... Poe to lower the tone of literary criticism in this country; and the greater his talent, the greater the mischief. As a poet he held for a time the place earlier occupied by Byron, and later by Swinburne , as the patron saint of all wilful boys suspected of genius, and convicted at least of its infirmities. He belonged to the melancholy class of wasted men, like the German Hoffman, whom perhaps of a...