John Phelps Fruit, the distinguished Poe scholar, was born at Pembroke, Kentucky, November 22, 1855. He was graduated from Bethel College, Russellville, Kentucky, in 1878, after which he became a teacher. For two years Professor Fruit was president of Liberty College, Glasgow, Kentucky; and from 1883 to 1897 he was professor of English in his alma mater, Bethel College. In 1895 the University of Leipzig granted him the Ph. D. degree; and three years later he was elected to the chair of English in William Jewell College, Liberty, Missouri, which he still occupies. Dr. Fruit's first work was an edition of Milton's Lycidas (Boston, 1894), and this was followed by his edition of Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner (Boston, 1899). Both of these little volumes have been used in many schools and colleges. Dr. Fruit devoted many years to the study of Edgar Allan Poe and his works, and his researches he brought together in The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry (New York, 1899). This book gave Dr. Fruit a foremost place among the Poe scholars of his time. His work was officially recognized by the University of Virginia, the poet's college, and it has been widely and cordially reviewed. At the present time Dr. Fruit is engaged in a comprehensive study of Nathaniel Hawthorne, his pamphlet, entitled Hawthorne's Immitigable (Louisville, Kentucky, n. d.), having attracted a deal of attention.

Bibliography. Who's Who in America (1912-1913); letters from Prof. Fruit to the writer.

THE CLIMAX OF POE'S POETRY[13]

[From The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry (New York, 1899)]

Accustomed as we are, from infancy up, to so much "rhyme without reason," in our nursery jingles and melodies, we associate some of Poe's poetry, remotely, at first blush, with the negroes singing "in the cotton and the corn." So much sound makes us suspicious of the sense, but a little closer ear appreciates delicate and telling onomatopoetic effects. Liquids and vowels join hands in sweetest fellowship to unite "the hidden soul of harmony."

As if, at last, to give the world assurance that he had been trifling with rhythm and rhyme, he wrote The Bells.

The secret of the charm resides in the humanizing of the tones of the bells. It is not personification, but the speaking in person to our souls. To appreciate this more full, observe how Ruskin humanizes the sky for us. "Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential."

Poe made so much of music in his doctrine of poetry, yet he never humanized the notes of a musical instrument....

He took the common bells,—the more praise for his artistic judgment,—and rang them through all the diapason of human sentiment.

If we have imagined a closer correspondence between expression and conception, in the previously considered poems, than really exists, there can be no doubt on that point, even to the mind of the wayfaring man, in reading The Bells.

If it be thought that the poet could harp on only one theme, let the variety of topic in The Bells protest.

Again, Poe's doctrine of "rhythm and rhyme" finds its amplest verification in The Bells. Reason and not "ecstatic intuition," led him to conclude that English versification is exceedingly simple; that "one-tenth of it, possibly, may be called ethereal; nine-tenths, however, appertain to the mathematics; and the whole is included within the limits of the commonest common-sense."

It must be believed that Poe appropriated, with the finest artistic discernment, the vitalizing power of rhythm and rhyme, and nowhere with more skill than in The Bells. It is the climax of his art on its technical side.

Read the poem and think back over the course of the development of poet's art-instincts.