The poetical works of Edgar Allan Poe, with original memoir. Illustrated by F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., John Tenniel, Birket Foster, Felix Darlay [and others]

MEMOIR.
a mystery, and the utterances of his fancy are but the drapery
of the veiled statue which still leaves the figure itself unknown.
A dissection of the song-bird gives us no insight into the secret
of his melodious notes. Some of the great modern poets have
had their whole lives exposed with minute accuracy; but in what
are we the wiser for the knowledge we have obtained of them?
We only know they lived and suffered like other men, and their
inspirations are still a cause of wonder and delight. The subtle
secret of their power is still hidden from our search; and though
we know more of the daily habits of the men, we know no more
of the hidden power of the poet. But there is still a yearning
to know how the men lived whose genius has charmed and instructed us, and a vague feeling exists, that in probing the lives
of poets we may learn something of the art by which they
produced their works. But it is like the useless labour of
Reynolds, who scraped a painting by Titian to learn the secret
of his colouring.
Of all the poets whose lives have been a puzzle and a mystery
to the world, there is no one more difficult to be understood than
Edgar Allan Poe. It is impossible to carry in the mind a double
idea of a man, and to believe him to be both a saint and a fiend;
yet such is the embarrassment felt by those who have first read the
poems of this strange being, and then read any of the biographies
of him which pretend to anything like an accurate account of his
life. Like his own Raven, he is, to his readers, "bird or fiend,"
xviii