belong to Poe's more serious literary criticism but are essentially a contemporary and easy comment on persons he knew, most of them obscure. At the end of 1845 despite his desperate efforts, the Broadway Journal failed, leaving its editor and by that time sole owner, in debt, despondent, and in ill health. Virginia, his wife, continued to decline and was nearing the grave. Poe was once more without means of support. In the meantime he had again moved his lodgings to 185 Amity Street. An unfortunate lecture at Boston in the fall of the year had provided an opportunity for Poe, then in a serious nervous condition, to make more or less an exhibition of himself. The aff air was taken up by his enemies in New York and made the most of. All this served to add to his depression. Despite such, however, he had succeeded in bringing out in June, 1845, Tales, a collection of his stories selected by E. A. Duyckinck, an able editor, and published by Wiley and Putnam. This was followed in December, 1845, by The Raven and Other Poems, a selection of his verse produced by the same publisher. In the series of Poe's work issued during his life time these two constituted the eighth and ninth books respectively. The Tales were in some cases bound in two volumes, and both outputs achieved a minor success. At the same time Poe was known to have been at work on an anthology of various American writers which occupied him from time to time for several years. It was never published, although some fragments of the manuscript exist. Poe's affairs and Virginia's health now once more necessitated a move to the country. While Poe traveled to Balti- more to lecture in the spring of 1846, Mrs. Clemm and Virginia again went to stay at the Bloomingdale farm. A few weeks later we find the entire family at a farm house on "Turtle Bay," now Forty-seventh Street and East River. The stop here was brief. Poe rented a little frame cottage at Fordham, then a small village about fifteen miles from New York, and to this the family moved at the end of May, 1846. In the puny cottage at Fordham, still preserved as a relic in Poe Park, New York City, the poet and his benign mother-in- law, Mrs. Maria Clemm, experienced together the extremes of tragedy in poverty, death, and despair. The summer of 1846 was embittered by a violent quarrel with one T. D. English. whom Poe had attacked acidly in the "Literati Papers." English now "replied," and after a personal encounter with Poe, accused the latter of forgery in the New York Mirror. Poe sued the paper and recovered damages for a small amount in February, 1847. Poe's health was exceptionally bad, his wife continued to sink rapidly, and he himself could neither write much nor obtain employment. During much of the time Mrs. Clemm by various artifices and wiles kept bread in their mouths. She both borrowed and begged, and was even reduced to the necessity of digging vegetables by night in the fields of neighboring farmers. With the arrival of cold weather the visits of friends and curious persons from the city ceased and the Poes were left alone to face the rigors of winter without fuel or sufficient clothing or food. 'Under these inflictions Virginia sank rapidly. She lay in a bed of straw with her hus- band's cloak wrapped around her and a pet cat on her bosom to help provide warmth. In December, 1846, the family was visited by a friend from New York, Mrs. Mary Louise Shew, who found Virginia dying and Poe and his "mother" destitute. Through her kindness, and a public appeal in the papers, the immediate wants of the family were relieved and Virginia enabled to pass away in comparative peace at the end of January, 1847. She was buried at Fordham but afterwards removed to the side of her husband at Baltimore. After the death of Virginia, Mrs. Clemm continued to nurse Poe, who gradually returned to a somewhat better state of health. In this Mrs. Shew assisted until finally compelled to withdraw, due to the emotional demands of her patient. Helped by his friends Poe once more began to appear among the living. At Fordham he had written Eureka, a long "prose poem" of a semiscientific and metaphysical cast which was published in March, 1848, by Geo. B. Putnam of New York. This was the tenth and last of the poet's works published during his life time, although an "edition" of his tales dated 1849 is known to exist. The nature of Eureka forbade its being popular. Poe now took to lecturing after a trip to Philadelphia in the summer of 1847 when another lapse in drink almost proved f atal. The end of his life was marked by the publication of some of his most remarkable poems. "The Bells," "Ulalume," "Annabel Lee," and others, and by his infatuation with several women. During various lecture trips to Lowell, Mass., and Providence, R. I., he became acquainted with Annie Rich mond and Sarah Helen Whitman, the former a married woman, and the latter a widow of some literary reputation and considerable charm. After a visit to Richmond, Va., in the summer of 1848 in which he tried to fight a duel with one Daniels, the editor of a Richmond newspaper, and again lapsed into drink, he began to pay court to Mrs. Whitman, making several visits to Providence and carrying on a fervid correspondence. He finally obtained her reluctant consent to marry him on his promise of refraining from the glass. Poe, however, now in a sadly shattered state, was also "in love," or so dependent upon the sympathy of Mrs. Richmond that in an attempt to put an end to his impossible emotional problems he tried suicide by swallowing laudanum in Boston in November, 1848. The dose proved an emetic and he survived. Next day in a state bordering upon insanity he appeared in Providence and begged Mrs. Whitman to carry out her promise. She, it appears, hopeful of perhaps saving him from himself was about to marry the poet but the opposition of relatives and another lapse from sobriety on the part of Poe, finally brought about his dismissal. Greatly chagrined he returned to Fordham the same evening to the comforting ministrations of poor Mrs. Clemm who was reluctantly preparing to welcome a bride. Poe attempted to hush the matter up and to carry it off with some bravado. News of the affair was noised about, however, and caused considerable scandal. He now threw himself into writing with renewed activity, meanwhile continuing his correspondence with Mrs. Richmond. Misfortune con