Text: Various, “The Memorial of Poe,” New-York Times (New York, NY), vol. XXIV, whole no. 10,505, May 5, 1885, p. 5, col. 1

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The Poe memorial, sculptured by Richard Henry Park and presented by the actors of New- York to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was unveiled in that building yesterday afternoon. A very large audience assembled to witness the ceremonies. A platform had been erected at the east end of the main ball, and on this sat members of the Memorial Committee, while the audience had seats on the floor in front or in the galleries above. Not more than one-half those present could hear what was said, and the effect of the music of Gilmore's orchestra, situated in the gallery on the north side, was much marred. The memorial consists of a tablet sunk into the wall at the west end of the building on the main floor next to the bust of Scott, bearing a bronze bust of Poe in bas-relief. and an inscription informing the visitor who he was, who presented the memorial, and when and why they did it. In front of the tablet stands female figure, chiseled in marble, representing she is inclosing the bust in a wreath of laurel.

The exercises yesterday afternoon began with prayer by the Rev. Arthur Brooks, after which Gilmore orchestra played the overture to “Oberon.” Then Algernon S. Sullivan, President of the Memorial Committee, delivered the Introductory address. He said that the unveiling of the memorial would convert the building from an ordinary museum into a shrine for intellectual worship. Poe's genius had been underestimated in his own time, but the exercises of the day were in the nature of a judgment of reversal, putting the palm where it was always merited. In conclusion, be said that be consecrated the alcove in which the memorial was in the name of American drama, art, and literature as the poets’ corner of Mr. Sullivan then introduced Edwin Booth, who was received; with hearty applause, to make the presentation speech on behalf of the actors.

Mr. Booth said: “It was my privilege to have leading hand in the first performance given for the purpose which is to-day accomplished. It was thought that I ought to make this presentation, and it is a pleasure and an honor to do it. I believe I speak the sentiment of the whole dramatic profession when I declare that the American stage is proud and glad to have been the means of paving this tribute to American literature. The art of the actor is peculiarly sensitive to the bond which unites all the arts in one family, but its kindred is nearest and its obligation deepest to the art of the poet. Poe was pot a dramatic poet: He wrote hardly anything In dramatic form — nothing that was ever acted. But he was a true poet, and every actor must know that the success of the dramatic art is due to the influence upon the public mind of poetry, which attunes It to all that is beautiful, majestic, or in human life. Actors, like other people, recognize in Poe a being of strange endowments — a writer who, in the magnificence of his conceptions, the vividness of his pictures, and the vitality of his diction, has rivaled even the wonderful originality and splendor of Coleridge, We remember with pride that he of theatrical lineage, and while we deplore his faults, we exult in his great powers. To the Metropolitan Museum of Art I now present this memorial of Edgar Allan Poe. Here may it be preserved under the reverent protection of American scholarship, permanent tribute to genius and lasting memento of sympathy until, in the long flight of axes, this structure, with all its hallowed relics of the past, shall have crumbled into dust” [Applause.]

The orchestra then played the last movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, after which John Gilbert performed the ceremony of. unveiling the memorial. He said that a speech would be unnecessary in view of what was to follow, and he waved his hand to the attendants at the other end of the hall, who drew the covering aside amid great applause. Gen. L. P. Di Cosnola made a brief speech accepting the memorial, and then a chorus and the orchestra, conducted by Richard Henry Warren, organist of the Anthon Memorial Church, gave at anthem. Song of the Free.” written and composed by George Edgar Montgomery and arranged by Mr. Warren, with excellent effect.

The oration of the day was next delivered by the Rev. William K. Alger, of Boston, his subject being The Mission and Errors of Genius as Seen in the Personality and Works of Edgar Allan Poe.” How little do ordinary souls,” said the speaker, “dream of what goes on in extraordinary souls The contemporaries of Poe — nameless thousands who mechanically transacted their affairs from day to day — have gone like sp many shadows of clouds. But he — child of intuitional being and passion — had imagination, which creates worlds of its own wherever it goes and magnifies its accompanying states of consciousness to indefinite dimensions: and we make pilgrimages to the places where be tarried and muse on his memory with unfathomable wonder and sorrow. As the eye of Coleridge made pictures when they were shut, so the mind of Poe, in periods of intense tranquillity, when the health was perfect, was the scene of visions with whose production he seemed himself to have nothing to do, but whose involuntary emergence and panoramic march through his imagination, be said, he watched with an awe which but moderated their ecstasy, for he regarded them as glimpses of the outer world of the spirit. The more closely we contemplate him with competent sympathy the greater and stronger be appears. He wandered through the streets of the city, the votary of an idealism vaster and vivider than that of Fichte, so intoxicated with a sense of unbounded consciousness as to feel that the universe itself was but an adumbration from his brain.

“How sad was the career, bow dark the fate, of the proud, dazzling, ill-starred, unspeakably afflicted genius we are this day commemorating. overwhelmed with poverty, unappreciated by his contemporaries, beset with calamity. the lights of paradise and the flames of perdition contending in his breast! He was not a bad man. According to all the evidence, he has been a constant victim of misinterpretation and misrepresentation: Dow ignorantly abused, now unfairly caricatured and defamed, now wantonly belied. He had many qualities which compel admiration, and many traits which are worthy of his love — his extraordinary intellectuality. imaginative worship of beauty, his ideal enthusiasm for literary art, his ineffaceable memory of the dead, his unfailing tenderness and devotion to his wife and mother. He was not in any sense a man of deliberate depravity. The worst that, can be justly said against him is that he was marred with moral obliquity, was stained with vicious weakness, was variously defective and sinful, while his life was a series of trials, griefs, disappointments, and tortures, which, in their intense and fearful array, appeal irresistibly for the compassion of every chivalrous nature, and the charitable Judgments of mankind.”

Sarah Cowell recited The Raven,” and was loudly applauded; the orchestra played the vorspiel to Lobengrin.” William Winter read a poem, and the grand march from the closed the platform and exercises. Among those, present on elsewhere were Schurz, E. C. Stedman, Dr. J. G. Moran, Cyrus W. Field, Parke Godwin, John Howe, Bigelow, Luther R. Marsh, Elliott, George Fawcett Theodore Western. Prof. of the Baltimore City College; A. M. Palmer, Marshall H. Mallory, W. Fearing Gill, the biographer of Poe: the Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, Harry Edwarde, Leon John Vincent, Salem Ana H. Wales, E. Dixey.