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.
even a typographical error, threw him into an ecstasy of passion,
It was this sensitiveness to all artistic imperfections, rather than
any malignity of feeling, which made his criticisms so severe, and
procured him a host of enemies among persons towards whom he
never entertained any personal ill-will. He criticised his own
productions with the same severity that he exercised towards the
writings of others; and all his poems, though he sometimes represented them as offsprings of a sudden inspiration, were the work of
elaborate study. His handwriting was always neat and singularly
uniform, and his manuscripts were invariably on long slips of
paper about four inches wide, which he never folded, but always
made into a roll. Nothing he ever did had the appearance of
haste or slovenliness, and he preserved with religious care every
scrap he had ever written, and every letter he ever received, so that
he left behind him the amplest materials for the composition of his
literary life. At his own request these remnants of his existence
were entrusted to Doctor Griswold, a gentleman with whom he had
quarrelled, and had lampooned in his lectures; Doctor Griswold,
in a generous spirit, accepted the charge, and produced from the
papers entrusted to him, the best biography of the strange being
that has been published, which was appended to the collection of
his works in four volumes issued in Nlew York.
J.une, 1857.