her own tubercular condition to go to Albany. Poe pursued her there, then to Boston, and thence to Providence, R. I., where on a lonely walk late one evening be first saw a Mrs. Helen Whitman to whom he afterwards became engaged. The second poem called "To Helen" celebrates this meeting. Lowell visited Poe in New York in the spring of 1845 and found Poe slightly intoxicated in his lodgings at 195 Broadway, whither he had lately moved. In July, Dr. Chivers also visited him and saw him at times much under the influence but nevertheless with the characteristics of genius about him. Poe's affairs despite his growing fame did not prosper. He contributed a series of articles to Godey's Lady's Book on the literati of New York. They were personal sketches combined with the obiter dicta of the author and a dash of literary criticism that caused considerable stir at the time and in one or two cases involved Poe in undignified quarrels. The "Literati Papers" do not 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 affair 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, 1...
