The following is a critical obituary for the poet Edgar Allan Poe signed
"Ludwig" - later revealed to be archrival Rufus Griswold. It appeared in
the evening edition of the New York Tribune on October 9, 1849.

Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday.
This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The
poet was well known personally or by reputation, in all this country. He
had readers in England and in several states of Continental Europe. But
he had few or no friends. The regrets for his death will be suggested
principally by the consideration that in him literary art lost one of
its most brilliant, but erratic stars.

The character of Mr. Poe we cannot attempt to describe in this very
hastily written article. We can but allude to some of the more striking
phases.

His conversation was at times almost supra-mortal in its eloquence. His
voice was modulated with astonishing skill, and his large and variably
expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who
listened, while his own face glowed or was changeless in pallor, as his
imagination quickened his blood, or drew it back frozen to his heart.
His imagery was from the worlds, which no mortal can see, but with the
vision of genius.

He was at times a dreamer, dwelling in ideal realms, in heaven or hell,
peopled with creations and the accidents of his brain. He walked the
streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct
curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayers for the happiness of
those who at that moment were objects of his idolatry, but never for
himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned.
He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjected his will and
engrossed his faculties, always to bear the memory of some controlling
sorrow.

He had made up his mind upon the numberless complexities of the social
world and the whole system was with him an imposture. This conviction
gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable character. Still
though, he regarded society as composed of villains, the sharpness of
his intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with
villainy, while it continually caused him overshots, to fail of the
success of honesty.

Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst emotions, which militate
against human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you raised
quick choler. You could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with
gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantage of this poor boy, his
beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a
fiery atmosphere, had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an
arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudice
against him. Irascible, envious, bad enough, but not the worst, for
these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold repellant
cynicism while his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to
him no moral susceptibility. And what was more remarkable in a proud
nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a
morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition,
but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species, only the hard
wish to succeed, not s hine, not serve, but succeed, that he might have
the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit.

We must omit any particular criticism of Mr. Poe's works. As a writer of
tales it will be admitted generally, that he was scarcely surpassed in
ingenuity of construction or effective painting.

As a critic, he was more remarkable as a dissector of sentences than as
a commenter upon ideas. He was little better than a carping grammarian.

As a poet, he will retain a most honorable rank. Of his "Raven," Mr.
Willis observes that in his opinion, "it is the most effective single
example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is
unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conceptions, masterly ingenuity
of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift."

In poetry, as in prose, he was most successful in the metaphysical
treatment of the passions. His poems are constructed with wonderful
ingenuity, and finished with consummate art. They illustrate a morbid
sensitiveness of feeling, a shadowy and gloomy imagination, and a taste
almost faultless in the apprehension of that sort of beauty most
agreeable to his temper.

We have not learned of the circumstance of his death. It was sudden, and
from the fact that it occurred in Baltimore, it is presumed that he was
on his return to New York.

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well."

LUDWIG