Near the end of the year 1838 he settled in Philadelphia.  He had no very Definite purposes, but trusted for support to the chances of success as a magazinist and newspaper correspondent.  Mr. Burton, the comedian, had recently established the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” and of this he became a contributor, and in May, 1839, the chief editor, devoting to it, for ten dollars a week, two hours every day, which left him abundant time for more important labors.  In the same month he agreed to furnish such reviewals as he had written for the “Literary Messenger,” for the “Literary Examiner,” a new magazine at Pittsburgh.  But his more congenial pursuit was tale-writing, and he produced about this period some of his most remarkable and characteristic works in a department of imaginative composition in which he was henceforth alone and unapproachable.  “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Legeia”, are the most interesting illustrations of his mental organization—­his masterpieces in a peculiar vein of romantic creation.  They have theunquestionable stamp of genius.  The analyses of the growth of madness in one, and the thrilling revelations of the existence of a first wife in the person of a second, in the other, are made with consummate skill; and the strange and solemn and fascinating beauty which informs the style and invests the circumstances of both, drugs the mind, and makes us forget the improbabilities of their general design.

An awakened ambition and the healthful influence of a conviction that his works were appreciated, and that his fame was increasing, led him for a while to cheerful views of life, and to regular habits of conduct.  He wrote to a friend, the author of “Edge Hill,” in Richmond, that he had quite overcome “the seductive and dangerous besetment” by which he had so often been prostrated, and to another friend that, incredible as it might seem, he had become a “model of temperance,” and of “other virtues,” which it had sometimes been difficult for him to practice.  Before the close of the summer, however, he relapsed into his former courses, and for weeks was regardless of everything but a morbid and insatiable appetite for the means of intoxication.

In the autumn he published all the prose stories he had then written, in two volumes, under the title of “Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque.”  The work was not salable, perhaps because its contents were too familiar from recent separate publication in magazines; and it was not so warmly praised, generally, as I think it should have been, though in point of style the pieces which it embraced are much less perfect than they were made subsequently.

He was with Mr. Burton until June, 1840—­more than a year.  Mr. Burton Appreciated his abilities and would have gladly continued the connection; but Poe was so unsteady of purpose and so unreliable that the actor was never sure when he left the city that his business would be cared for.  On one occasion, returning after the regular day of publication, he found the number unfinished, and Poe incapable of duty.  He prepared the necessary copy himself, published the magazine, and was proceeding with arrangements with for another month, when he received a letter from his assistant, of which the tone may be inferred from this answer: