I 1846 or 1847; but the passion grew, Some will affirm that this idea of and when Poe's stories were collected mental affinity was, of course, purely in volume form, his French affinity was imaginary; but is it because we so ready to devote himself to the task of easily accept the far greater miracle of translating them—and what admirable infinite variety of minds that we are translations they are, combining beauty, staggered by the idea of two brains and zz finish, and truth! Turning aside from two characters bearing a close and strikzhis own special field of literature, Bau- ing resemblance ? Whether true or delaire talked and wrote to make the not, the fact remains that, imbued with name of Edgar Poe famous; and he this idea, Baudelaire determined to was successful, for, as a Frenchman translate all Edgar Poe's works; that has himself certified, "It was through the first one he undertook was entitled the labor and genius of Baudelaire that "Magnetic Revelation," clearly pointEdgar Poe's tales have become so well ing to this impression; and that for known in France, and are now regarded seventeen years the poet labored unas classical models." Further, it should ceasingly at his self-imposed task. The be noticed that Edgar Poe is the only excitement of politics, the constant American writer who has become pop-fight with poverty and debt, the calls of ular in that land where the literature of publishers none of these things dethe nineteenth century has reached a terred him from his work, death alone perfection which after-ages will cer- putting an end, as far as this life is tainly record and admire. concerned, to this strange affinity.

But we ask ourselves, Is this result During his lifetime Edgar Poe had due to the exquisite style Baudelaire preached, through the medium of his employed in his translation ? and would weird tales, the doctrine of the power his magic pen have endowed any for- of mind over matter, of thought and eign author, however unworthy, with feeling being imperishable even after fame? Did the strange influence lie in death, and at times conquering the morthe rich fancy of the American author, tal parts of man. As if to prove his or in the richer setting given to it by words, at his own death the one man the Frenchman? Baudelaire must evi- perhaps capable of understanding him dently have known English well; but and his work, though of another tongue did he, whilst reading it, simultaneously and nation, was moved to preach the clothe the English words in his own same doctrine, not because he had French dress, or did English style and evolved the thought, but because he New World fancy win his admiration ? declared himself to be in full sympathy These questions are difficult to answer. with the ideas he so ably translated. Baudelaire's explanation does not alto-Surely no such instance as this has ocgether clear up the difficulty. "Be-curred before, and the knowledge of it lieve me or not, as you like," he says, fills the life-sketch of these two men "but I discovered in Edgar Poe's with new interest. Baudelaire never works, poems and stories which had carried out the intention expressed in been lying dormant in my own brain, "Mon Cœur mis à nu" of explaining vague, confused, ill-assorted, whilst he to us fully why he undertook the transhad known how to combine, to tran-lations of Poe's stories, but he has left scribe, and to bring them to perfec- us two deeply interesting notices of his tion." Here was, according to the literary affinity, to whom he further French poet, the secret of his success. ascribes his own power of close reasonHe had discovered his affinity; he had ing. So enthusiastic was Baudelaire's but to collect his own floating ideas, biographical notice of Poe that a critic finding no difficulty in the setting, for in Le Journal d'Alençon said it was to all was clear to him. The two authors be feared the translator would come to were of one mind, and the result was the same end as his model ! this gift of classic work to France, created with alien thought.

Strangely enough, the story of both lives is infinitely sad: both were

brought up luxuriously; both felt that | without a slight sketch of their lives it literature could alone be their vocation; would be impossible to demonstrate the both loved passionately the woman strange affinity of spirit which we claim they called mother; both threw off the for them. As Edgar Poe died so soon authority of their adopted father; both after Beaudelaire's discovery of his were faithful as lovers one to his work, it is doubtful whether the former wife, the other to his unworthy mis-ever heard the name of, or read the tress; both fell hopelessly foul of the works of the latter; had he done so, he public-that judge they would neither would certainly have been capable and of them acknowledge or bow down to; worthy of appreciating them; but he both were, in consequence, literary out- has in Baudelaire a perfect chronicler, casts; both sought by deleterious one who could place the facts simply means to drown sordid reality and to before us and find a reason for the failinvoke dreams of unattainable beauty; ures, forcing us to recognize what M. both sought diligently for the choice Byvanck has well expressed in his little word, the rare feeling, the rare sensa- book on literary Paris: "I have at tion, both looked upon the common- times suffered cruelly when I have conplace as a mortal enemy; both strove, when they found themselves plunged into an abyss of misery, to retrieve their mistake, and both succumbed to the fatal wish to soar into regions too elevated for poor humanity that humanity whose mental capacity fails before visions which cannot be expressed, causing only the delicate brain-machinery to fall into ruins after it has endeavored to weave too rich materials, fit only for spirit unclogged by clay.

sidered the dreadful problem of ruined lives, and at times it has filled me with indignation; but after a while I have found for all these problems some moral justification."

Edgar Poe was born in 1809. His parents were well connected, his father, David Poe, being the son of a general, whilst his maternal grandfather had claimed the friendship of Lafayette. David fell in love with a pretty English actress, Elizabeth Arnold, who was also well connected, and the light-hearted All this the ordinary world rarely pair played out their brief happiness on takes into consideration. If a man the stage, then died, leaving Edgar to fails to win riches and honor by his be adopted by Mr. Allau, a rich Amergenius, his contemporaries invariably ican; hence the addition of this name say that the genius is wanting. Edgar to his own, which graft brought him Poe and Baudelaire were no exception very doubtful advantages aud one inesto the rule, and for their funeral oration timable benefit a first-rate education both were plentifully bespattered with-partly in England (his English school mud, both were scorned by a too right- is described in "William Wilson ") and cous world of sinners; and even to this day Baudelaire's name is, for self-satisfied critics, the subject of controversy, and his genius the subject of doubt. Time, however, will avenge, and has partly avenged, their literary memory, and for the rest, surely it should be left for the next genius of equal merit to throw the stones; our part is to collect the precious gems which they scattered so lavishly, and for which they asked in return only for a little sympathy and appreciation, failing utterly during their life to obtain them.

We would willingly say nothing about their personal history, were it not that

partly in America. Handsome, clever, small in build but strong of limb, young Edgar seemed at this time to be destined for a spoilt child of fortune; but a wild, restless disposition and an early love of gambling caused the first breach with his adopted father. The quarrel turned Edgar's mind towards fighting for the oppressed Greeks, and he suddenly left America with this chivalrous intention! Two years of wandering follow, but we hear of no fighting with the oppressors, and no geographer has traced a map of these travels. We next find him at St. Petersburg, the hero of some scrape, and he has to be

helped to return home by the American | He could not fathom the mind of a consul. Reconciliation with Mr. Allan young man who was giving his life-blood and a nomination to West Point Mili- for 1001. a year, but did not always tary College appeared once more to be keep sober, so he dismissed him, and setting Edgar in the right road, but the disgraced editor began his wandertwo years of freedom had not prepared jug life again, seeking work, and doing him for discipline. In less than a it here, there, and everywhere, always twelvemonth he was dismissed by the brilliant, always original, but always college authorities, and his adopted writing under the terrible pressure of father, having married again, discov-poverty and mental agony. His idolered that he was tired of the prodigal. ized wife fell ill, and his brilliant, imThe inevitable result followed: a pas- pressionable brain seemed to lose its sionate scene took place between them, balance. Virginia's devoted mother then the Allan doors were shut forever was then the guardian angel of the against him. house, and never a. complaint did she utter, but, taking her courage in her two hands, she would go round to editors and publishers and plead for work.

She would offer Edgar's talesand articles for sale in a gentle, deprecating manner, the attitude of a humble suppliant. Perhaps she alone, besides Baudelaire, knew the secret of that poor brain. It could work only under strong excitement, so excitement it was forced to have in order to give daily food to his Virginia. The heart was always in its right place. She and Virginia knew it, whatever others might say; but it was too sensitive, too easily impressed, and the agony of

Edgar Poe now found himself penniless and thrown upon the world with nothing but his talents between him and starvation. Then began the struggle with poverty, a struggle which a biographer finds quite natural in the life of young genius, but which as often as not ruins the health and mental balance of the individual. Suddenly the happy chance of winning a prize offered by a newspaper for the best story and the best poem cleared his encumbered path, and revealed his talent to those who were ready to turn it into hard cash. Still it cannot be said that the young genius had no chance. Mr. Thomas White, proprietor of the South-seeing his wife's sufferings seemed to ern Literary Messenger, offered him the post of editor to this paper, and the man and the occupation seemed exactly fitted for each other. His advent on the staff was like a meteor flashing into sight upon a dull sky; his strange, weird, fascinating stories began to appear with welcome regularity, and the paper quadrupled its sale. For his share of the profits Edgar found himself the possessor of 100l. a year, and, much to the horror of the wise, immediately married his cousin, the beautiful but penniless Virginia Clemm.

For two years the editor managed to attend to his duties, or rather he managed not to break out too often, for his gambling propensity had been followed by fits of craving for drink. Now Mr. Thomas White knew how to manage the financial part of his paper, but he was not at all endowed with imagination.

snap the remaining brain-connecting links which we call self-restraint. The story is well known, but perhaps only Baudelaire has found the excuse, perhaps only he from personal experience understood the whole truth. He notes down the fact that Edgar Poe's work never suffered from his excesses, and that his best writings were either preceded or followed by one of his drinking fits. Very little sufficed to turn. the subtle brain. "Drink," says Baudelaire, "seemed to excite and to rest him;" in fact, to some natures stimulants, alcohol or morphia, produce series of vivid visionary dreams, some dreadful, some beautiful, but all continuous only when the dreamer is under this special influence, unfolding for his delight exquisite hallucinations deemed by him to be necessary, and perhaps really necessary, for his creative genius. "One part of that which now gives us

pleasure is what killed him," pathet- much above the common ! 6 Quel ically remarks his chronicler. "No odeur de magasin!' as Joseph de one has written with a more magical Maistre would say.” Here we feel intouch than Edgar Poe the exceptional clined to end Poe's life with his own in life and nature. He analyzes all that words, taken from "Magnetic Reveis most fugitive, he weighs the immeas-lation," which paper certainly must urable, and describes in his minute and have been caviare to the multitude, scientific manner all those imaginary and which therefore must have brought sensations which surround the highly the author very few dollars: To be sensitive man and often lead him on happy up to a certain point we mustto his destruction." Later on Baude- have suffered up to that point. Never laire adds, "In his poetry is to be to have suffered would be equivalent found his insatiable craving for the to never having known happiness." beautiful, which is his title of honor If this is true-and what human being among the poets." Strange beauty, will lightly contradict it? too near to which man may not ap- must feel that Edgar Poe had his moproach with safety; which, as we think ments of exquisite happiness, and that of it, makes us hear again down the what we call a ruined life may one day long line of ages an echo of the words, be brought again to our sight—spirit"Thou canst not see my face, for manual or corporeal in the likeness of a shall not see me and liye."

then we

star shining brightly in a deep firma

Need we finish the story? Vir-meut. ginia's death and Poe's despair, but a despair less agonizing than when there was yet hope. Then a gleam of passing reform, a sudden belief in lectures and money-getting, a relapse, but always that loving, watchful woman, Mrs. Clemm; and then the last downfall. The poor poet's still breathing body found in the street, robbed, drugged perhaps. Nothing left of the magic brain except such as is expressed by stertorous breathing in a hospital bed where he gave his last breath to earth and his spirit to God who made it. "My conviction is," says Beaudelaire, "that the United States were for Edgar Poe only a vast prison a savage country lighted with gas; and that his inner spiritual life of poet, and even of drunkard, was but one perpetual effort to escape the influence of this antipathetic atmosphere." Then he flings his accusation against the world that could not fathom this genius, this man whom he could so well understand, his mental affinity, and ends with this sentence, which we know stirred the very depth of his being as he wrote it: "One of these worldlings even ac-spair of his parents, Charles declared knowledges that it was difficult to give Edgar Poe employment, and that it was necessary to pay him less than others because he wrote in a style too

And now let us turn to Edgar Poe's translator. We have but touched the skirt of one mysterious life, and can do barely more for the other, leaving it to our readers to search out for themselves treasures that will repay their labors, the part of the chronicler being merely to suggest and not to teach.

Charles Baudelaire was born in 1821. At six years old he lost his father; the next year his mother married a Colonel Aupick, who, being stationed at Lyons, sent his stepson to school in that town. But the boy in no way distinguished himself, for even there, in the midst of his young companions, he began to feel solitary. In 1836 the family moved to Paris, and Charles went to the Collège Louis Grand. His stepfather seemed then to have entertained great hopes of the lad's future, but the passion for poetry had already taken hold of him, and later on he himself hints at having been expelled from college. His stepfather, now a general, wished his son to follow the military career, in which he could have procured him promotion, but, to the immense surprise and de

that he meant to embrace the profession of letters. The young man hated his stepfather, the reasons he gave for this hatred being that he was his step

father, that he was very demonstrative, | of his keen sense of perfection of the and that he knew nothing of literature ! beautiful, to stray entirely away out of There was nothing for it but to sever the beaten path, common to the mere the home tie, and the young man joy- scribblers of rhymes. Like Poe, he fully plunged into Paris life with its could not be paid at the ordinary rate magic charm and its literary compan- when his style was extraordinary. It ionship. He struck up an acquaint- is certain that Baudelaire was a rare ance with Balzac and set up as a case of true, not affected, originality. "dandy." Still all the while he was Not only was his mind moulded in au working hard, as all true poets must original form, but all his tastes were work; but when barely twenty years out of the common. His manner of old his mother interfered, and, enforc-dressing, his taste in food, his friending her legal authority, sent him to ship and his society-in fact, in everyIndia, in order to separate him from thing he could not be like other people; his evil surroundings. Ten months of neither were his likes and dislikes staexile were enough for him, and, taking | ble, being, even to himself, a mass of the law into his own hands, he has contradiction. One might liken him to tened back to his beloved Paris. His a man lost in the Bocage, seeking a absence must have helped to give him city he had heard of, but ignorant in greater mastery over English, which what direction to find it-trying all language in after years was to bring ways hither and thither, backward and him to the knowledge of Edgar Poe. forward, determined only upon one When the poet's majority arrived he thing, to find the goal without asking found himself with 3,000l. in his pocket, the way. All his tendencies were arisand delivered from parental authority. tocratic, but for three years he affected Then began his unfettered bachelor democratic principles, and even donned life. He determined, if possible, to be a blouse ! His money melted like something to aim at perfection - but snow in spring. He wished to work, the taste for beautiful pictures and but he could only do so when the fit antique furniture led him into extrav-seized him, all the while resolving to agance little in accordance with his make up for lost time. In sixteen means. He fell into the hands of a years he changed his lodgings more dishonest dealer, and incurred debts than eleven times, and even under which laid their heavy weight upon him for the rest of his life. Perhaps nothing is so strange, so ambiguous, so utterly despised by ordinary mortals as the life of a struggling poet. His elders invariably suggest that sweeping a street crossing is more honorable and more profitable; his intimates suggest alterations in his verses; and he himself must have an extraordinarily strong nature and an inextinguishable fund of originality and resistance if his genius is not to be swamped by the unfailing tide of custom. Further, the more correct his ear, the more dainty his taste, the more he will torment more he returned to pure literature, himself with the ignis fatuus of perfec- failing utterly when he tried journaltion, always touching and re-touching ism, for he was ever striving for that his verses, ever consumed by the pas- perfection which fugitive journalism sion for style which, to the ordinary almost precludes and usually excludes. public, is merely an insane mania. Then began the dawn of his literary passion for Edgar Poe, and soon after

Such was Baudelaire, bound, because

pressure of poverty he found it most. difficult to sit down to continuous labor. Besides being a true lover of his mis-. tress, poetry, Baudelaire was passionately fond of plastic art. He began his literary career by art-criticism and reviewing. Whatever he touched he left. upon it the impress of originality. At the age of twenty-five he had given proof of his genius in all branches of critical art, literature, and poetry.

The year 1848 interrupted his fitful labors, and the revolution fired his impressionable brain; but it was only a firework, and soon extinguished. Once