been engaged in the most delightful of occupations-the instruction of a beautiful girl, singularly interesting and truly loved. For four years, Virginia-his starry-eyed young cousin-had been his pupil. Never had teacher so lovely a pupil, never had pupil so tender a teacher. They were both young; she was a child.

"But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we."

Under the name of Eleonora, Edgar tells the story of their love in the Valley of the Many-colored Grass. He describes the "sweet recesses of the vale;' the "deep and narrow river, brighter, than all, save the eyes of Eleonora;" the "soft, green grass, besprinkled with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the ruby-red asphodel"-all so beautiful that it "spoke to our hearts of the love and glory of God." Here they "lived all alone, knowing nothing of the world without the valley-I, and my cousin, and her mother." "The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the seraphim, and she was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her heart," etc.

As soon as his prospects began to brighten, and his regular employment on The Messenger gave him a fixed income, Edgar, with the enthusiastic ardor of his race, wanted to marry his cousin Virginia, although she was only in her fourteenth year. Late in the summer of 1835, he was offered the position of assistant editor of The Messenger, at a salary of five hundred dollars per annum. He gladly accepted the offer, and prepared to remove to Richmond immediately. Before leaving Baltimore, he persuaded Mrs. Clemm to allow him to marry Virginia, and on the 2d of September, 1835, they were married, at old Christ Church, by the Rev. John Johns, D.D., afterward the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Virginia. The next day he went to Richmond, and did not see his darling little wife for a year, when she and her mother joined him in that city.

Poe felt most painfully the separation from "her he loved so dearly." For years Virginia had been his daily, his hourly companion and confidant. Like Abelard and Heloise, they had one home and one heart. He had watched her young mind's development; he had seen her grow each year more lovely, more winning, more interesting. And now, when his most cherished wish was realized, by the sweet girl becoming his wife, he was two hundred miles away from her. In the first days of this separation, he wrote Mr. Kennedy a letter (dated Richmond, September 11, 1835), in which, after express

ing a deep sense of gratitude for frequent kindness and assistance, he says:

"I am suffering under a depression of spirits such as I have never felt before. I have struggled in vain against the influence of this melancholy; you will believe me. when I say that I am still miserable, in spite of the great improvement in my circumstances. My heart is open before you; if it be worth reading, read it. Write me immediately; convince me that it is worth one's whilethat it is at all necessary to live, and you will prove yourself indeed my friend. Persuade me to do what is right. I do mean this. Write me, then, and quickly. Your words will have more weight with me than the words of others, for you were my friend when no one else was."

In December, 1835, Poe was made editor of The Messenger. Under his editorial management, the work soon became well known everywhere. Perhaps no similar enterprise ever prospered so largely in its commencement, and none, in the same length of time-not even Blackwood, in the brilliant days of Dr. Maginn, ever published so many dazzling articles from the same pen. Strange stories of the German school, akin to the most fanciful legend of the Rhine, fascinating and astonishing the reader with the verisimilitude of their improbability, appeared in the same number with lyrics plaintive and wondrous sweet, the earliest vibration of those chords which have